Welcome to the cusp of yet another new year! Some schools have already received children; others are in their final approach. We have planned and prepared our physical and logistical environments to help the students feel welcome and confident in what will be their home for the next 9 months. All is ready – perhaps.
Have we planned for refreshments? Not food and drink — physical refreshment — but refreshment for the mind, body, soul, and spirit. Have those been prepared?
Lessons Learned – Hopefully…
If we learned nothing else from the past year, I hope we have embraced these two truths:
- Mental and spiritual health is every bit as important as physical health.
- We are not good at taking care of our mental and spiritual health.
In recent months, the public spotlight has been focused on several world-class athletes who have stepped back and set boundaries in defense of their own well-being. Initially, there were detractors who said that these were selfish acts of pampered and privileged celebrities. But the dialog has shifted to recognize that these were courageous acts of necessary self-care. The public paradigm shifted just a bit.
In education, there has been a similar small shift over the past year. The pandemic required tremendous fortitude, creativity, and perseverance at a time when everyone’s much more basic need for safety was being called into question. With this as a backdrop, many concerned administrators began to admonish staff to take better care of themselves, to which one teacher I know responded, “If one more administrator tells me to practice self-care without giving me the time and skills to do it…”
What Lessons are We Really Teaching?
Now, at the beginning of the year, it is time to intentionally find the time and skill to integrate self-care into our days. We need it. The children need it. If we do not, we are teaching our children that it is reasonable to expect oneself and each other to be 100% productive 100% of the time that we are in the classroom. We are modeling that it is noble to suppress your needs to push through and get the job done. Children learn that it is appropriate to feel defensive, apprehensive, or guilty when not actively producing a product.
Admittedly, it is tricky for teachers to carve out space for those important life lessons when the charge is loud and clear to somehow make up for a very disrupted year. But failing to prioritize caring for the mental, emotional, and physical well-being of ourselves and our students reflects a paradigm that busyness is more valuable than effectiveness, a paradigm that many predict will lead to continuing learning deficits in children and further attrition from the teaching profession. For our own well-being, then, and for the success and well-being of the children, we must take this seriously and make it a priority. The good news is that we can learn how to practice effective self-care alongside of the children by weaving self-care into just a few minutes each day.
A Lesson Sequence
In April of 2019, Dr. Saundra Dalton-Smith gave a TedTalk identifying seven types of rest – it’s not all about napping or watching TV. She said that failing to provide ourselves with the type of rest that we actually need has created “a culture of high-achieving, high-producing, chronically tired and burned-out individuals.” (Watch her enlightening TedTalk at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZGNN4EPJzGk )
Dr. Dalton-Smith identifies seven types of energy that we use in everyday life, saying that if we know which type(s) of energy we used most heavily in a given day, we can identify the type of rest that will be most effective. When we match the type of rest to the type of energy expended, we feel refreshed. We become more creative and energized and feel motivated and rested. The good news is that rest doesn’t need to take a lot of time! When we choose the right type of rest, refreshment is minutes away.
Refreshment Bombs
Here are a few options for each of the seven types of rest that we all need that, in 5-minutes or less, can produce authentic refreshment. Some of these are best done at the beginning or end of the day, but some can be done in the classroom!
- Mental – take a walk (a brisk walk to the other end of the building and back or a stroll around the playground). Or grab a healthy snack and a large glass of water. Keep a pad of paper on your nightstand to capture racing thoughts so you can dismiss them when it is time to sleep.
- Sensory – go into a darkened, quiet space and shut your eyes to create intentional moments of sensory deprivation.
- Emotional – be authentic in expressing your emotions. Begin by being authentic with yourself. (“I’m not ok right now…”) Cut back on people pleasing – give a truthful “no” when the request is too challenging.
- Social – make a list of people who recharge your batteries: supportive people who are easy to be around. Engage fully with these people, even if it is just a brief phone call or a coffee break.
- Creative – spend 5 minutes with no agenda. Listen to music. Take a dance break. Engage with something that makes you feel awe (art, nature, science, literature).
- Spiritual – connect to something beyond the physical/mental to feel belonging, acceptance, and purpose. Breathe. Meditate. Read short and inspiring passages. Pray. Make a gratitude list.
- Physical – the type of rest to which most of us (sometimes mistakenly) default, leading to overgeneralized statements like, “Naps don’t work – I feel more tired after a nap than before.”
- Active physical rest: practice yoga, stretch, sit in an ergonomically neutral position and breathe intentionally.
- Passive physical rest: sleeping, napping
Research on rest done by Bec Heinrich revealed that the majority of people do not factor rest into their schedule. The most common reasons given for not intentionally including rest include feeling guilty for taking the time, not knowing know how rest, and being overcommitted in every aspect of their life. The truth is, we have control over each of these. We can choose to value intentional rest and to unapologetically practice it until we get good at it!
Bringing Refreshment to the Children
Once we have given the Practical Life lessons on rolling a rug, cleaning a shelf, and using the planner, it is time to initiate Practical Life lessons on human needs and courteous interactions. Among these can be lessons on choosing to refresh ourselves when needed. We can use Dr. Dalton-Smith’s framework to design mini-lessons that spend 5-10 minutes discussing one type of work/rest, continuing until all 7 have been covered.
If the topic du jour is mental rest, the discussion might go like this:
- What does mental exertion look like and feel like?
- Are there signals that we need mental rest (brain fog, slow progress on something that normally takes less time and energy, etc.)?
- What are some forms of mental rest that are options during the work cycle – ways to be mentally refreshed without disturbing others?
- Bonus: If we were to design an icon for mental rest, what would it include? Sketch the icon at the top of a large sheet of paper. At the end of the day, invite everyone to share any form of mental rest they tried that seemed effective and add that list to the page. Keep that page posted for the first couple of weeks to be able to reference until new habits are established.
Of course, children learn more from what we model than they do from our beautifully delivered words. We must follow up these lessons by practicing visible, brief, intentional rest. It is safe to say that few of us practice self-care with grace and confidence right now. Heaven knows, I need these skills as much or more than most! I know that my implementation will be mechanical at first; the grace and confidence will come with practice, like any new skill. I also know that it is important to not let “perfect” get in the way of the next right step. So right now, I am going to take 10 minutes to sit with an iced coffee and watch the hummingbirds in my front garden. No apologies.
Reflection for Adults:
What negative feelings do I carry about self-care? Guilt? Apprehension or fear? Inadequacy or unworthiness? Resentment?
What will it take for me to replace these unhelpful attitudes with the certain knowledge that this practice is unabashedly essential to my ability to serve the best interest of the children in my class and to preserve my passion for education?
“If your compassion does not include yourself, it is incomplete.”
-Jack Kornfield