Self-care for today’s educator
Author: Wesley Wilson
In light of the chaos that ended the Spring 2020 semester/2019-20 school year, many educators were forced to rethink comfortable habits of instruction and ways of interaction with students. Policies and structures that had been in place for years were suddenly called into question as the best practices for student success and equity.
“Educators embody the idea that the reality we create is one that is influenced by our own events and experiences, but in order for us to break the cycle of punishing ourselves for past mistakes, we must create a new positive perspective.”
Our own reality in education is strongly influenced by our own past experiences. In its most basic form, people view the same incident or hear the same conversation and yet may interpret it completely differently. In education, this is known as a “framework” or “paradigm.” Complicating matters even further is the internal dialogue or voices that tell us things to do or remind us of things from our past. In Toltec wisdom, these voices are called mitote, and while we hear them constantly throughout the day and night, they tend to cloud our judgment to what is really going on. They also distract us from making good decisions or breaking bad cycles.
Humans are the only species on the planet that punish themselves multiple times for a single mistake. Other animals make mistakes and learn from them to move on. Believing in the mitote, which constantly reminds you of mistakes, opens the door for you to punish yourself. The belief in your past weaknesses or mistakes builds a never-ending negative mindset.
To break this negative mindset cycle, we must recognize those mitote and create a new perspective for us to operate under. The new perspective is encompassed in reminding yourself of four guardrails that create the new paradigm for educators. These are known as the four agreements.
Agreement #1: Be Impeccable with Your Word
For most educators, this agreement has its foundation in being honest, respectful, and staying true to your word. More importantly, the most overlooked part of this agreement is that your words have strength – especially for our students.
Telling a student that they aren’t putting in enough time or effort or announcing to a class that 1/3 of the class is going to fail can be devastating to hear for a student struggling to find confidence or support for success. Our students listen to what we say, and they internalize it, even when we don’t think they are listening. If your words have power, then what we say and project to students should be positive and self-confidence building.
Agreement #2: Don’t Take Anything Personally
What someone does or says should have no affect how we think or feel. Maybe someone needs to express an emotion or frustration with something that has nothing to do with us. To internalize what someone says or does is to also buy into their perspective, whether it is true or not. If we say we don’t accept what someone says, why do we hear their voices again when we are laying in bed later that day? Why does the memory of whatever they said pop up at anytime?
We have plenty of examples of someone behaving badly from our perspective: cutting someone off on the freeway, insulting or calling someone names, or seeing a student in class who just received a bad grade in an earlier class. All of these could provoke a reaction; however, these actions do not need our response. Moreover, anything we might do could create a downward spiral.
In the education paradigm, an angry parent could be venting about the stress of working fulltime while dealing with a challenging teenager but poorly express their stress at a parent-teacher conference. Or, a student upset by a test grade could blame poor instruction rather than not preparing adequately. In either of these situations, educators who take things personally could make the situation worse rather than diffusing the stressful atmosphere.
Agreement #3: Don’t Make Assumptions
When we make assumptions, we listen to those inner voices who are telling us the worst. Without a complete set of facts and framed within our own perspective, we are creating a false reality. To make sense of everything around us, we relate things to what we went through in the past.
As educators, we have a tendency to fill in the gaps according to our past experiences. If a student is absent from class, we speculate on the reason: disinterest in the class, car trouble, or irresponsibility. We prepare a strong response that expresses our disappointment or even a chastisement and reinforces the importance of the curriculum or responsibility. However, when the student shows up, they demonstrate a hospital emergency for a sick child and present completed homework. We spent a lot of time making and planning for an incorrect assumption.
Agreement #4: Always Do Your Best
No one is perfect at everything all the time. Even a gold medal winner falls short when taken out of their event. Lying in bed at night, we review our day and, normally, we focus on all of the challenges and shortcomings. The only way to rest soundly is to know that in the situation and with the strengths you have, you did the best you could.
When a student fails, we encourage them to do their best and learn from their mistakes. Reflecting on feedback on tests is a major aspect of soft skills necessary in the workforce. Why can’t we do the same for ourselves? Learn from the opportunities where we were less than perfect and strive to do better next time. Self-reflection and continuous improvement are threaded throughout educational leadership on an organizational level, but this agreement brings those to an individual educator level.
Creating a new paradigm using the four agreements will help with the new world of education that has extended past the coronavirus complications of spring into the uncertainty of the fall semester. Be impeccable with your word, don’t take anything personally, don’t make assumptions, and always do your best are positive mindset advice. They take the best of education and allow us to keep focused on what we can control, building on our strengths, and continual self and professional improvement. Taking the moment to let things go, readjust out thinking, and build from a positive foundation can help you start this new semester and academic year ready for anything that gets thrown at you.
For more on The Four Agreements, check on Don Miguel Ruiz’s book on them.
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