My career began in the field of mental health and blossomed into an eight-year stint as a special education teacher. In mental health care settings, I have taught self-care strategies to clients receiving individual therapy or participating in community stress management classes. As a special educator, regardless of subject matter or setting, I have taught students self-care strategies. It’s safe to say that I know my way around self-care. Despite my professional training and expertise, I have personally experienced burnout at least once per school year.
In the mainstream, the popularity of self-care has increased in recent years. The consumption of products and services related to personal care has made it a thriving commercial industry. This trend reflects increasing levels of stress and burnout among all American workers.
For educators, These are not new concepts, but the packaging is. Mindfulness, yoga, and other school initiatives targeting educators have grown in importance. There are now even conferences dedicated to this cause. As a professor of education whose research and professional development focuses on educator empowerment and well-being, I am excited to see an increase in ridership of the autonomous train. However, this topic has been misinterpreted and requires clarification. In particular, three misconceptions about self-care perpetuate unfair expectations of educators.
1. Limit the definition of self-care: The term seems self-explanatory, but what exactly does it mean? There is no universal definition. Exercise is often a recommended form of self-care, as are mindfulness meditation and relaxation techniques. Some report soaking in hot baths, reading for pleasure, and cuddling their puppies. Anyway, my point is that self-care is often defined as specific health-promoting activities or products.
To be clear, self-care doesn’t always have to be overtly healthy. Some educators have told me that their self-care includes self-soothing behaviors like gorging on brownies or sipping spirits. Others counter by suggesting that self-care must be healthy – otherwise it is self-harm.
Recently, I attended a conference and heard an engaging speaker say that self-care isn’t about bringing M&Ms or other chocolates into the workplace to share with colleagues. So the next day I brought Almond Joys to share. Since these contain two superfoods: almonds and coconut, that meant I was promoting self-care, right? All joking aside, my humble opinion is that taking care of yourself does not always constitute a health-promoting behavior. If small indulgences produce positive mental and emotional gains, why frown upon them? The problem, however, is knowing the line between beneficial indulgence and harmful debauchery. This varies individually and is not universally defined.
Self-care isn’t limited to specific activities either. By focusing on evidence-based practices, we have greatly underestimated the intangible aspects of our well-being. For example, another form of self-care is setting limits on our time and availability. By ending our workday at a certain time and including downtime in our schedule, we promote the work-life balance necessary for our health.
We can also take care of ourselves by being demanding about our commitments. Saying “yes” to everything creates more expectations and less appreciation.
Beyond boundaries, the benefits of positive reciprocal human relationships need no explanation. Do the people in your life enhance it or deplete it? And vice versa, and how do you treat others? Personal care works in conjunction with community care, not in isolation. Overall, we need social networks that support the best versions of ourselves and therefore the best we offer to others.
2. Blaming burnout on educators: Self-care literature often concludes by proclaiming the benefits of self-care and ways to achieve it. Some use this to argue that burned out educators weren’t taking enough care of themselves. Make no mistake: educators have an ethical duty to maintain their capacity to perform. Although overlooked and underprioritized, self-care and effective coping are necessary skills of an educator and essential to effective instruction and behavior management. Nevertheless, the ethical responsibility for educators’ self-care does not diminish the importance of effective school leadership, parental involvement, reasonable salaries and benefits, and especially student responsibility.
We all have a shared responsibility for education. Administrators, parents/families, and policy makers cannot continue to hold teachers responsible for students’ entire existence while paying them so poorly that they must either marry to have a decent standard of living or have struggling to pay basic bills. We cannot expect educators to save the world in such conditions through the miracle of self-care alone. It is simply one piece of a complex puzzle that involves other essential conditions, including excellent leadership, positive collegial relationships, access to adequate resources, parental and family involvement , and above all the participation of students.
3. Wait for a superhuman educator: You often hear stories about the ex-spouse of someone’s first cousin’s best friend who was a teacher. This person taught classes of 40 or more students, all of whom had disabilities and had suffered childhood trauma. Thanks to this incredible professor, students excelled on their standardized assessments, demonstrated exemplary behavior, and all became doctors, engineers, and CEOs. In addition to incredible teaching abilities, the superteacher was a hardworking single parent (clearly without third cousin involvement – how convenient), with no financial support or family members. This teacher was always happy, never complained, and never needed to take care of himself, instead finding joy in self-sacrifice and dedication to others.
Critics will constantly compare us to these superhuman educators they claim to know, and we will inevitably fail. Please also understand that these stories are either huge exaggerations or outright lies. Educators are human beings and we all have our strengths and challenges. Yes, self-care makes a difference and is a necessary practice for a healthy and happy life, not to mention an effective educator. However, it is not another weapon to use against us, to blame us for the problems of education (and society), or to justify superhuman expectations.
