Onward

Cultivating Emotional Resilience in Educators

Elena Aguilar

• Publisher: Jossey-Bass
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781119364900
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Professional Development

A practical framework to avoid burnout and keep great teachers teaching

Onward tackles the problem of educator stress, and provides a practical framework for taking the burnout out of teaching. Stress is part of the job, but when 70 percent of teachers quit within their first five years because the stress is making them physically and mentally ill, things have gone too far. Unsurprisingly, these effects are highest in difficult-to-fill positions such as math, science, and foreign languages, and in urban areas and secondary classrooms—places where we need our teachers to be especially motivated and engaged. This book offers a path to resiliency to help teachers weather the storms and bounce back—and work toward banishing the rain for good.

This actionable framework gives you concrete steps toward rediscovering yourself, your energy, and your passion for teaching. You'll learn how a simple shift in mindset can affect your outlook, and how taking care of yourself physically, mentally, and emotionally is one of the most important things you can do. The companion workbook helps you put the framework into action, streamlining your way toward renewal and strength.

• Cultivate resilience with a four-part framework based on 12 key habits
• Uncover your true self, understand emotions, and use your energy where it counts
• Adopt a mindful, story-telling approach to communication and community building
• Keep learning, playing, and creating to create an environment of collective celebration

By cultivating resilience in schools, we help ensure that we are working in, teaching in, and leading organizations where every child thrives, and where the potential of every child is recognized and nurtured. Onward provides a step-by-step plan for reigniting that spark.

Chapter 1
Know Yourself

When you know yourself well—when you understand your emotions, social identities, core values, and personality—you gain clarity on your purpose in life and in work. Being anchored in purpose makes you able to deal with setbacks and challenges.

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June: This habit is foundational for all the others. In June you can reflect on last year, transition into summer, and contemplate next year while gaining deeper self-understanding.

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It was late spring during my first year of teaching, and I stood sobbing in front of my principal, and not just regular sobbing but that uncontrollable kind during which strange sounds you didn't know your body was capable of making burst out of you. I was furious.

There'd been a breakdown in communication; if I gave you all the details, you'd probably think, Elena, that's really not a big deal. But when I learned about the communication glitch, I felt wronged. I felt disrespected. I felt unappreciated. I sobbed and argued and then bolted from the room, but I wasn't so far down my emotional vortex that I didn't register the look of surprise on her face. My principal was a veteran educator who wore a skirt, nylons, and heels every day and whom I never once called by her first name. She was always steady, focused, and calm. But surely, in her decades as a principal, Mrs. Cooke had witnessed other worn-out young teachers unravel into hysterics? Yet as I replayed her surprised expression, I couldn't help but wonder whether perhaps I really had been the first one.

Although it's been decades since this incident, I remember it vividly. I'd felt excruciating embarrassment and then avoided my principal at all costs during the last few weeks before summer. Although part of me wanted to lock the memory away, once I had a few weeks of rest and perspective available to me, my meltdown in front of Mrs. Cooke pushed me to greater self-understanding.

That summer, as I reflected on the previous school year, I recognized why I was so upset. I felt as though values I held around respect and appreciation had been violated. I'd also received no feedback during the year. I wanted Mrs. Cooke's approval, or at least an indicator that I was on the right track as a teacher. I didn't know how schools worked or how communication between staff operated. Generational and cultural differences were also among the many factors that contributed to how I experienced the communication glitch and how I responded. I can see all of this now, in retrospect, but at the moment of the incident, I wasn't aware of these elements. My gaps in self-awareness set my distress in motion. By contrast, if I'd had more self-awareness in Mrs. Cooke's office that day, I would've been better positioned to take a deep breath and show up differently. Self-knowledge helps us to be more confident about our actions and clear on our decisions. It's what enables us to show up in the way we want to show up.

Fast-forward to a few years later, to a similar miscommunication with a different principal. Following a slight (and private) meltdown, I reflected, applied the self-knowledge I'd amassed, and initiated a conversation. As a result of the learning and growth I'd made in my self-knowledge, our relationship became stronger, I felt both heard and respected, and I was pleased with how I handled the situation.

Self-Knowledge Is True Power

A teacher who really knows herself is keenly aware of her values and beliefs, and her behaviors consistently reflect those; she understands how aspects of her personality affect how she works and lives. She uses that knowledge to make decisions about her life, and she accepts her personality traits; she has a sharp sense of her sociopolitical self and can see the role that dominant culture plays in her experiences; she knows what she's good at and what she likes doing. She understands her own emotions and has tools to engage with them.

With this kind of deep self-knowledge, a teacher can deftly navigate the thousands of challenges that she faces every day, playing to her strengths and innate resources and drawing on her assets to help her manage rough moments. When an upset happens, she's unlikely to “take it personally,” because she knows who she is, and she can distinguish between the external event and herself. In other words, she's resilient.

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Your self: your essential being that distinguishes you from others; includes your values, personality, character, aptitudes, interests, identity, mind, and psyche

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Resilience is cultivated through hundreds of little choices every day. In order to make the best choice, you need to know yourself. With self-knowledge, you can anticipate moments that might trigger you. Self-knowledge enables you to build stronger relationships with others. With knowledge of your unique talents, aptitudes, and interests, you play to your strengths and wisely direct your energy. When you're clear on your values, you align your skills, time, and energy to your purpose—and purposefulness is a key trait of the resilient.

In this chapter, we'll explore how self-awareness is the foundation for the decisions crucial to boosting your resilience. We'll explore the following elements of self: Values, personality type, sociopolitical identities, and strengths and aptitudes. Because the psyche, our emotional self, is at the core of emotional resilience, Chapter 2 is devoted entirely to it. Figure 1.1, Elements of Self, reflects the aspects of ourselves that we'll explore in this chapter and in Chapter 2.

Figure 1.1 Elements of Self

Values: What We Believe

If you followed Leo around for a day, you'd observe a principal consistently acting on his values. His three core values are family, kindness, and equity, and whether he's interacting with a student, an office staff member, his boss, or a teacher, you'll see evidence of these. When he makes decisions about allocating resources, he does so from a lens of equity. He listens to students with patience and respect, and holds them to high expectations, “Because I know what they're capable of,” he says. When he gives hard feedback, he's kind. I've coached Leo for several years. I've heard his innermost thoughts and am inspired to know an educator like Leo who lives his values so consistently. His staff members also appreciate this, as is evidenced by their annual feedback raving about his leadership, and by the exceptionally high retention of teachers at his school. Finally, Leo cites the alignment between his values and his behaviors as a source of inner strength: “I know who I am,” he says, “and that helps me manage the challenges of this job. As long as I honor who I am, I'm good.” In spite of unrelenting pressures and stressors, Leo really is doing well most of the time and research on resilient school leaders confirms that thriving leaders are grounded in their values (Patterson and Kelleher, 2005).

A value is a tightly held belief from which we act. Our core values are often enduring beliefs that can be traced back to our families of origin or religious traditions. Examples of values include compassion, responsibility, hard work, justice, and community. Sometimes we use the terms values and beliefs interchangeably; they are aspects of the same idea. Core values can change over time. You may have had different values as a young adult. Values are essentially beliefs, and beliefs are strongly held opinions. It's useful to remember that beliefs can change—our own beliefs, as well as those of others. For some, values may remain the same for many years, and that's okay too.

What are your core values? If you aren't aware of them, there's an activity in the workbook to help you identify them. You might also just consider what comes first to mind in response to these questions: What do you value most? Which behaviors and values in others do you most appreciate?

Our values orient us, drive us, and anchor us. We experience integrity when we act in alignment with them. When our actions are not aligned with our values, it doesn't feel good. We might say to ourselves, This isn't me, which can indicate that our actions don't reflect a core value. When an inner voice says something like that, listen closely. Interestingly, psycho-neuroimmunologists find that our immune systems are strengthened or depleted by the degree of integrity with which we live our lives. When we act in ways that are out of alignment with our values, we physically don't feel good. This is why, when you are asked to do something you don't believe in, you might say, “It makes me feel sick to my stomach to have to do this,” because your body literally feels unwell.

Can you recall a time recently when you felt that you acted in alignment with your values? Or another time when you did something that conflicted with a value? What might it feel like to work with the same degree of conviction that a superhero has about her values? Your values can be a source of strength when you're aware of them. I know you have them, even if you're not crystal clear right now on what they are. We can also forget what our values are and find ourselves operating on autopilot, sometimes not in alignment with our values. This is why we need time to reflect on who we are and what we value, and also to talk with others about our values. Now might be a good time to take a break from reading and engage in some of the activities in the workbook!

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Implications for Leaders

• A great way to start the year is to have staff identify their core values and share those with each other. (See activities in the workbook for how to do this.)
• When a teacher is distraught or confused, ask about his or her core values, or if you know what they are, remind him or her of those.
• Organizations thrive when they have clear, shared values and where practices align to those values. Schools need articulated, lived values.
• People want to feel connected to values, and connected to each other through values. When shared values aren't strong, people resort to their own individual values, which weakens the school's overall mission. Invite your team to do an integrity scan. Review your organization's mission or vision statements. Do they include clearly stated values that are instructive and that compel people to take action?

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Personality: The Way We Are

Whereas our values develop and change throughout our lives, our personalities don't change much. Respond to these statements with a quick true or false:

• Finding out, a week before sc...