Self-Care for Teachers: Regain Your Balance Reclaim Your Time Renew Your Practice

By Matthew Allen

Designed for both individual use and professional development programs, Self-Care for Teachers provides guided reflections and practical advice for classroom teachers and educational leaders alike, and will be of immediate benefit to many who feel overwhelmed by the increasing demands of the profession and are struggling to avoid burn out and find balance.

Clearly, many teachers are stretched to the breaking point, and much the same could be said of many administrators. Indeed, there is a curious conspiracy at work in overwork. Teachers typically find it almost impossible to say no to more work and greater expectations, just as administrators cant help themselves asking for more. With the best of intentions, we all put students first, and sacrifice ourselves as necessary. Various remedies have been suggested, but most focus on managerial strategies or pedagogical reformorganizations and teaching rather than teachers.

Dr. Allens approach is fundamentally different. Twenty-five years wide experience in educationbeginning with a boys boarding school and including a university lectureship, a post at a prestigious prep school, and various teaching and administrative positions in international schoolshas convinced him two simple truths. Teachers can never meet the endless demands of the profession. Not only that, but as much as we care for our students, we dont look after ourselves very well. Consequently, he suggests that a good part of the solution to the beguiling business of overwork and its attendant maladies must be what he has come to call self-care, both a missing piece of pedagogy and an overlooked aspect of educational leadership.

By self-care I simply mean learning to look after ourselves better so that we can continue to look after our students as we would like to. However much (or little) we are supported in our work and outside it, I suggest that we appoint ourselves our own chief care givers and consciously seek whatever it is which sustains us most. The purpose of this book is to further that initiative.

Since, by self-selection, rigorous training, and long habit, educators often become used to unnecessary self-sacrifice and constant self-neglect, Self-Care for Teachers emphasizes learninglearning to look after ones selfand is as inspirational as it is instructional, balancing inventory exercises with personal anecdotes.

Self-Care for Teachers will help educators everywhere to regain their balance, reclaim their time, and renew their practice, and will be of critical importance to thousands of teachers and administrators in the IB (International Baccalaureate) Program who believe in the IB ideal of balance but require explanation and guidance to make this concept a reality in their lives and schools.

Blending current research, personal experience, and literary reflections, Self-Care for Teachers at once scholarly, artful, and moving. Written in a lively and accessible style, this thought-provoking work invites readers to reconsider long-held views and values about vocation, success, balance, time, productivity, and spirituality. By reconsidering these fundaments together, educators everywhere can literally change their minds about their work as professionals and their lives as people, and move towards greater peace, productivity, and pleasure.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Trafford Publishing
• Release date: Jun 12, 2013
• ISBN: 9781466983625

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© Copyright 2013 Dr. Matthew Allen.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the written prior permission of the author.

isbn: 978-1-4669-8364-9 (sc)

isbn: 978-1-4669-8363-2 (hc)

isbn: 978-1-4669-8362-5 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2013903202

Trafford rev. 05/11/2013

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Contents

Dedication

Exercises & Strategies for Better Self-Care

Preface: A Dispatch from the Front

Introduction: The Reason for the Book

Chapter One: Accepting the Necessity

Chapter Two: Reaffirming your Vocation

Chapter Three: Redefining Educational Success

Chapter Four: Regaining Your Balance

Chapter Five: Knowing Your Limits

Chapter Six: Deciding on Reasonable Goals

Chapter Seven: Reclaiming Your Time

Chapter Eight: Finding Institutional Solutions

Chapter Nine: Choosing When and How to Go

Chapter Ten: The Spiritual Dimension

Acknowledgments

About the Author

"‘You puzzle me. You could have had the whole world.’

‘But I have had the world I really wanted. I’ve worked with the kind of men and women more beautiful as humans, more courageous, more idealistic, than any on earth.’"

—Leon Uris, Topaz

Dedication

To my friends and colleagues—with thanks for everything that you have taught me through the years—and to those just starting out in the profession.

Exercises & Strategies for Better Self-Care

To be used individually or in groups for your personal and professional development.

Self-Care Inventory

Reflection Exercise: Assessing Your Vocation

Visualization Exercise: Picturing Yourself in the Classroom

Adding Yourself to the List

Visualization Exercise: Picturing Balance

Inventory Exercise: Your Time and Attention

Reflection Exercise: Gauging Your Relative Contentment

Inventory Exercise: Seeking Help When you Need it

A Quick Self-Care Assessment

Your Life Support System

Your Personal-Professional Profile

A Self-Care Menu

A Leave-Taking Exercise

Visualization Exercise: Picturing Time

Reframing Your Time

Creating a Non-Linear Flow Chart

Watching How Your Lessons Flow

Inventory Exercise: School Ethos

Inventory Exercise: a Varied Pro-D Diet

A Spiritual Inventory

The Beauty Exercise

Paying Attention to Pleasure & Surprise

Preface

A Dispatch from the Front

The eye sees not by itself, but only by reflection by some other things.

—Shakespeare, Julius Caesar

Never to allow gradually the traffic to smother With noise and fog the flowering of the spirit.

—Sir Stephen Spender, Those who are truly great

I just finished talking to my sister, after the first week of classes. She put into words what so many of us think and feel this time of year:

I feel like I just got hit by a truck: it never gets any easier, and I feel the same thing each year.

I should mention that my sister is not only buoyant by nature but also a master teacher. In fact, she’s renowned in her district—no one does a better job of primary teaching than she does—yet she still feels this way.

Thankfully, we can talk about this honestly since we are both long time teachers, know exactly what each other is experiencing, and understand that we are not to blame. Even more thankfully, though with some regret, this will be her last year in the profession. After thirty-one years in the classroom, it is time to go. But I was intrigued by two things that my sister mentioned: her description of her classroom and her tale of a younger colleague.

Let’s begin with her class. She said, in her polite, professional way, that her class was particularly challenging this year. She has one student who is autistic, several with diagnosed learning disorders, and twelve for whom English is a second language. The rest are typical kids: an interesting assortment of colourful characters, many of whom lack social and listening skills. It is grade one after all. That said, what struck me most is that she really wasn’t fazed by this—it’s just the way things are in her district. In fact, she was bemused to hear some of the old timers in her school complaining because she had recently transferred from another school which was much worse off.

Still, she wasn’t beyond caring for a new teacher who came to talk to her. When my sister said that she felt that she had been hit by a truck, this new teacher—a bright, professional in her early 20s—just burst into tears… Is this how it always feels? she said. She had been up until midnight several nights in a row preparing for her classes and still going in feeling unprepared and completely overwhelmed.

My sister had the good grace to say, Yes, this is how it always feels, so there is nothing wrong with you. Remember, I have a job-share partner, I know what I’ll be teaching tomorrow, my husband will have the dinner made and greet me with a glass of wine when I get home, AND I know that this is the last time I will be doing this—and I still feel that I just got hit by a truck during the first week of classes. It does get better after September, but it’s never easy.

Let’s face it, teaching—especially at the start of every new year and at the start of every new term—is a huge, convulsive effort. We come home wrung-out, and still have to push ourselves to prepare for the next day. At the risk of telling a twice told tale, my sister also recalled a young teacher whose friends were perplexed because she was never available to go out in the evening. They worked hard all day at their jobs but had the evenings free to enjoy themselves. Meanwhile, she was beyond exhausted and still had projects to mark and lesson plans to make.

Unless you teach, it is hard to imagine just how much time and energy teaching takes. So where do we find the support, the resources, and the encouragement to continue? Not often from our overburdened colleagues or perplexed spouses.

My sister gave the great gift of kindness and truth to the new teacher she was talking to, but who will help that teacher tomorrow? All she really wants is to give her all to her students, and it’s hard to think of a more admirable goal. But martyrdom is not the way to achieve it, as this book will make clear.

We will only be able to continue to look after our students as we would like to if we learn to look after ourselves adequately as well.

Introduction

The Reason for the Book

Deign on the passing world to turn thine eyes, And pause a while from letters to be wise.

—Samuel Johnson,

The Vanity of Human Wishes (1749)

Will time say nothing but I told you so? If I could tell you, I would let you know.

—W. H. Auden, If I could tell you

It’s often been said, with some validity, that we teach what we need to know. So, too, we write what we want to read: in this case, the book that I wish someone had written for me when I was a young teacher just starting out.

I began teaching in a British style boys’ boarding school: all boys, all boarding—a trial by fire if ever there was one. I was fresh out of university, with a good M.A. but virtually no teaching experience, and only the dimmest idea of why I was joining the profession. I had been told by someone I trusted that I had a natural talent for teaching, felt faint stirrings of vocation, and wanted to give something back after a long and self-indulgent education. Beyond that, I had no idea of what I was getting into or why.

It was a strange Darwinian world of bad food, cold showers, harsh discipline, and cross country runs, with other vestiges of British public school tradition including bread pudding, corporal punishment, and daily chapel. Paradoxically, despite the strict discipline and institutional formality—the masters were universally referred to as Sir and the boys addressed by surname—a great fondness grew between staff and students. We were, at the very least, honorable enemies reminiscent of Tom Brown’s Schooldays; at best, a boisterous family marooned together, more like Swiss Family Robinson.¹

Something hilarious happened every day. The boys were irrepressible, despite our best efforts, and the charged, insular atmosphere of the school somehow produced the most extravagantly colorful personalities. I was always amazed at how the boys bounced back after a frozen route march or an exhausting exam week; it was the masters who showed the strain.

Partly, we lacked the resiliency of youth. We were older in our bones, and our sinews had lost their elasticity. Partly, we followed an unrelenting schedule, since in addition to our teaching duties (including a half-day on Saturday), we were required to patrol the dorms, supervise study hall, and lead all-weather outdoor adventures. Sixty-hour work weeks were standard, rising to eighty hours during peak periods. But we also suffered the natural consequences of an immutable law and a professional handicap which I will explain.

The immutable law of education

What came to seem an immutable law was simply that the school always wanted more, the students always wanted more, and the parents always wanted more, but there was only so much of the staff to go around.

There was no malice in this; it was simply the nature of things, as much a fact of life as the air we breathed. At the time, I thought that my school was singular in this regard, and admittedly, the charm and challenge of boarding schools is their ability to foster the illusion that the small world of school is all that exists, or at least all that really matters.

However, twenty-five years later, after a stint teaching at the university, a post at a prestigious prep school, and various teaching and administrative positions in international schools, I understand the simple truth.

Teachers can never meet the endless demands of the profession. Not only that, but we suffer from a serious professional handicap: as much as we care for our students, we don’t look after ourselves very well.

As heroic as the masters were at my first school—and the veterans not only seemed larger than life but actually were—they wore themselves thin over the years. And not just thin, but too thin—often down to the bone and beyond—a situation which their monkish existence did little to amend.

Our professional handicap as educators

A new school nurse with a background in public health diagnosed the problem during her first year. She realized that while the boys suffered frequent broken bones and periodic bouts of flu, they nonetheless remained in ruddy good health; it was the masters who were at risk. They always felt over-extended, and usually were: you could see them rushing from one commitment to the next, driven by duty—bound to motivate the recalcitrant, and desperate to help the needy. From one point of view, they were indeed heroic, and their self-sacrifice for their students was admirable.

But at some cost—mostly to themselves. The masters’ diet was appalling. Exhaustion had become a way of life, heavy-drinking the norm, and self-sacrifice the unwritten creed. Morale suffered, and the inevitable stresses and strains of teaching eventually took their physical and emotional toll. The school nurse wisely invited a world famous life style expert from one of the universities to talk to the staff.²

He warned us about our poor lifestyle choices, of course, and predictably recommended a regime of diet and exercise to combat stress, knowing that few, if any, of us would take his good advice. Far from being judgmental, however, he was deeply compassionate, and I will never forget a pregnant pause during his presentation when he said that of all the professional groups which he had encountered in his long career, teachers were the least able to look after themselves. I think it’s something about the profession itself, he reflected, teachers can never do enough, and their students always come first. For some reason, they willingly sacrifice themselves.

The reason for this book

That judgment, corroborated by so much experience since, haunts me still, and is the reason for this book. You will notice that I dedicate this volume not only to my friends and colleagues still on the front lines of the profession but also to the next generation of educators who will follow in their footsteps. So, permit me a moment to talk to you as one educator to another:

Your calling is urgent and breath-taking, for you carry the future in your hands every day. I take it for granted that you are superbly professional, that you are highly idealistic, and that you are armed with the latest pedagogy and information technology. I know that you are ready to give everything to your students in selfless service; I simply want you to learn how to look after yourselves too, both for your own good and for the good of the profession.

How to use this book

I have constructed this self-care guide sequentially, so you may find it most useful to read if from beginning to end; however, I also know that you are busy, so I have also divided the book into sections and italicized some essential ideas to help you find what is most immediately helpful to you most easily.

I have also written this book partly with professional development programs in mind, so I begin each chapter with a poem and quotations suitable for group discussion. Each chapter also contains at least one inventory or exercise which you will find useful for both individual reflection and group activities.

Remember, your personal and professional development always begins from within; however, the teachers sitting beside you are often a great source of inspiration, encouragement, and support—especially if you are willing to share your own insight, doubts, and dedication with them.

INTRODUCTION NOTES

1. Thomas Hughes wrote Tom Brown’s Schooldays (1858), based on his own boyhood experiences at Rugby School under Dr. Arnold, and started a Victorian vogue of English public school novels. The tradition continued into the 20th century with works such as Goodbye, Mr. Chips and has been revived recently with the Harry Potter series. At various points in Tom Brown’s Schooldays, Tom and East discuss the received wisdom of regarding masters and boys as honorable enemies. We will come back to Tom Brown—another fellow traveler of Florence Nightingale—in Chapter Six.

2. Although I prefer not to name the school to protect the privacy of my former colleagues, the consultant mentioned was Dr. Art Burgess, Professor Emeritus of Physical Education at the University of Alberta, who was an acknowledged expert on the effect of lifestyle on health and fitness.

Chapter One

Accepting the Necessity

Tho’ much is taken, much abides; and tho’ We are not now that strength which in old days Moved heaven and earth; that which we are, we are.

—Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Ulysses

There are liars, damn liars, and statisticians.

—Mark Twain

Clearly, many teachers are stretched to the breaking point and for many reasons. Because of the pace of curricular change and the race for information technology. Because of overcrowding and underfunding, mainstreaming and standardized testing. Because of overwork and lack of support and recognition. Most of all, perhaps, because of unrelenting time pressure. Ironically, our own dedication makes us all the more vulnerable to external pressures, for as the British Columbia Teacher’s Federation says in its study of job-related stress among its membership:

Teachers’ commitment to teaching appears so strong that they are sacrificing their physical and mental health, and in some cases their relationships, to maintain their programs and classes… This represents a severe and unsustainable imbalance in many teachers’ lives.¹

In all fairness, administrators suffer a similar fate.² Indeed, there is a curious conspiracy at work in overwork when you think about it. Teachers typically find it almost impossible to say no to more work and greater expectations, just as administrators find it almost unthinkable to set an example by doing less or decreasing expectations. With the best of intentions, we all tend to put our students first and sacrifice ourselves as necessary.

But let’s pause to consider the wording of this report. The recognition that overwork represents a severe and unsustainable imbalance in many teachers’ lives contains the seeds of its own solution—that is, creating a more sustainable way of working and being that helps us to regain our balance—which is the subject of this book.

This is no easy business. Rebalancing our lives as educators requires a paradigm shift, a concerted effort to change deep-seated habits of mind and linked emotional responses. We naturally look outward for help, and rightfully so: we do deserve to be supported as educators, since it is difficult to think of anything as essential to society as education. But as much as we are affected by the many external pressures brought to bear on us as educators, we may be best-served to look inward as much or more than outward for the solutions to our problems.

In her comprehensive work, Teacher Well-Being, Elizabeth Holmes voices the need and the challenge of such a re-orientation:

We should be embracing the responsibility that each of us has for our own well-being. If this is to be achieved, many in the profession will have to undertake profound changes to their practice, preferably removing any element of self-sacrifice and over-conscientiousness from their daily work.³

It seems to me, then, that a good part of the solution to the beguiling business of overwork and its attendant maladies is no more or less than what I have come to call self-care. In my view, self-care is a missing piece of pedagogy, an overlooked aspect of educational leadership, and a simple necessity for all of us.

By self-care, I simply mean learning to look after ourselves properly so that we can continue to look after our students as we would like to. However much (or little) we are supported in our work and outside it, we would be wise to appoint ourselves our own chief care-givers and consciously seek whatever it is which sustains us most and brings balance and harmony into our lives. Whatever our circumstances, we can affirm and strengthen ourselves by taking responsibility for our own well-being, and my purpose in writing this book is to support and encourage you in that regard.

Self-care emphasizes learning—learning to look after ourselves. Again, I am calling for a paradigm shift here—a fundamental a re-thinking of our long-held views and values about:

51773.jpg vocation

51776.jpg success

51778.jpg balance

51780.jpg time

51782.jpg service

51784.jpg spirituality.

By reconsidering these fundaments together, we can literally change our minds about our work as educators and our lives as people, and move towards greater peace, productivity, and pleasure.

By changing our minds, I mean changing our patterns of thought and the feelings associated with them—remodeling our plastic brains one little bit at a time. To do so involves unlearning much of what has shaped us and allowed us to cope in the short term. But after all, our business is learning—including our own learning—and I am convinced that we have everything that we need inside ourselves to overcome overwork and embrace a richer life, once we accept the need to do so.

Recognizing the need

Let’s start with an anecdote which is also an analogy. I live with a certain amount of low back pain, as many people do. Mine stems from an old injury, aggravated by too much sitting. Medication can ease the pain and relax the muscles when they spasm. If I have too many ten hour days at my desk, I may need Chiropractic or Physiotherapy treatment to get going again. And I know that if I continue to do too much sitting for too long without sufficient care, I may eventually need surgery.

But I also know that if I stretch periodically and walk around from time to time, the pain will be manageable without medication. And if I add twenty minutes a day for some Tai Chi and Qigong, the pain almost vanishes. In fact, there is no mystery about the treatment, preventive or otherwise; the only mystery is why I get so caught up in my work that I forget to look after myself in these simple ways. But I do forget—or choose to give priority to other things—and periodically end up with severe back pain. The same mystery and an analogous pattern of emotional pain keeps turning up in the literature.

The writing on the wall

There are times—though perhaps not many of them as teachers—when we hate being proved right, and this is one such moment for me. I have been deeply saddened to have my intuitions and experience confirmed by the research on teacher stress, sickness, attrition, and morale. Mark Twain’s disclaimer aside, the statistics are alarming, and the desperation of the new teacher mentioned in the preface is all too typical. That said, I have also been much heartened by the research for several reasons.

To begin with, what so many of us have felt for so long has now been clearly documented. The literature on teacher workload and stress is unambiguous: teacher workloads are excessive and stress related costs are growing.⁴ There is some comfort to be taken in the knowledge that our suffering is real and that we do not suffer alone. Around the world, educators live with extreme levels of stress and suffer a disproportionate incidence of stress-related sickness, all too often leading to burnout and withdrawal from the profession.⁵ But we also have cause for hope, since our plight has not only been widely recognized but has also prompted remedial action in many quarters.

Various remedies have been proposed and piloted in the last decade or so. In the USA for example, a number of schools now offer induction programs, mentorship, and salary incentives to encourage new teachers.⁶ The UK has led the way in teacher support, instituting a teacher helpline and providing wellness programs through Worklife Support, and other countries are beginning to follow suit.⁷ There is good evidence that pressure can be relieved, that sick days can be reduced, and that school climate can be improved through strategies as simple as providing water as well as coffee in the staff room, dedicating times when sports facilities can be used by staff, and appointing well being coordinators.⁸

An Essential Ingredient

As

Reviews for Self-Care for Teachers

[philip goggin · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Much here of relevance to anyone. Not just for teachers. An authentic thoughtful exploration of spirituality and practical implications for living. Not overblown or over-claimed.