Category Archives: Health and Safety

7 Ways to Protect Your Health 

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Protect Your Health

Educators, protect your health because no one is worried about your health. The Delta variant of COVID 19 is raging across the country and world. School districts are intent on returning students to class by all means necessary. Anti-vaxxers and anti-mask persons are creating havoc at school board meetings. Some even harass and physically abuse teachers and administrators who try to enforce policies. So you see, no one can protect your health better than you. You have permission to take care of yourself!

COVID-19 Hits Hard

Let’s review how we got to this point of contention. COVID hit our country hard in early 2020. Suddenly our hospitals and emergency rooms filled up with very ill patients. Medical personnel was overwhelmed with the number of people overfilling hospital beds. Businesses, schools, and government offices closed down. Mask and health mandates became requirements for us all. Scientists rushed to create a vaccine to help stop the carnage of COVID. In the United States, over 600,000 people died within 12-18 months.

For a few months, we thought that we might have a reprieve after people began to vaccinate. The number of Covid cases decreased as more received the shots. Hospitalizations also reduced, and people began to let down their guard. Cities and schools began to open again. Suddenly we felt like we could live again, hug people we love, take off masks, hold family gatherings, or go out to restaurants. We were throwing caution to the wind too fast created another dilemma for us to navigate.

Decisions, Stress, and Frustration

As decisions come, the teachers and school administrators are not a part of the process. What else we have to navigate is how to keep ourselves safe and healthy. School boards and politicians make policies and mandates without knowing the full effect and impact their decisions have on the teachers and administrators in the trenches every day. Afterward, the impact hits hard, and we are left to pick up the pieces. Unfortunately, picking up the pieces adds extra stress and frustration to one’s personal and professional life.

Eating nutritious and balanced meals can improve your overall health.
Photo by Sam Maqadam on UnSplash

We know how stress and frustration affect the teacher burnout statistics. Pile on the effects of a pandemic, and now more teachers and school leaders than ever want to leave the profession. The anxiety level of fearing of getting infected with COVID is a reality for many. Educators worry about the possibility of sick colleagues and students, unclean classroom surfaces, masks slipping off of students’ faces, and wondering what happens to you if you become ill. 

So that the worry is not overwhelming, it’s time for you to protect your health. What can you do to keep yourself healthy and safe? Here are several ways to protect your health.

Proper Nutrition and Hydration

Good health begins with eating nutritiously. Your body needs healthy foods and plenty of water. Frequently, teachers and school administrators do not take the time to eat proper meals or to stay hydrated during the school day. On the other hand, stressed-out educators may emotionally binge on the junk or processed food as a way to self-medicate. Or some of you drink coffee or sugary drinks all day instead of water. Your body needs foods rich in nutrients, vitamins, proteins, etc. Check the CDC website for suggestions on preparing and eating nutritious meals.

Exercise and Stay Active

Your body needs exercise and movement! Being sedentary is not suitable for any human being. Our bodies are to be active. So, let’s get moving! Do not say that there’s no time to exercise, because you can make the time. During preparation periods, find a few minutes to stretch, leg lifts, yoga moves, jumping jacks, etc. Roll your shoulders and neck, deep breathe and work the kinks out. Walk around the playground or football field. Take the stairs instead of the elevator. Even in the classroom with your students, you can have stretch breaks between transition times. You will feel better and get your body more accustomed to constant movement. 

Get Adequate Rest

Your body needs exercise and movement! Being sedentary is not suitable for any human being. Our bodies are to be active. So, let’s get moving! Do not say that there’s no time to exercise, because you can make the time. During preparation periods, find a few minutes to stretch, leg lifts, yoga moves, jumping jacks, etc. Roll your shoulders and neck, deep breathe and work the kinks out. Walk around the playground or football field. Take the stairs instead of the elevator. Even in the classroom with your students, you can have stretch breaks between transition times. You will feel better and get your body more accustomed to constant movement. 

Maintaining Healthcare

Are you the person who never goes to the doctor or takes your medicine? Do you go to work sick and spread your germs to others? Why are you saving your sick days? Do you have a chronic condition like diabetes, hypertension, heart disease, or asthma? COVID-19 took a toll on persons with underlying health issues. Many infected people with previous health issues either died or continue to have serious side effects. Protect your health by taking the necessary prescribed medications or schedule regular appointments with your primary care doctors. By the way, if you feel sick, stay home or see the doctor!

Take Stress and Anxiety Seriously

All of the chronic illnesses mentioned earlier are exasperated by stress and worry. Stress kills, and anxiety causes disease. Brushing off one or both are not good for anyone. Protect your health by recognizing the damage stress and anxiety causes to one’s body. Develop positive coping skills to combat the effects and damage of stress and anxiety. Try to stay positive and not focus on negative things. Seek professional counseling if everything is overwhelming and it feels like the walls are closing in on you. Also, find positive activities, including exercise, a hobby, journaling, reading, or meditating. A healthy mind helps to keep your body healthy, too. 

Stay Connected With Family and Friends

During times of hardship, illness, or worry, some people disconnect from everything and everyone. Please do not isolate yourself from friends and family members. Protect your health by reaching out to people who care about your well-being. You may feel like you want to curl up in a ball and be left alone. However, you desire to be around people because we are social beings. We need to talk about how we feel and what’s going on. You want advice when there doesn’t seem to be an easy answer. Stay connected by reaching out to friends and family. 

Keep Your Workspace Clean and Healthy

One of the biggest things teachers can do to protect your health is to keep your workspace healthy and clean. The classroom should not be a petri dish. Create health and safety routines with your students. First, you need a few items to have a clean workspace and classroom. It would be best to have anti-bacterial wipes and gel, Lysol spray, masks, rubber gloves, paper towels, tissue for runny noses, and a few more items. Hopefully, the school can provide the supplies to have available for daily use. 

Establish a schedule in the classroom for cleaning moments. Delegate specific responsibilities to students (helpers for the day). They can help to wipe off desks; door handles, etc. Students do enjoy having duties and jobs in the classroom. Build out an hourly schedule, or between transitions, so the cleaning becomes a daily routine. Also, turn it all into a teachable moment about how a clean classroom environment reduces the spread of germs and illness. 

Essential School Supplies!

Students Need a Well Teacher

Educators, your health is a significant priority. Of course, students need a healthy teacher, but your family and friends need you to be whole, too. Put yourself and your health first! Even when we get beyond this COVID pandemic, the seven ways to protect your health remain essential to fighting disease and illnesses. 

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Is it time for a career change

Educators is it Time for a Career Change? 

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Career Change

The school year is almost finished. Normally, the summer is a time for educators to refresh and reflect. As you know, the education profession is not easy peasy and  202o and 2021 have been no less than traumatic. The pandemic, virtual learning, hybrid classes, or balancing both virtual and in-person learning are all enough to send some teachers over the edge.   All of these issues lead to a serious question. Educators, is it time for a career change?

Teacher stress and burnout continue to be prevalent across the United States and worldwide. Loud whispers of teachers and principals leaving the professions fill many ears of district administrators. School districts wonder how to keep teachers and principals from walking away from the profession. Educators are becoming more vocal about their well-being and why they’re willing to leave the field. Many are ready for a career change. Here are a few reasons for their departure.

Low Pay and Lack of Benefits

Low pay and lack of benefits are reasons for a career change. Many teachers work two and sometimes three jobs to make ends meet. Plus, this year the COVID19 pandemic dumped more responsibilities on teachers.  We already know that many states do not adequately fund public education. Also, some states do not sufficiently support teachers’ pension funds. For many teachers, a raise is hard to come by. Even a cost of living raise is on teachers’ wishlist. Like doctors and attorneys, teachers must have a degree and state license to practice their craft.  Plus, think about how much of their money teachers spend on supplies and resources. Some educators begin to think about other possible job opportunities.

Lack of Respect

Another reason for a career change is teachers and school administrators do not feel respected. Many blame teachers for societal ills that they have no control over. Society relegates educators to many things other than educating students. During the beginning of the pandemic, educators were considered heroes. Parents realized how valuable we are when they had to teach their own children. Parents realized it is a big and difficult job. Then, the tide turned as the pandemic continued for many months. Suddenly, politics made educators into villains. Even before the pandemic, teachers played various roles as nurses, social workers, jack of all trades, disciplinarians, Miss Manners, and sometimes de-facto parents. They are all of these things while teaching kids how to read and do math.

Unachievable Expectations

Expectations and too many responsibilities are unachievable. Both cause stress and burnout. Consequently, educators are trying to leave the field and change careers. Politicians and others who’ve never taught set benchmarks and don’t provide the funding and resources to succeed. It’s all about the data and the numbers. It’s rarely about the children and their real needs. It is about standardized tests and school ratings. It’s time to look at more variables such as the social-emotional needs, socio-economics of a community, family structures, class sizes, etc.

Safety Issues

Safety played a big role during the pandemic. Normally, teachers worry about safety issues; however, COVID 19 took the worry to another level.  Now, educators worry about the traumatic experiences of students that occurred during school closures. Homelife for many students is not stable on a regular basis. Add a pandemic and school closures to disrupt students’ lives more.  Whether it’s a rural or urban school district, teachers and administrators always think safety first. Universities and colleges train educators to teach. A school building must be a safe zone or haven for the students and staff. All teachers only want to teach and not have anxiety about clean and healthy buildings.  When they feel as if they can no longer teach, it’s time for a career change.

Helpful Tips

Undoubtedly, many will see something that resonates in this post. You cannot take it anymore and are ready for a career change! Before you decide to leave the profession,  begin to prepare for new realities! The corporate world is vastly different than the education world. Here are a few helpful tips.  

A career change is like putting together a jigsaw puzzle. Photo by Hans-Peter Gauster on Upsplash.com

Look at your finances. Do you have money saved for a rainy day? If you don’t have a job lined up, how long can you survive on your savings?

Is your family supportive of your decision to change careers? If you’re single, then you only have one person to answer. However, if you have a spouse and children, you must consider how a career change affects your family.

Prepare for a Job Search

Prepare for a job search by thinking about your marketable skills. Educators, don’t underestimate yourselves. Your skillset is very high! Think about what you want to do and write a new resume. Network and communicate with anyone who may be able to support your search for a new job.

Be open to other things like pursuing a new degree or trade. For example, one teacher went to a truck-driving school. She learned to drive a truck, passed the test, and received her license. Now, she is on the road for a major trucking company. A science teacher enrolled in a nursing program. In 18 months, she received a nursing degree and now works in a hospital. Think outside the box and ponder the possibility of relocating.

While losing great teachers is not a good thing, sometimes a career change is good. Your sanity, physical and mental health are top priorities. You have various skills, experiences, and knowledge to share with the world. You can use your degree to become a professional consultant or become a corporate trainer. Becoming an entrepreneur is a great option, too. The possibilities are endless. Do you stay or go? It is all about you, so take the time to figure out what is best for you.

This is an update to a previous post from May 2018. 

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Additional Resources

Time Magazine

http://time.com/money/longform/teacher-pay/

Teaching during a pandemic

Working in Schools During a Pandemic Requires GRAPES 

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Working in Schools During a Pandemic

Teachers and school administrators are nearly at the end of their ropes. Many don’t recognize or seem to know the professional or emotional needs of teachers and school administrators. This is especially true while working in schools during a pandemic. Stress is affecting all stakeholders, including educators, students, parents, and community members. However, the educators are on the frontlines, and they need GRAPES.

Working in schools during a pandemic brings unexpected new demands on educators. Even before COVID, teaching was never an easy profession. During this trying time in our history, teaching and learning changed on the drop of a dime. Suddenly classes were virtual with nearly no preparation for professional development. Yet, teachers and school administrators had to think on their feet and make it work. It may not have been perfect, but teachers know they must have a plan A, B, and C. They work hard under pressure, but at some point, it all becomes too much to handle.

Teachers’ Emotional Needs

According to the article How to Support Teachers Emotional Needs Right Now, the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence and the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL) launched a survey to get an idea of teachers’ emotional lives during the pandemic. Over 5000 teachers in the U.S. responded to the study in March 2020. “The five most mentioned feelings were anxious, fearful, worried, overwhelmed, and sad. Anxiety, by far, was the most frequently mentioned emotion.”

In the same article, 2017 is mentioned, too. Again, over 5000 educators responded to the same questions. Then the top five emotions were frustrated, overwhelmed, stressed, tired, and happy. Of course, the responses were before COVID19, but you can see how the feelings are much more intense or worrisome. 

The emotions in 2020 are much more personal for educators. Both teachers and principals worry about their own health and the needs of their families. Teaching in a virtual setting or a hybrid is difficult. If you must work from home and your own children must learn from home, conflicts will occur. Your students need attention, but so do your own kids. How do you balance both? It’s impossible!

Decision-Making Without Teachers’ Input

Stress and burnout among educators was an issue before COVID. The pandemic intensified the problem. Decisions were made to return to schools despite an increase in the number of cases of the virus. Teachers were left out. Decision-makers seem to forget that teachers’ emotions, opinions, and experience matters. Educators still feel some kind of way about how politicians and district leaders ignored their pleas. Right now, the negative emotions will only increase the levels of chronic stress in teachers and school administrators. 

Not only do educators have to deal with being left out of the decision-making process, but they must also deal with hostile public relations. The perception and some headlines seem to portray teachers as not wanting to work. “Teachers need to do their jobs and return to the classroom!” How many times did we hear and see those words? We also heard from politicians if schools did not reopen, districts would lose federal funding.” Educators did not need additional and unnecessary pressure. What they need are GRAPES! Here is an explanation.

Working in schools during COVID19
Teaching during COVID19 is a game-changer.
Photo by Adam Niescioruk on Unsplash.com

Grace and Resilience

First, teachers and school administrators need grace. What is grace? How do you provide dignity to educators? Grace, as a noun, means favor or goodwill. As a verb, grace means to favor or honor. All first responders and essential workers deserve dignity, including teachers. Educating the nation’s children is an honor and a tough job. Many cannot and will not do it. However, those that do the job make many sacrifices daily. They teach, but they also give, nurture, care, love, and go beyond the call of duty. Show an educator some grace by honoring the work they do daily.

The second part of GRAPES is resilience. In the field of education, school staff members need to be resilient. We cannot take everything personally because stress and disappointment will have their way with us. Educators can bounce back after being pulled in too many directions, overwhelmed, disrespected, and much more. 

Kicks Crew

Access and Patience

Next is access to the necessary resources and support. Give educators the funds, materials, technology, and professional development to be successful and provide the best quality education. Also, provide access to the social-emotional needs of the adults who work in schools. Make funding our schools a priority so that resources are plentiful and equitable.

Educators give and need patience. Parents are upset that virtual learning is not going as well as they’d like it. Students are squirmy and overwhelmed. Teachers are frustrated with virtual learning platforms, low bandwidth, unobtainable expectations, and a few other things. Everyone is tired of sitting in front of a screen for too many hours. Impatience turns into stress for all. 

Essential School Supplies!

Empathy and Support Systems

Teachers and principals need empathy, too. All non-teachers should put yourselves in their shoes. Wear their moccasins of an educator. Ask yourself, can you survive a week in a classroom with 25 or more students? If the answer is no, then give empathy to all those who teach your children. Many parents discovered how hard it is to work with their own children during the pandemic. Some parents even praised teachers for the job they do. Still, others feel teachers do not work hard enough. 

Lastly, teachers need a variety of supports. Working during a pandemic showed how vital teachers are to our country. Educators represent an essential market in the economy and in politics. We are an engine that helps to move many working parts in our nation’s systems. Support systems must be in place to deter the effects of stress and burnout bound to happen during and after this pandemic. 

Teacher Self-Care During a Pandemic

Provide grace, resilience, access, patience, empathy, and support to every educator you know and meet. Let’s make teachers feel seen and heard. Empower them to make decisions. Value their opinions, knowledge, and experience. Make working in schools during a pandemic less scary, Tell teachers they are worth every penny and more of their salaries. 

Now, educators, you must do some things for yourselves, too. You can only control the controllable. Carve out some time for self-care to maintain your mental health. During breaks from virtual classes, move your body by walking around your house or apartment. You need self-compassion, too. Set reasonable expectations for yourself and others. More importantly, reach out and communicate your mental health status. Do not stay silent when your suffering. Your livelihood is a priority, but your life is more important.

Got GRAPES?

Additional Resources

How to Support Teachers’ Emotional Needs Right Now

https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/how_to_support_teachers_emotional_needs_right_now

Teachers Are Caring More Than Ever

https://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2020/07/22/teachers-are-caring-more-than-ever-but.html

Reflecting on Teacher Well-Being During A Pandemic

https://ies.ed.gov/ncee/edlabs/regions/pacific/blogs/blog28_reflecting-on-teacher-wellbeing-during-COVID-19-pandemic.asp

How to Support Teachers’ Emotional Needs Right Now

https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/how_to_support_teachers_emotional_needs_right_now

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