3 Ways to Tune Into Your Needs as a Teacher
Teachers are experts at tuning into the needs of their students. We pay close attention to students who need an extra snack before school starts or invite them into the peace corner to take a nap between learning activities. We reach out to caregivers when students are exhibiting new and challenging behaviors. We know kids can’t learn if their basic needs aren’t met.
But how often do the needs of teachers get put on the back burner? It’s no wonder that teacher stress and overwhelm is so common — we consistently put the needs of so many others ahead of our own!
Taking care of yourself as a teacher is so important to deal with overwhelm. But it goes beyond trying the latest self-care tips for teachers. Often, simply tuning into your own needs and honoring them is the first step toward more happiness and less burnout.
If you are currently teaching, but you’re feeling overwhelmed, exhausted, and burned out, here are three ways to nurture yourself before you fill the cups of others.
How to Honor Your Needs as a Teacher
If you’re ready to truly practice self-care as a teacher, start by using these three strategies to tune into your needs and put yourself first.
Trust Your Gut.
Many of our Educator Forever community members come to us completely destroyed from working in a system that constantly exploits them. Although you might be able to acknowledge the factors that contribute to the unsustainable life of a teacher, it’s harder to trust that what you are noticing is real.
Honor your needs as a teacher by taking time to reflect on the things that are not working for you anymore. Journal about your feelings and find a community that will support you as you figure out how to step into your brilliance.
Cultivate Joyful Moments.
Standardized tests, covering the curriculum, and prepping your classroom environment so it’s supportive and accessible for all students take up so much time in the daily life of a teacher. Because of this, it can be easy to feel like there is no time to cultivate joyful moments. But we encourage you to disrupt this thinking when you’re feeling overwhelmed as a teacher.
Instead, think back to a time, year, or moment in your teaching career when you felt inspired and joy-filled. Can you replicate this through movement, music, art, or connection? How about infusing a book a day into your daily rhythm? Or restorative circles to form a culture of care and a brave space to have courageous conversations?
Even if you are preparing to use your skills beyond the classroom, there’s still time to enjoy the chapter you are in and push back against the idea that learning is about productivity and outcomes.
Remember to Dream.
Working within a toxic environment can lead to diminished imagination. It’s heartbreaking, considering educators are some of the most innovative and creative people we know! But there’s power in identifying that the inability to dream is not an individual issue, but instead an outcome of experiencing secondary trauma.
One of the best ways to honor your needs as a teacher is by taking time to dream. Create art, write about your plans, and most importantly, feel them in your body. Visualize yourself living a spacious life with time in nature and your family. Think about what it would feel like to be with children in a space that’s centered around learning and joy instead of punitive practices. How would your life be different? Where would you work? How would you spend your time?
Even if these dreams feel far away, taking the time to visualize them and think them through is an important first step toward making them a reality - and help reduce teacher stress in the meantime!
Take Self-Care as a Teacher to the Next Level
Although it’s a process to relearn to care for yourself after so many years of putting others first, it’s a journey that will benefit you and those around you for the rest of your life. You deserve so much more!
Sometimes, what overwhelmed teachers need most are new ways to make an impact in education. If part of tuning into your needs involves leaving teaching and finding more flexible jobs in education, having community support is key!
When you join Educator Forever’s Beyond the Classroom program, you get access to more than just an online course. You also join a growing community of teachers and former teachers who have been in your shoes.
Whether you want to work in curriculum development, want to take on freelance jobs in education, or are dreaming of starting an education business, joining a supportive community of educators can help you reach your goals.
Contact Educator Forever to learn more.
About The Author
April Brown (M.Ed) is Educator Forever’s community facilitator and a curriculum coach for the Curriculum Development Foundations program. In 2015, April began designing curriculum and writing articles for an EdTech company as a side gig while she was teaching in Placencia, Belize. After having her daughter in 2016, April was eager to use her unique experience teaching and leading in mainstream and alternative settings in the United States and internationally to work remotely while still making a difference in education.
The Beyond the Classroom course empowered April to leverage her skills as a compassionate disruptor and out-of-the-box thinker to excel as an instructional/well-being coach, adjunct instructor of a Trauma Supportive Schools course, curriculum developer, and writer for publications such as PBS SoCal, Education.com, and Britannica for Parents. April is an advocate for teachers and students – inside and outside of the classroom. You can find April in rural Vermont spending time with her husband, two beautiful daughters, and charming rottweilers.