How to Talk to Teachers about Self-Care
I’m going to be honest, when I started thinking about ways to talk to teachers about self-care, my first thought was “stop.” Stop talking to teachers about self-care, especially in May. I can feel my school’s social emotional learning (SEL) committee and my colleagues who put affirmations in the bathroom disagreeing with me already. But hear me out here before you decide that I’m wrong.
Self-care is definitely experiencing a moment in the spotlight. This started before the pandemic and the focus has only increased as we’ve gone through the last year and a half of anxiety, upheaval, and just general awfulness. Throughout this time, we’ve been reminded by our schools to practice self-care. Maybe your admin or department head has suggested going for walks, taking a long bath, curling up with a good book, and any number of other relaxing activities. Maybe there are signs or affirmations hanging in your department office or school bathroom. Perhaps those make you smile and you're sitting there reading this and wondering what possible problem I could have with these kinds of messages. After all, aren’t they designed to make you feel more cared for and less stressed?
Well, let me tell you, things like that only work in school cultures that are supportive of teacher well-being the rest of the time. Especially this year, when many teachers have felt like their very safety has been threatened, messages like this are not doing much to help teachers. If you’ve been around schools for a long time, you may have heard the sentiment “You can’t get to Bloom before Maslow.” Simply put, you can’t get to any higher-order thinking or feeling until you’ve dealt with the basic need for safety. And if your school’s culture isn’t focused on safety, both the physical and emotional varieties, then your school’s messages of self-care are falling on deaf ears. If your school is finding ways to target, scold, censor, or punish its teachers for expressing their feelings about being unsafe, then your school is not creating a safe culture. And if your school’s culture isn’t safe, they might as well skip posting those affirmations, because teachers and school staff will see right through them.
It isn’t the responsibility of teachers to self-care their way out of questioning right vs. wrong and standing up for themselves. There are not enough relaxing baths in the world to make a teacher feel okay about their administration not supporting a safe environment. How many books would one have to curl up with to feel okay—just okay—in an environment where they fear being punished or shamed for expressing their opinions?
So, what is the point of this, Amy? Are you really arguing that teachers shouldn’t take care of themselves? Absolutely not. But unless administrators are working to create a culture of caring in their schools, they should stop foisting the responsibility onto their teachers. Toxic school culture will never be fixed with self-care and affirmations. To convince teachers that self-care is important, administrators must first create a culture that supports them. That kind of culture allows all school personnel to care for themselves and their students.
Want some more information about how to improve your school culture? Looking to do some healing in the fall? Reach out to Aequitas and let’s chat about how we can help.