4 Ways to Cultivate Resilience for Teachers as You Enter a New School Year
Learning how to cultivate resilience for teachers is among the most important back-to-school prep — right up there with updating lesson plans and setting up your classroom.
As educators, we often fill others’ cups before our own. This might work for a while, as teachers are well acquainted with surviving instead of thriving. Unfortunately, continuing to prioritize others’ wellness instead of your own will lead to depletion. Making it through weeks on empty is impossible; your body will let you know when it’s time to change.
Signs of burnout and overwhelm (and being set up to fail) include (but are not limited to) anxiety, sleeplessness, health problems, and panic attacks. Instead of pushing these responses away, it’s imperative to tune into them. What are they telling you about your needs and the shifts that need to happen?
Educators are experts at getting to the root of challenging behavior, and we can use this same radical curiosity to find the sources that are taking the most of our energy. For example, you might spend your evenings grading papers, talking to students’ families, modifying outdated and problematic curricula, or stressing about administrators who don’t value educators as whole humans.
If your evenings are spent in a high-stress state, you aren’t replenishing yourself so you can show up as your full self the following day. Even more, your family and friends — crucial sources of support — might not see you for weeks on end.
This is where building resilience in teachers come in.
Why Is Resilience Important For Teachers?
Although resilience is often over-simplified for educators who face unique and ongoing challenges, true resilience involves successfully adapting to challenging life experiences, especially through mental, emotional, and behavioral flexibility in response to external and internal demands.
Teachers deal with a wide range of emotions, both your own and those of your students. Resilience for teachers means being better able to maintain your emotional balance and helping you handle challenging situations, such as dealing with difficult students or navigating conflicts, without being overwhelmed.
Resilience also encourages a growth mindset. Teachers who are resilient are more likely to seek out new opportunities for development, embrace feedback, and reflect on their teaching practices to improve..
To survive another year in the classroom, it’s crucial to embrace resilience as a way to navigate the ups and downs of being an educator without dismissing feelings of overwhelm, stress, and burnout.
How to Build Resilience for Teachers
Here are four tips to cultivate resilience so you can take care of yourself the same way you’re expected to care for others:
1. Tune into your emotions.
Although it might seem straightforward, it can be difficult to tune into our emotions during times of stress. Set aside time to recognize and validate your own emotions. This might mean reflecting on body sensations (e.g., buzzing, warmth, tingling, rapid heart rate) that show up before you experience feelings such as frustration, sadness, or anger.
Reflect by journaling, creating art, or recording your feelings on your phone. Remember that “one size doesn’t fit all” and taking time to tune into your inner landscape is a way to prioritize your mental health.
2. Embrace vulnerability.
When we’re stuck in a toxic stress cycle that’s become normalized (e.g., the teacher as a martyr myth), it can be difficult to feel safe to share how we are feeling with family, colleagues, and friends.
Although you might experience discomfort, it’s important to share what’s going on with people you trust. Speaking your feelings and reality into existence allows you to feel seen instead of keeping your mind machine spiraling in ways that are not beneficial to your wellness. In addition, speaking about your feelings provides you with insight and clarity related to ways you can create a more sustainable life, which is key to building resilience for teachers.
3. Seek a community of support.
Similar to the previous tip, being in a community of support is all about feeling safe to share your challenges, hopes, and aspirations. When we surround ourselves with former or current teachers who share our goal of prioritizing our wellness and creating a life that allows us to be present with those we care about, we are more able to make a positive difference in education.
At Educator Forever, our Network of innovative educators are stepping into their brilliance in a multitude of ways. Some are in the classroom, designing curriculum to stay inspired. Others are leaving the classroom and creating solutions for problems in education by starting education consulting businesses or coaching educators around the world in best practices.
Hearing stories of success beyond the classroom, or shifting to another role in a school that lights you up, is empowering. It opens your eyes to a world of possibilities. Even more, fostering connections with fellow educators where collaboration and guidance are nurtured can help mitigate feelings of isolation. We heal in relationships!
4. Remember you can do hard things.
Educators face a variety of complex challenges every day. Limited funding, endless paperwork, unmanageable class sizes, developmentally inappropriate expectations of students, and extended working hours are just some from a very long list.
When trying to find space in your life to prioritize your needs, it’s important to acknowledge the stressors in your life and then focus on the things you can control (e.g., feelings, words, decisions, actions, etc.). It’s equally important to reflect on challenges you’ve faced in the past and how you overcame them. Likely, some of the solutions included leaving a toxic work environment or ending a relationship that wasn’t healthy. You can do hard things!
It can be scary and uncomfortable to acknowledge that the job we thought we’d have forever isn’t providing us with what we need (financially or emotionally).
Thankfully, there are so many ways you can use your teacher skills within or beyond the classroom. Learning that you have a choice in your career options is empowering. It builds our confidence and allows us to break free from the box we are often put in as educators.
Ready to Build Resilience Beyond the Classroom?
The path to a sustainable, rewarding career in education is possible. You’re not alone as you reimagine your career and embrace new beginnings.
Educator Forever has helped thousands of teachers like you build resilience, identify their unique skills, learn how to apply them to flexible new careers, and get the clarity and confidence to go after what they want. We’re here to support you, too!
The Beyond the Classroom Starter Kit offers you instant access to all of the support and guidance you need to discover the right career for you.
This includes:
✨ Our signature Beyond the Classroom Course
✨ How to Earn More as a Teacher Course
✨ 2 months of membership to the Educator Forever Network
You’ll benefit from:
✅ Step-by-step guidance as you discover your career possibilities, gain clarity, and learn exactly how to find and land flexible jobs in education
✅ Empowering live group calls (every week!) for career guidance and job search support
✅ Exclusive access to ongoing wellness, creativity, skill growth, and co-working sessions, along with special career-related workshops designed for transitioning teachers
✅ Instant access to exciting, flexible job leads on our private jobs board, along with expert support at your fingertips
✅ An incredible, supportive community of like-minded educators cheering you on as you expand your impact and income in education
Sign up now to empower yourself and take your education career to the next level!
About the Author
April Brown (M.Ed) is Educator Forever’s Director of Learning and Development and a curriculum coach for the Curriculum Development Foundations and Advanced Curriculum certification programs. In 2015, April began designing curriculum and writing articles for an EdTech company as a side gig while teaching in Placencia, Belize. After having her oldest 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 Educator Forever Network 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 Trauma Supportive Schools and Mindfulness courses, 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.