Beyond Educator Burnout - 7 Tips for Authentic Self-Care for Teachers

  Hey educator friends, today we are going to talk about something that is becoming a pet peeve for me and maybe for you too. It is this whole idea that's got weaponized. It's a really good idea but the way it's been presented in education the last few years is abysmal. So let me tell you what it is before you roll your eyes.

We're going to talk about what it is. Authentic self care. Now, self care, yes, that word has become almost weaponized in education, right? Placing the burden of managing stress and burnout solely on individual teachers, like somehow we're negligent and, you know, it's a personal failing for not taking care of ourselves, while really dismissing the systemic issues and inadequate support systems.

everywhere in the educational landscape, right? So, um, at worst, it's weaponized, at best, I see school districts and schools with good intentions, you know, just paying lip service, doing like a one and done quick little training on it or something. So in this episode, I am going to empower you that until This education system gets fixed.

Who knows when that's going to be. We still got to go about living our best teacher life. So I'm going to give you seven strategies for authentic teacher self care. We're going to talk about the difference between self care and not, you know, when you look on Pinterest and you're like, Ooh, a face mask and a mani pedi, like that's pampering, that's beautiful.

It's not the same thing. So I'm going to give you the strategies. And at the end of the episode, Oh my gosh, I have a fantastic resource for you. Um, that is free that you can all use and you can even bring to your teacher besties and your campus. So I cannot wait to get started. I will. I appreciate that you have a.

So many choices of things to listen to and right now you're investing in yourself by listening to me. I'm proud of you. Let me see you on the inside.  Welcome to the Balance Your Teacher Life podcast,  where we talk all things avoiding educator burnout, setting healthy boundaries and achieving better work life balance. 

If you're passionate about education but tired of it consuming your whole life, You have found your home in the podcast universe. I'm your host, Grace Stevens, and let's get going with today's show. 

Okay. So here we are. I could start with a story and let me tell you, I have so many,  you know, often I say life Right. Like those, uh, exams for mastery, you keep getting the same test until, until you pass it. And I took this, uh, this test of, you know, lack of self care. Uh, so many times I can give you so many examples, but let me just tell you this.

Um, I had an emergency appendectomy. Bye bye.  Probably like it was on a Sunday night and it was the week before spring break. My, my body held out until then. I had an emergency gallbladder removal on the last day of school before winter break. You guessed it. Spent my whole winter break recuperating, released to work the first day back at school.

Right. I had two, um, surgeries that I had kept putting off and putting off and putting off. That could have been minor surgeries, but I put them off until summer. Yeah. So I wouldn't inconvenience anybody and write those sub plans. And then those surgeries turned into bigger issues that took me all 10 weeks to heal.

I mean, I could keep going on. Well, let's just stop here. The law, I never had COVID all those years of, um, two years of hybrid teaching  and, you know, days when 22 of my 32 kids were out with COVID, I never got it on the last. Day of my teaching career. Last day, day, year 20, I had 103 fever. I miss my last day with my kids and the last day of my career.

And in fact, I miss my own retirement party because my body held on until then to get COVID. Why? Because I just didn't take care of it, right? And we know better, we know that we've got to take care of ourselves or we can't take care of anybody else. Um, I mean, I know I'm preaching to the choir or you wouldn't be listening to this podcast, okay?

Our energy teaches more than our lesson plans how we show up. And so we're going to be looking at what matters. We gotta show up energized, excited, not burn out, resentful exhausted and sick. Okay, that's not good for students, not good for you. It's not good for anybody around you. Um, and it's unproductive if that's what you need to tell yourself.

If it's not a worthiness issue like other people's needs are more important than my needs, then go back and listen to my episode on the teacher martyr syndrome. time. Bye. Was one of my first episodes, um, go listen to that, take that to heart. But in the meantime,  we got to really take responsibility for looking after ourselves.

So let's talk about this whole concept of self care. What is it? What isn't it? So. Again, to reiterate, this word in the last few years, ugh, like, it's been big in education. Like, self care is important, right? And kind of the insinuation is, oh, you silly teachers, you know, you're negligent, you're not taking care of yourselves.

Well, you know, there needs to be responsibility, saying it's, um, systemic issues. And you know, as a result of our enormous lack of support, right? Overburdened, ridiculous, you know, requests put on us, underfunding of the education system, you know, dysregulated students. I can tell you all the reasons why we don't have time and energy to take care of ourselves.

so much for joining us. But I'm going to suggest that it's one of the most important things you can do. Again, if you don't want to do it for yourself, you need to do it for your students and for your family. So let's talk about it. Let's feel empowered, right? Because even some districts, like I was in a district that had plenty of funding, plenty of really smart people.

I, in fact, was a member of their wellness committee for three years.  And it was the three years of 2022. What were all of those?  Those were the lockdown, hybrid teaching, you know, those years, those were the most stressful years. You know, what was never once on the agenda, no matter how many times I tried to bring it up, was teacher wellness.

Right, we talked about vaping in bathrooms, we talked about having a farm for the kids so they could learn to eat healthy, all those things. Teacher mental health, teacher wellness, teacher stress, none of those things were discussed. Um, I made a resource that I'm going to share for you at the end, simply because, um, I was there as a teacher.

Each, um, school. Um, and then I had an admin who was supposed to report on whatever they were doing for wellness for that month and then a teacher there, whatever. Well, you know, there were many times the admin didn't come and, um, it was like, Oh, just Grace, you just tell them what we've been doing, which was  nothing.

Right. I was about to say a rude word, but basically. Nothing is what we've been doing. And I was so embarrassed to go to one more meeting and tell them we've been doing nothing,  that I made this resource, which was like this wellness challenge for teachers. And I'll talk more about it at the end. But like, that was basically, cause I was on this wellness committee that never talked about teachers.

I mean, it was ridiculous. So that's when I say it's given lip service. It's like a checkoff, like, yeah, we're doing it, right. We're doing it, but there's really, you know, it is treated like a checkbox exercise, not really, you know, follow through and commitment from policymakers. So we're on our own. Okay, we're on our own, but we can do this. 

We can do this. So let me tell you, right, that self care really needs this kind of holistic approach to personal and professional well being. And I'm going to give you seven things. Now, you're going to, some of them you're going to eye roll and you'll be like, yeah, we know that. Of course you know that.

There is a difference between knowing something and having created something. A habit to sustain the doing of that thing. Okay. So that's where we're, we're missing because the first thing I'm going to tell you is really that what we need to do is, you know, just look at our, our physical needs first, right?

Like we need to sleep, we need to hydrate.  Right? It's a big joke, right? That we never drink all day. At least I never did, because I was too far away from the bathroom and there was no one to cover. So that's terrible, right? We need to drink. We need to hydrate. We need to get over this idea that lunch can be, you know, a Diet Coke and a protein bar.

Like, we need to eat real food. Okay, so that's number one and you know, that's a lot and, and everybody's gonna, like I said, like we know that, but this is your body has basic human needs.  Take care of them. So number one, like you're a human. a human. Take care of your body. You take better care of your plants, some of you, and your pets  than you do of your own human physical needs.

So think about that. That needs to be top of the list. Get some sleep, hydrate,  eat healthy. All right,  now let's think about our mental health, right? Okay, our mental health.  There are days we need mental health days. We need them. We just, we just can't, just cannot adult today. Like I'm overstressed. I'm overburdened.

Yesterday I needed a day where I just stay home all day. And I don't even have a very stressful life anymore. But I was just like, you know, and I put everyone in my life off notice. I am not leaving the house today. I might not even get dressed today. Who cares? And you know, what was I doing? Was I living some fantastic life?

No, I sat at my desk all day, but I had stuff I needed to get done. And it was wearing me down. It was ticky tacky stuff. I just hadn't done it. This mental, you know, fatigue of carrying it around thinking, Oh, I gotta do this, I gotta do that. Like sit down, you know, five hours. I cranked it all out. Um, but I literally opted out my life for the day.

You have  PTO time. You have days off. Now I know when you have young kids, you kind of try and save them for when the kid is sick,  right? But if you don't, like the fact that there is no sub to cover your class is not your problem. That problem is above your pay grade. If you are a teacher and if you're an admin, You can take the day off too.

Somebody else's problem to make sure somebody can cover for you. It, we keep going even when we know we need a day off, right? That one day off that we could have taken to take care of ourselves. We keep putting it off, putting it off, putting it off until, yeah, we need a week off, a month off. We need a surgery.

Look at my other examples, right?  Like, and I didn't make those up. Those were true, right? It was a lot over a 20 year career, but it was a consistent pattern. I kept doing the same thing, like putting my own needs last until my body literally gave out. So take a mental health day when you need it. And that could be to go get a pedicure.

Nobody's darn business. It's your day off. If that's how you relax, if you feel I have done nothing nice for myself in forever, if you just need to stay home and, you know, clean up your office, get caught up on some bills or whatever, nobody's business. Okay, so number one, take care of your physical needs, right?

Sleep, water, nutrition. Number two, take a mental health day when you need it. No sub, not your problem,  right? Number three, we gotta take normalize taking days off to go to the doctor. It is such a huge relief to me since I am no longer in the classroom every day.  It is amazing to me when I call to get a doctor appointment that I can get one.

Like, 20 years of like, having to apologetically say I'm sorry I need your last appointment of the day. You know, as does every other teacher and you're three months out. Right, we've got to normalize it. If I've got to go to the doctor, I'm going to take my half day.  Right, that, that is what it is. You need to go to the doctor, the dentist, whatever you need to do, you need to do it.

We need to normalize that.  Okay, that we, it's okay to take a day off because your body has needs. All right. So that's number three. Number four. What habits are you gonna create around  these basic things?  That can occur at work, not just outside of work, right? So  fresh air,  exercise. I mean, no one's going to go jogging on their lunch.

We got like, you know, unless you're the PE teacher. Great. The rest of us are wearing professional clothes. We don't want to be all sweaty, right? But we could go for a walk on lunch. We could get outside and eat our lunch away from our desk and our email and our devices, right?  Cultivate some habits that are healthier while you're actually at school.

Not waiting until like, Oh, I don't have time to exercise. I don't have energy to exercise when I get home, but just to have something healthy, sit outside, drink some water, Walk around the campus. Uh, you know, do it when your own students are actually in lunch, not on the yard. Otherwise, you know, that would not be relaxing at all.

It'll be a tattle fest. They'll all come up  telling you, This happened! And then you're going to have to like, Oh, and what did the yard duty say when you told them? Oh, I didn't tell the yard duty. Okay, well, I'm not on duty right now. Go tell them. Right? Can you tell I've said that 8 million times in my career?

So yes, obviously be strategic about it. But try and get outside. Drink some water.  Take some deep breaths, feel the sun on your face, or even the rain on your face if it's raining. Just get away from your desk for a minute and say, this is what I need. Alright, number five. Connection and support. You know, I've talked about the blue zones before, um, the studies of the people who, the areas in the world where people live the longest, and as well as, you know, healthy food. 

In taking care of themselves, one of the huge predictors of a long, healthy life is social connections and support.  I know sometimes that lunchroom is the den of iniquity. I understand. Um, negative Nelly's hanging out in there. You just want to get away from it. Find your people, find your besties, find your positive posse, hang with them, go for a walk with them, like be social, have a way to have connections at school.

Don't just, you know, isolate. Right. Have a support network inside school, have a support network outside of school. You have to have interests outside of  school.  Self care means being a complete person. You can go back and listen to my other  podcasts that I did, the dangers of hashtag teacher life, when everything about your life is about teaching, you know, having some other interests.

Other people that you know and you enjoy who have nothing to do with teaching so that you have conversations about other things and excitement and interest about other things, right? Connection, support, inside school, outside of school, huge part of self care. Now, number six, now this should really, this is the crux of it all,  the best way to really connect. 

Invest in self care  is to set healthy boundaries.  Just go back, look through the episodes. I gotta say at this point, I must have done at least ten episodes in the last six months on setting boundaries, right? With negative people, setting boundaries on your time. How do you say no professionally? All those things, what are the misconceptions about setting boundaries, right?

What's getting in our way? Why do we have this teacher martyr syndrome that we equate the last car in the parking lot as being the best teacher, which is absolutely not true, right? So I don't want to, you know,  half of these podcasts are about setting boundaries. So go  listen to them. The reason I keep harping on about it is, it's the thing that changes the game.

It's the thing that changes the trajectory of your burnout. It improves everything. Everything about your life when you learn how to set healthy boundaries inside a classroom and outside a classroom and that is 100 percent in your control. So many things in education out of our control. How we set boundaries is 100 percent in our control.

Boundaries is about our behavior, not about other people. It's not about controlling other people. It's not about manipulating other people. It's about  what are we going to do? All right. So go listen to all of those episodes. Thank you.  Well, choose the one that you think is most painful for you. Hopefully you've downloaded the quiz and you've already found you're about blind spots.

If not, there was probably an intro about that or an outro or somewhere. If not go here right now, gracestephens. com forward slash quiz. You can take the quiz to find out where your blind spots are. It's confidential. It's free with awareness comes choice.  All right. Number seven, and this is the work of a lifetime.

Isn't it all,  do you know what your body needs?  Do you know what you need?  When you're starting to feel, you know, on edge, irritable, burnt out, not feeling great,  do you know how to ask yourself, what is it I need right now?  Right, is that a habit you have?  Do you know? A lot of us, you know, our first  D for, when we're feeling uncomfortable, is to distract ourselves, is to pick up our phone, pick up our phone, look at social media, do I have any messages, do I have this, do I have that, whatever, right?

Distraction. Number one. Pampering. Okay, pampering is good. That's not authentic self care. Sometimes you do need to be pampered, but sometimes you don't, right? It seems like every coping strategy we have these days or way of treating ourselves is reduced  to either the bar, like we can't wait to go home and have a beer or a glass of wine, or the bakery.

We want to have something sweet, right? So I'm not saying those things are wrong, but they're not True self care. That's a distraction. That's like a mini reward. Um, we feel like we deserve it. Oh, I've had a tough day. I deserve it. What you deserve is to feel connected to yourself so that you know how to take care of yourself. 

That you know how to put your head,  your hand on your head and say, let me think. What am I thinking right now? Or put your hand on your heart. What am I feeling right now? What does my body read my right now? Does it need some water? Does it need some quiet?  Right? Um,  Do I need to journal my thoughts for a minute?

Do I need to just sit quietly? I'm not even going to say meditate. People be like, Oh no, no one has time to sit cross legged on the floor, right? We've all moved beyond that. We do enough of of, of, of, of this work in schools now that you know just sitting quietly without a distraction a couple of deep breaths.

All these self soothing  exercises that we should be teaching our students, right? They work for us too. If you want a refresher on some of those, go back to episode 18, where I talked about co regulation,  right? How, how you show up.  Really influences how your students show up and then it either becomes a vicious circle where things get worse and worse and worse, or it becomes a virtuous circle where things are getting better and better and better, right?

Episode 15 was fantastic conversation with Kaylee Lethko of Educalm.  And in that episode, so many great resources. And then on the educom website that was linked to this  free curriculum for, for schools, for everybody. So some kind of this whole idea of just.  Being quiet, being mindful and asking yourself, what is it I need right now?

Okay, not just distraction, not just pampering. You know, sometimes we do need, you know, Netflix and just be left alone to kind of decompress. Um,  but the true area of self care comes from  having that connection to yourself and knowing what you need. Okay?  So,  let's recap here. I know that was a lot. Some of it you probably knew.

You might be like, well that's obvious, I knew that. Again, you know it. Do you do it?  Is it a habit?  Right. So, the seven ways to invest in authentic self care. Right? Number one, just take care of your body with its basic needs. Come on!  Maslow's hierarchy of deeds. Start there. Right? You, you need sleep. 

Nutrition, hydration, right? Then we need to feel emotionally safe.  Number two, take a mental health day when you need it. Right? Learn how to protect, you know, your energy. Decompress your nervous system. Had a lot of episodes on that, right? Living in this constant fight or flight stress. It's not, it's not good for us.

Our human bodies weren't designed for that. We haven't kind of adapted over time to live constantly in that stress response.  Number three, normalize taking a day off for a doctor. Whatever you need. Again, no sub. Not your problem.  Number four, habits. Try and incorporate healthy habits while you're at school.

Whether that's walking, just going outside, taking a breath, um, doing any of the, you know,  emotional, social, emotional, you know, mindfulness episodes that we've talked about all these times and, and getting away from your desk. Stop eating at your desk, shoveling in food, washing it down with, you know, Diet Coke or another cup of coffee that you've heated up for the fifth time.

Um, you know, while you're checking your mail, that's not what your body needs to either relax for a minute or to digest food properly, right? Number five, connection and support.  Connection with other people, a support network in school, outside of school.  X, um, you know, having some identity outside of school, interests outside of school.

Very important.  Number six. Ay yi yi. Setting boundaries.  Enough said.  Number seven, just learning what is your body? What does your body need? You try and reconnect with yourself.  Many of us are so used to worrying about what everybody else needs. What do my students need? What do my kids need? What does my spouse need?

Right? Like, it doesn't even occur to us to ask ourselves, What do I need in this moment,  right? What do I need? You need to put yourself back on the agenda. If you don't take care of yourself,  I know it's a cliche, you can't take care of anybody else.  But it is true. There was a moment I have to tell you, some of you know that, you know, my partner, um, beginning of December had a very bad accident and needed around the clock care there for awhile, uh, for about three months, in fact.

And it was me. I mean, looking back, he probably should have gone to rehab. We should've got a nurse, something, but it was me 24 seven. Um, not getting sleep, totally stressed, um, if I did manage to get like a tiny break and have someone look after him for a minute while I ran to pick up medicine or whatever, I was worrying about him.

It was just  really very tough and I got to the point where I said this is unsustainable for me, it's been three months, I need to have somebody come over once a week. Twice a week, whatever, so I can just have a little bit of a break and get out. Even just get the groceries done or whatever. And he, um, he called up,  um, his two older sons.

And I heard them,  and I heard him say, he's very to the point. He said, if she implodes, we're all screwed. He didn't say screwed. He said the F word. But I just burst out laughing. Like, that was a very. Really accurate description of the situation. Like if I imploded, like I was a glue holding it all together, right?

You are the glue holding it all together. You've got to take care of yourself. Okay, enough on that. I want to let you know that I am so appreciative that you are trying to do better. To feel better, to have a more positive experience  as a teacher, as an educator. I think that is a beautiful thing. It's a smart thing.

I applaud you for it. If you find any value in all of this, please share the episode with a friend. This is a really weird thing to sit in a room and talk to yourself and put it out in the universe and just trust. That somebody needed to hear it today. So let me reassure you, anytime you take  five seconds to whatever app you are on, they're all different.

But like to hit a bell or hit the stars or leave a quick comment, like all of that encourages me. It fills my bucket, right?  Is part of my support and connection, knowing that I'm not talking into a void. So anything you could do just to give me a little love today, hitting the five stars would do it.

Telling a friend to listen would do it. That would be amazing. The resource that I made, gosh, I almost forgot is a 30 day wellness challenge and  It's really fun. It's kind of like a bingo card and you can, you can do it with your teacher besties or you can do a campus wide initiative. We actually did a campus wide.

Hopefully, your admin will be like, you know, let's put some prizes up with this thing, a little Starbucks gift card or something. But the things on it are very varied. Like, like they cover all the bases. So like one thing would be, you know, reach out on FaceTime or message somebody you haven't spoken to in a while or, you know, schedule a doctor appointment that you've been putting off.

Like there's all ways to kind of earn points on this thing if you want to make it like a scorecard. Um, and some of them are very fun. Um, but all of them. really fall under the bucket of self care and none of them cost any money  and they don't take very much time and I think for you to focus on trying to just look at the card, look at the sheet and decide oh what am I in the mood for today?

For you to do one little thing for self care for 30 days in a row like that maybe none of you have ever done that 30 days in a row. So I'm putting the link below and Um, if you're in the car, if you, you know, if you don't know how to hit the link and you want to remember, just go to, um,  go to Teachers Pay Teachers, go to TPT, and the name of my store is Positive Happy Classrooms.

Happy positive.  I'm not even sure how sad is that? Um, just put in Grace Stevens when you get to TPT and it will come up and it will be the free resource. It will be the first resource free for everybody. So take it, share it, enjoy it.  My gift to you. Um, and you can laugh, maybe remember the story that I had to do that myself because I was tired of showing up at the meeting and having nothing to report. 

Like, oh my gosh, I better do something here. It's looking, it's looking bad for my school. I mean, was it my job to do that? No, but like, you know, I don't want to sit in that meeting being embarrassed. So anyway. All right, that's it. Go take care of yourself. Remember, if you implode, everybody else is screwed.

That's my, maybe that's the takeaway from today. Um, it just really is inelegant, but as true as that. And, um, as always, I believe in your ability to create your own path, bring your own sunshine, and I will talk to you next week.