TEACHER SELF-CARE STRATEGIES

Self-care for Teachers: INSIDE Strategy

Last Updated 22 November 2023/ By Zineb DJOUB

Teaching is a tremendously stressful job. Teachers’ energy, time, constant reflection, and decisions are required to meet the intended learning outcomes and even go beyond those expectations to boost students’ learning. Teachers’ well-being is essential to provide quality performance and productivity. In this respect, self-care for teachers can be a powerful tool to support them to develop and maintain that well-being. But, self-care can seem like an elusive goal. How can teachers integrate it within their everyday busy and exhausting practices?

Before talking about how to self-care, we need to understand what it means.

What is self-care?

Self-care is about optimizing our mental and physical health to feel good and live well. So, it involves healthy and productive habits such as taking vitamins, sleeping well, exercising, meditating, adding margins, etc.

To take care of ourselves, we need to be more intentional about our choices and daily routines.

We also need to reset our mindsets, focusing our attention and energy on what matters most.

But, we can see waking up early in the morning and exercising as necessary, and we can’t make them part of our daily routine.

So, self-care is not just a mindset but also a commitment to planning and developing healthy habits.

To support you in developing effective self-care habits and stick with them, I am suggesting a self-care strategy that includes 6 interrelated steps.

I called it INSIDE because self-care is about the inner self: our physical and mental health.

INSIDE stands for :
1. Investigate the self
2. Navigate your own way
3. Settle on your tools
4. Infuse your energy into your actions.
5. Develop rituals
6. Evaluate

So, let’s describe each step of this self-care strategy for teachers.

1. Investigate the self

Before engaging in any sort of self-care routine, you need to select what fits your needs or what matters most to your mental and physical health. This will help optimize your time and energy doing things that are worth it for you.

So, dig deeper into your priorities, the things you need at the moment to feel better and do well in your life.

Grab a pen and paper, look for patterns in your behaviours, and ask yourself what you need to care about most: your sleep, the kind of meals or what you’re eating, your schedule or how you’re spending your time, how you get energized when you’re having a hard time, etc.

Opt for something more important to your well-being not because it sounds easiest or fun. Write it down and visualize it (imagine yourself performing it), you will get more motivated to do it.

2. Navigate your own way

After deciding the self-care habits (or habits) you need, it’s time now to think about the plan or schedule to follow to practise them.

Your plan needs to show how your self-care practices are integrated into your daily routine.

You may think this is tough. You can’t have time for exercising, walking, cooking your own meals, etc.

We all have plenty of things to do every day, but making time for ourselves is a high priority. Here is what you can do to make this much easier for you :

• Start with one or two habits and devote at least a few minutes to yourself every day. Make your goals small and reasonable and specify more your actions. You can move on to other habits later on and devote much more time to practice them.

• Choose a time that is convenient for you instead of focusing on the perfect time to do your self-care. If you can’t practise yoga in the morning or if you’re not the kind of person, you can do it at any time.

• Try to be proactive. Plan and get ready to face the unexpected. If you intend to eat out less, plan for making ahead meals. If you want to spend less time on social media, schedule time to do it. Don’t just say I want to do it, but get prepared for it.

3. Settle on your tools

Self-care for teachers needs to involve certain incentives. So, whether your concern is to care about your nutrition, beauty, or mental health, you need to have certain tools to get started. These can act as reminders and motivational forces that support you to develop self-care habits.

Some examples of these tools are listed here :

 

I also consider learning a precious tool for self-care. We need to learn, for instance, what beauty products, diets, and exercises fit us more than others. Effective self-care is not based on randomness, but it is more systematic and purposeful.

You are not supposed to spend time looking for what works best for you. You can just ask experts or do some reading to know that. You will make proper choices and head in the right direction.

3. Infuse your energy into your actions

This is the stage of practising self-care habits. Committing yourself to the plan you set before is so important.

Yet, you may find it hard to align those self-care practices with your daily tasks. Struggling with taking care of your kids, cleaning the house, preparing lessons, and marking exam papers……you may not have time to exercise, join a yoga class, or even RELAX.

If you are experiencing this, be sure to:

• Reset your mindset: you’re overloading yourself with much work, focusing on doing all things each day and being a perfectionist. You’re a human being. Your mind and body need some rest. So, you deserve to make time for yourself.
• Rethink your daily to-do list: try to prioritize and think about scheduling those time-consuming tasks (like cleaning and shopping) on days you’re free.

So, avoid putting off your self-care plan for next month, or even a year because you THINK you’ll have much time for that. This concerns your health. You need to start today.

Love yourself and infuse your energy into caring about the self. Enjoy every moment you have a bath or take a shower, exercise, cook, go for a walk, listen to music, meditate, etc. Do it with passion. You’ll make it a habit.

5. Develop rituals

Sticking with your self-care habits is fabulous. As they become part of your daily routine, you may not even need to plan for them. So, no thinking or worrying!

But how to make self-care a habit?

You need to take care of yourself regularly to get used to it. But what is more important is enjoying doing it.

If you’ve planned to practise yoga and you started doing so, but you feel bored with it because of your coach, the atmosphere, or any other reason, you are not likely to stick with it for a longer time

It is that feeling of enjoyment which fuels your passion to pursue it. And it’s you who creates those moments of joy and self-fulfillment.

So, instead of giving up, look for a better coach or atmosphere that supports and inspires you to join more classes.

If you want to eat less outside but you find cooking boring, make it an exciting experience. Try new recipes, play music, or sing while cooking.

From time to time, invite one of your relatives or friends to cook with you. Plan for picnics with your family and friends, and enjoy your time cooking.

Having family members and friends who share the same self-care routine with you can be also a source of motivation to stick with it.

You can exchange ideas, talk about your achievements, and create competition; « who will keep on the good work » and self-reward.

It’s only when you feel the pleasure of self-caring that you’ll do it out of your will, not because you’re obliged to do it.

 

6. Evaluate

This is the process of reviewing your commitment and accomplishment of your self-care progress to identify any existing gaps and take actions to streamline.

Some questions that you can address here include:

• How do I feel now?
• How has my lifestyle changed?
• Has this lifestyle had any impact on my work?
• How committed am I to my plan? What should I do to improve?
• Should I bring up some changes to my plan? If yes, how?
• What kind of self-habits should I develop more and devote much time to?
• What other self-care habits should I include in my routine?

 

Create self-care habits to maintain sustainable lifestyles and be the kind of teacher every student admires. Use the INSIDE strategy and remember self-care is not an add-on task you can either select or dismiss. It’s a MUST. So, give it your full attention and concern because it is all about you.