Consider and describe the relationship of self-care to resilience with various exmples ?strategies for self-care. Keep in mind four quadrants to include mind, body, heart, and soul.

147

CHAPTER 6

Take Care of Yourself

Physical self-care and well-being are founda- tional for many other habits. When your body

is cared for, you’re better able to deal with emotions. Resilient people have a healthy self-perception, are committed to taking care of themselves, and accept themselves more or less as they are.

❧❧

In my third year teaching, I wrote myself a letter that contained the following section:

You will not save the world by working yourself to the bone. You can’t be patient and attentive with kids, and deliver carefully crafted, differentiated lessons, and keenly capture formative assessment observations if you’re con- gested, hungry, achy, weepy, phlegmy, jittery and have burning eyes from sleep deprivation. You won’t be an amazing teacher if you work until you can’t stand up.

Maybe you know this already. It took me a long time to learn. I suspect you know that you’re not your best when your definition of self-care is that you brushed

November: Self-care is the root of resilience when you’re dragging yourself toward winter break and your emotions are raw.

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Onward: Cultivating Emotional Resilience in Educators, First Edition. Elena Aguilar. © 2018 Elena Aguilar. Published 2018 by Jossey-Bass.

148 Onward

your teeth and changed clothes. You know that you get sick when you’re run down and depleted, and that after a good night’s sleep everything feels easier in your classroom. I’m sure you know that self-care is important.

So why don’t we take better care of ourselves? What would it take to make us do so?

Our bodies and emotions are inextricably intertwined—our physical state creates emotional states; our emotions are affected by our physical state. This whole book is about emotional self-care, but in this chapter, we’ll explore what it’ll take to get us to sleep more, eat well, exercise, and take care of our bodies. If our bodies are strong, rested, nourished, and enjoyed, tending to our emotional selves will be exponentially easier.

Pause and Reflect • What’s your history of self-care? Are you on a trajectory of improvement,

or has it been deteriorating? • Why do you think you don’t take better care of yourself? • What might better self-care look like for you?

When Disillusionment Sets In

For new teachers, the stretch between mid-October and Thanksgiving is the most emotionally challenging phase of the school year. The New Teacher Center (NTC) calls this phase the “disillusionment period,” when the excitement, hope, and adrenaline of the new school year have worn off and winter break seems impossibly distant. Ellen Moir (1990) of the NTC writes, “After six to eight weeks of nonstop work and stress, new teachers enter the disillusionment phase .  .  . The extensive time commitment, the realization that things are probably not going as smoothly as they want, and low morale contribute to this period of disenchantment. New teachers begin questioning both their commitment and their competence. Many new teachers get sick during this phase.” This phase, as well as the others in a new teacher’s year, is depicted in Figure 6.1.

Furthermore, by November, kids haven’t yet demonstrated their learning in a way that matches our output of energy and effort. We can’t yet see the results of all

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Take Care of Yourself 149

that hard work. This is what makes us say to ourselves, Is it really worth it to work this hard?

November can be a low point for experienced educators as well. Whether I was working as a teacher, coach, or administrator, late October was a hard time for me. I’d been exerting tremendous energy for several months to get the year launched, to build relationships, and to be my best self, and my own self-care had fallen low on my list of priorities.

As we roll into the month of November, what would happen if we devoted time and energy to tending to our physical and emotional needs? What if during this time, teachers supported each other to take walks, eat nutritious lunches, and sleep? Isn’t it worth focusing on our self-care for a month if there’s a chance we could prevent illness, feel happier, and serve children more effectively?

Over the last 20 years, I’ve been on a steadily improving trajectory, but I’m not yet where I want to be in my self-care goals. Perhaps this is why I’ve been obsessed with getting people to take care of themselves. Our schools are bursting with educators who rarely put themselves first. Whether as a teacher in conver- sation with colleagues, as a coach working with clients, or as an administrator managing direct reports, I was faced with this issue again and again. I’ve probably thought about this question—What would it take to get so-and-so to sleep eight hours a night?—more than any when it comes to behavior change. Far too many times, a lack of self-care has surfaced as the root cause for lack of growth for a teacher or leader.

Figure 6.1 Phases of a First-Year Teacher’s Attitude Toward Teaching

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150 Onward

Four Reasons Why We Don’t Take Care of Ourselves

Here’s why I think we don’t take care of ourselves:

1. We’re missing information. Let’s call this a knowledge gap. Sometimes we hear new information (or even something we’ve heard before) about exercise or sleep or kale, and it catapults us into behavior change.

2. We don’t know how. We want to eat better, but where do we start? What exactly do we do? We all have skill gaps of different sizes. Self-care is learned.

3. We don’t really think we need to take care of ourselves. We get by on minimal sleep, we can teach with a cold, and we figure we can rest later. This is a will gap.

4. We don’t feel we deserve to take care of ourselves. We feel that our value is tied to our output and that if we don’t work hard, people won’t respect us, like us, love us, or want us. We don’t say no to anyone; we take on too much work and overcommit. This is an emotional intelligence gap. Valuing yourself and feel- ing that you are worth self-care are core to emotional intelligence.

Gaps tend to coexist, so if you don’t believe you are worthy of experiencing physical well-being (your emotional intelligence gap), you’ll be unlikely to listen to a podcast on how sugar destroys your body. It’s hard to know which gap came first—did an emotional intelligence gap spur a will gap? Or did the will gap come first? It can be useful to reflect on the root gap, but at the same time, it doesn’t really mat- ter which gap came first. What matters is that you start addressing the gaps—and sometimes it’s easiest to start closing whichever one feels easiest.

You are reading this book because you want to be emotionally resilient, right? A healthy, well-rested body is foundational for emotional resilience. In this chap- ter, I’ll focus on addressing will and emotional intelligence gaps around self-care, whereas the workbook offers some support in closing knowledge and skill gaps.

Outside Permission Can Be Motivating

I coached an assistant superintendent whose sleep deprivation wreaked personal and professional havoc on him, and, because he was such a physical and emotional mess, my leadership coaching was going nowhere. After observing his disastrous facilitation of a team meeting, I got tough. I said, “That’s it! I’m going to quit being your coach unless you sleep! You can’t get your team to make thoughtful decisions that impact thousands of kids if you don’t get some sleep, eat breakfast, and drag your clammy face into the sun for 15 minutes a day. Either you sleep or I quit.”

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Take Care of Yourself 151

This administrator trusted me. He knew that I had his best interests at heart. He also wanted me to coach him. His response was, “I respect your opinion and I want to be a better leader, so if you say I should sleep, I’ll sleep.” We wrote a self-care plan, which included SMART (specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and timely) self-care goals, and these moved to the top of his strategic planning documents.

As we created these plans, this leader also talked about his beliefs around hard work. “Growing up, all around me, there were messages around the value of work, warnings about laziness, about the role of men to work hard and provide. Those are in me,” he said. I acknowledged that many of us have wholeheartedly adopted cultural mindsets and values around work and rest. I added that women are often told to care for everyone else before caring for themselves. These messages around sacrifice, hard work, and service have great value in our world—but they also need to be balanced with caring for ourselves. We don’t have to abandon these values; they may just need to be tempered and updated with what we now know about our bodies, minds, emotions, and spirits.

Self-care is not the end of the conversation—it’s the beginning. This assistant superintendent had three other goal areas that directly impacted children in his 25,000-student district, and, that year, he met them all. At the end of June, when I asked him in our final reflection, “To what do you attribute your success this year?” he said, “I slept eight hours a night, ate breakfast, and sat my clammy face in the sun.”

“What convinced you to do that?” I asked. He’d been sleep deprived in this role for several years.

“I needed someone to make it a mandate or maybe give me permission,” he said. “I haven’t yet been able to do this for myself—that’s the next step—so you tell- ing me I had to do it got me started.”

The moral of this story is this: If the Protestant work ethic has you trapped, or if another dominant mindset about who should care for themselves is choking you, get help. Tell a few people whom you trust and respect that they can yell at you. This kind of permission—granted or received—is a scaffold. It’ll help us along this journey of self-discovery and true self-care. Don’t turn down scaffolds; they exist for a reason.

Maybe you’d listen to your doctor telling you that you have to quit smoking or do something about your weight. Maybe you’d listen to your partner tell you to take the day off and get a massage. Maybe you’d listen to your mom or best friend or coach or boss or sister or kid or neighbor or pastor or Oprah tell you to treat your body well. If there’s someone you’d listen to, let that person know. Most likely,

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152 Onward

people who care about you have tried before, but you’ve turned away. Let them know they can try again. Request help in getting started on this project.

When You Are in Self-Care Crisis

Are you reading this chapter now because you’re falling apart and you can’t figure out how to return to the classroom (or office) tomorrow? In Chapter 6 of the work- book, you’ll find an intervention plan that has pulled many educators back from the edge. (It’s called “When You Are in Self-Care Crisis.”) Note that you’ll need to do the things described there every day for a week in order to feel better.

If you know that you really struggle with self-care, it might be worth turning to a mental health professional. This can be an area where deep-rooted issues lie, their origins often from childhood and, sometimes, trauma. You deserve this kind of care.

Implications for Leaders • In the late fall, lighten up on the requests for evening or weekend duties.

Help new teachers prioritize their time. Feed them. Give them refillable water bottles. Hold a staff meeting outside in the sun or even cancel a staff meeting and tell everyone to go home early. Don’t let new teachers go into school on the weekend or launch an after-school program in the fall. You may need to set boundaries for new teachers so that, as they learn the rhythms of the school year, they can focus on their top priorities.

• Your own calendar cycle of energy and emotions might be different than that of a teacher’s. Many principals find April-May to be the most punish- ing season of the year. During this time, they simultaneously finish one school year (including all the testing and celebrations of the season) and launch the next year (and do hiring, budgeting, master schedules, PD plans, and so on). This is also the time of year when, especially in second- ary schools, kids tend to unravel. Plus, you’re exhausted. Prepare for May as you would prepare to climb a mountain and, while climbing, prioritize your own rest.

• If a staff member is in crisis, use the plan in Chapter 6 of the workbook called “When You Are in Self-Care Crisis.” Gently and kindly hold her

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Take Care of Yourself 153

To Hell with Martyrdom

Some of us ignore our own health because of a nebulous and sinister force that we unconsciously create. Read these statements and note how many you’ve said or perhaps heard from a colleague:

• “No one appreciates how hard I work! I’m the first one here and the last to leave every day.”

• “I don’t even see my own kids because I’m so busy taking care of other people’s.” • “Do you see that stack of notebooks on my trolley? That’s what I take home

every night. Who else is going to read 120 journal entries? How else will their writing improve?”

• “I can’t take a day off! My classroom would crumble without me.”

These are the kinds of statements that martyrs make, and, in most schools, there’s at least one person bearing the scars of a savior and pleading for recognition. Many of us have tendencies toward martyrdom—as a new teacher, I did too—but our schools don’t need martyrs. Let’s consider what the martyr complex looks and sounds like, where it comes from, and why it’s destructive.

Examining the Complex

Many educators, at different times in their career, have found themselves on a mar- tyrdom continuum, which contains a range of behaviors and attitudes. It’s useful to

accountable for taking action: Ask her to call her doctor then and there to make an appointment, or to text her partner and say she needs help.

• You may also, at times, insist that a staff member take a sick or personal day. New teachers and perfectionists can have a really hard time giving themselves permission to take a day off. With your experience and per- spective, you may recognize when it’s in the best interest of the students that the teacher steps out for a bit. Relieve the teacher from having to make the decision.

• Make sure all teachers have an Emergency Substitute Folder prepared by week 1 that contains a couple of lesson plans, a seating chart, daily schedules, and the student roster so that on the occasion when he needs to step out and take care of himself, he doesn’t have to go through this logistical process.

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154 Onward

know the indicators of a martyr complex so that you can recognize it in yourself and understand it better in others.

At their most intense, martyrs are righteous and self-sacrificing. They don’t set personal boundaries or say no to anything, and they can emotionally manipu- late others into doing what they want. Work comes before everything, and every- one else’s needs are put above their own. Martyrs also have an obsessive need to be right. They evade guilt and taking responsibility, and blame others for their misfor- tunes, disappointments, and turmoil.

Martyrs frequently talk about how hard things are, find lots of problems to complain about, and want others to know how underappreciated they are. Mar- tyrs exaggerate suffering, hardship, and mistreatment; they expect admiration and heaps of sympathy. Publicly, martyrs actively seek appreciation, recognition, and attention for their efforts, sometimes creating drama in an effort to generate them; privately, martyrs take some pleasure in the suffering. It affirms some aspect of their self.

This is a depressing depiction, isn’t it? It hurts to think that you would ever be among such a despicable bunch—but, perhaps, sometimes you play the martyr card. I’ve played it when I’ve been blind to my fears, frustrations, or insecurities, or when I’ve simply been too exhausted to think clearly. I’ve also played it when I was angry at others, as a way to make myself look better and indirectly to put them down. Ultimately, acting this way didn’t get me what I wanted; it didn’t compel others to work hard or help me, or to appreciate my contributions. It made people distance themselves from me.

You need to get real with yourself and determine where you are on the con- tinuum. If you only dabble in martyrdom, work to shift those behaviors. Seek to understand the underlying emotions of fear, anger, and sadness. Ask someone you trust to call you on it when they see you playing the martyr. If you have fully donned the martyr’s cape and have the scars to prove it, then you probably need outside help. Committed martyrdom probably has its roots in your childhood and has to do with your sense of self-worth. It can also be tangled up with perfection- ism, which we’ll explore later in this chapter. Seek help from a mental health profes- sional to explore the origins of this tendency.

Recognizing the Dangers

Implicit in a martyr complex can be a deficit mindset about students and their communities—that the children and parents can’t and haven’t helped themselves, so they need an outside savior. I’ve encountered this mindset in school reform or

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Take Care of Yourself 155

transformation efforts in which teachers, thinking they are revolutionary, enter a community with big goals and inspiring slogans intent on saving kids (who are of- ten black or brown and from low-income communities) from the ravages of inequi- ties. Be careful—martyrdom can converge with racism and classism.

Martyrs can also undermine the health of a staff community. A martyr, by definition, thinks that he or she is in some divine way superior to others. Martyrs make this known to colleagues by detailing their sacrifices and suffering, and hold- ing their own actions as exemplars.

Martyrdom is also problematic because it kills you, and usually pretty fast. You may have internalized some messages about suffering (there are institutions and mindsets that promote such ideology), but it’s usually optional. Teachers can do amazing work and transform the lives of kids and also have their own families and hobbies and eight hours of sleep every night.

If we’re not supposed to dance, Why all this music?

Gregory Orr

Acknowledging Origins

Martyrdom is complicated. The reality is that it’s unproductive and often ugly, but it can also feel seductive, particularly to new teachers. There are good reasons why some of us are tempted to compete for a spot among famous educator saviors— they are heralded, and movies are made about them. Who didn’t choke up watching Stand and Deliver, Dead Poets Society, Freedom Writers, or Dangerous Minds? What new teacher doesn’t think, I want to be like Jaime Escalante or Ellen Gruwell and enlighten my “at-risk” kids and save them from gangs? But these movies contribute to the problem of the martyr complex by deifying educators who see their students as victims to be saved and who get sick and burned out trying to save them.

For those of us who have found ourselves fantasizing about being Jaime Es- calante, I acknowledge that educators have few praiseworthy role models (and if you’re a person of color, even fewer). When you’re a new teacher, it’s hard to figure out whom to emulate, especially if you’ve got a fire in your belly to make the world better. Furthermore, teachers are seriously underappreciated in all ways, including financial compensation. The lack of acknowledgment and even empathy for the work that teachers do exacerbates this whole martyr thing. There’s nothing wrong with wanting recognition; but needing to be recognized and making a martyr out of yourself are two different things, and martyrdom is deadly.

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156 Onward

Even though we can find a martyr or two in most schools, we can also find their antitheses—healthy, effective, humble teachers—working in classrooms. They are grading papers at school so they don’t have to take them home, getting help from students to organize the classroom, taking a moment of quiet during lunch, and facilitating productive and often (but not always!) exciting classes. The best role models might not be the most charismatic or the busiest or the ones who stay at school the longest. But they do exist. Seek them out—those who live balanced lives and do great work with kids.

If you have come here to help me you are wasting your time. But if you have come here because your liberation is bound up

with mine, then let us work together. Lilla Watson, Indigenous Australian artist,

activist, and academic

Seeking Antidotes

We need to shift our mental models of what it takes to transform schools, and redefine what it means to be an educator. Our kids need teachers who sleep eight hours a night and walk every day and eat dinner with their families—and they need teachers who are highly skilled at their craft and who make good on the promise of education for all. And principals: Teachers need leaders who do the same.

If you have tendencies toward martyrdom, try these tactics for change:

• Find role models in your schools and communities. Talk to veteran teachers and ask, “Whom do you know who does great work with kids in our school/district and who lives a balanced life?”

• Look at things through a strengths-based lens: What works in this community? • Cultivate a vision for your life that’s holistic—one that includes self-care, per-

sonal growth, adventure, and celebration. • Consider working with a therapist to explore the underlying emotions.

New teachers, I know you got into this work because you want to contribute to the lives of young people. It might take a while to see evidence of your contribu

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