All in The Sustained Teacher
Balance doesn’t have to be about doing less, it can be about doing with intention. By setting explicit priorities about work that is important to us, we can feel better about what we are able to get done in the day. This decision to focus on what was most important can end up making it possible to give ourselves grace and be grateful for what it is we were able to accomplish in the work day.
What this experience taught me was that while I eventually came to trust my own intuition, I was not pausing to check in with myself before accepting professional commitments. I rarely, if ever, stopped to ask myself if the roles I was taking on would contribute to my own growth as an educator. I did not ask if these service positions would actually serve me.
In this series, I offer you and every educator a principled method for teacher self-care, what I prefer to call teacher sustainability, because for me it’s about sustaining ourselves in a system that is very efficient at overwhelming and wearing down educators who are passionate about public service, therefore resulting in high teacher turnover especially in high-need areas.
