“Education...is a painful, continual, and difficult work to be done in kindness, by watching, by warning...by praise, but above all, by example.” ~ John Ruskin
Teachers do far more than impart knowledge to their students. Everything they do serves as an example to the students in their classrooms and that includes how well they take care of their own needs.
At Alludo, we understand the importance of self-care for teachers. Any teacher may experience compassion fatigue or burnout. That makes it essential for teachers to have an array of tools and techniques at their disposal and to feel empowered to use them regularly to optimize their self-care. Without such tools, teacher retention may become a problem.
We have included many self-care topics and activities in the Alludo Content Catalog. Here are five must-have health & wellness tools that can help teachers avoid burnout.
Because self-care for teachers is often overlooked, it’s essential to understand why it matters – and what can happen when it’s not a priority. When teachers engage in self-care, it’s not selfish. In fact, it’s just the opposite because they’re modeling healthy behavior for their students.
Self-care isn’t just about how a teacher feels about themselves. It has an impact on their students every day. A 2021 study in Cultural Studies of Science Education found that when pre-service teachers were educated about self-care and built a toolbox to help them cope with stress and burnout, they were more likely to be successful in the classroom than teachers who were not provided with self-care tools.
Teachers are caregivers and like any caregiver, they may neglect self-care because they’re focusing on their students. A 2020 study found that caregivers who regularly engaged in self-care were better able to care for their patients – and it’s not much of a leap to extrapolate that data to apply to teachers, who experience comparable levels of stress.
Teaching is one of the most stressful occupations because teachers worry about their students. Even the most committed and passionate teachers may experience stress. Good self-care helps teachers manage stress by providing them with a necessary release when they need it – which in turn, benefits their students.
When we conducted our Teacher Happiness Survey, we learned that teachers who don’t engage in consistent self-care are far more likely to burn out or leave the profession of teaching than those who make self-care a priority.
Teachers can maintain their personal wellness and engage in self-care by building self-care activities into their lives. Here are some examples:
These simple activities can make a big difference in teachers’ health and wellness, helping them to avoid compassion fatigue and burnout.
Teachers can prioritize self-care most easily when they have a collection of resources and tools they can use. Here are five of the best health and wellness tools for teacher self-care.
YouTube is a wonderful resource for self-care because it has millions of free videos related to wellness topics such as meditation and Yoga. Teachers can access these videos at home or at school using a computer, tablet, or smartphone.
Yoga With Adriene is one channel that features special Yoga videos for teachers. There are hundreds of meditations designed for teachers as well, including some that teachers can do with their students. Teachers can curate videos they find useful and add them to a personal playlist. (Anybody with a Gmail account can sign into YouTube and save videos to watch later.)
Mindfulness apps can provide guidance for teachers to practice mindfulness and send notifications and reminders to help teachers make self-care a priority. Here are a few mindfulness apps to try:
Of course, these are just a few of the available apps and there are many others.
Teacher self-care can take many forms and at its best, social media can be a tool to facilitate self-care. Following self-care accounts on Instagram can be helpful because it’s something teachers can do from anywhere. Here are some examples.
These are just a few examples. Teachers can curate their own preferred accounts, so that every time they open the Instagram app, they’ll see content that’s calming and inspiring.
There are thousands of books and journals that can help teachers cultivate the habit of self-care. Reading a book about mindfulness can help teachers learn about its benefits and how to practice it. One good option is Thich Nhat Hanh’s book You Are Here: Discovering the Magic of the Present Moment.
Journals are available online and in bookstores, with pre-printed and printable versions to choose from. We like Resilience Journal: Daily Reflections & Self-Care for Educators because it was created especially for teachers.
With millions of websites to choose from, it should come as no surprise that the web can be a wonderful resource for teachers. Here are two websites we like for teacher self-care:
Teachers can and should curate other resources to add to their bookmarks.
One thing that may be helpful for teachers is creating and using a teacher self-care checklist. The checklist should be simple and include daily, weekly, and monthly reminders and goals. Here are some of the things that might appear on such a checklist:
Many of these things can easily be worked into a teacher’s daily schedule, while some may need to be reserved for weekends or time off.
The Alludo Content Catalog includes many activities related to teacher self-care and wellness. Topics include the following:
We make it easy for teachers to practice good self-care by giving teachers a choice and a voice in what they learn and by using elements of gamification to make learning fun and easy.
Practicing self-care helps mitigate teacher burnout and stress and bring their best selves into the classroom every day. In other words, it benefits their students too! School districts should help teachers help themselves by providing them with access to self-care tools and education.
Experience personalized learning for all levels of educators with a free trial of Alludo’s professional development platform. You’ll enjoy: