Resilience

Staff well-being is a massive issue. Teaching is often listed as one of the most stressful professions. However, “fixing” staff well-being is not easy and requires focused attention by school leaders, systems, school councils and most importantly staff themselves.         Here are 11 actions you can take immediately to start improving your own well-being. Take responsibility for your own personal well-being Many educators put themselves last! They work long hours tirelessly trying to be all things, for all people. Looking after your own well-being needs to be a priority. Undertake a thorough health appraisal every year Early detection is better than pursuing a cure. Replace the term work-life balance with work-life satisfaction ‘Balance’ can be difficult to achieve in a job…

Successful people work well under sustained pressure. For some, pressure acts like a laser beam – focusing their energy and sharpening their mind to make clear and accurate decisions. For others, pressure acts like a fog that scatters their thinking and impairs their good judgment. The difference in how sharply you operate under pressure, pivots on your ability to step back and gain perspective. When you experience pressure, your body’s instinctive reaction is to place all physical energy and mental focus on the essential tasks. This narrows your focus – like tunnel vision – on the specifics and gives you a hit of energy (which is why some people find that pressure helps them to get things done). However, as…

The school year has well and truly kicked off and it’s probably about now that our intentions of taking better care of ourselves and not letting work overwhelm us are flying out the window. But before we throw in the towel and succumb to the ever-increasing pressure of work demands, let’s try reframing how we think about and deal with stress. Historically, stress was useful because it helped us survive (fight, flight or freeze), in response to a threat to our physical well-being. However, our bodies can’t distinguish between real and perceived threats and a stress response can be psychologically or physically detrimental to our health and wellbeing. It’s important that we commit to tackling this problem and use a…

Reduce the number of decisions you need to make in any given day – This is one of the easiest ways to give a burnt out brain a break (decision making is incredibly tiring under normal circumstances – when we’re feeling overwhelmed, even more so.) Some ideas for reducing the number of decisions you make each day include eating the same thing for breakfast every day, getting up at the same time every morning, developing a work uniform and doing a meal plan so you don’t have to decide ‘what’s for dinner’ at 5pm. Have a morning routine – If your day starts off rushed and frantic then chances are, the rest of the day will continue in that same vein. To combat this, I…

Humour / Laughter I am a huge believer in bringing fun to my lessons and this is the major reason I don’t ‘stress out’ in my classroom. I believe that laughter is the best medicine – it always makes me feel better and a happy classroom reduces my stress! Research shows that laughter releases natural feel good chemicals from the brain. There is, however, a fine line between adding laughter and losing control. Always ensure you bring your students back to focus quickly. Give it a go! Believe in what you do and stay positive Having a strong belief in your own abilities and believe that what you are doing is making a difference! Even the worst lesson (in your mind), could…

Stress is a fact of life, but it doesn’t have to be a way of life! How long have we talked about needing life balance and at that same time BEEN doing everything we can to go faster and to do more! At work and at home, people expect to do more with less and in less time. Families are LIVING in the ‘nightmare of the two career couple,’ where both partners are working, bringing up children and probably looking after their aging parents. More single parents exist than ever before. Change is constantly swirling around us – at work, at home and in society. In short, life is chaotic and lived at laser track speed! As life continues to…