SEL Starts With You
SEL STARTS WITH YOU
Learning and leading that lasts.
At Friendzy, we talk a lot about how social-emotional learning helps improve students’ wellbeing, emotional health, academic success, relationships, and more. For you, as educators, the results of focusing personally on social emotional learning are just as powerful.
As an educator you have one of the most stressful jobs in the nation which makes incorporating social and emotional learning strategies into your routine vital to your personal wellness and efficacy as a teacher.
Having a high level of stress impacts you personally and has a ripple effect on your ability to effectively teach.
46% of teachers report experiencing high daily stress. Are you one of them?
Did you know, when you are highly stressed, your students show lower levels of both social adjustment and academic performance?
There is more for you as a teacher than stressful days, exhausting nights, and waiting for summer to finally enjoy some self-care activities. Improving your wellbeing and minimizing your stress starts with incorporating social emotional learning into your everyday life. This will not only benefit you, but it will benefit your students as well.
Four Ways to Friendzy Yourself
(Click HERE for full conversation with Jennifer Gonzalez and Angela Watson)
1/// Build in rest as the catalyst for productivity, not a break from it.
Too many people work until they drop, or they view rest and sleep as something to do after work is done. Angela advises us to view rest differently, as an essential tool for productivity. By looking at it this way, we will see it as a necessary part of our schedule, rather than a diversion from it.
“You are not a machine,” she says. “You can’t just program yourself to perform at optimal levels 24 hours a day. You have to have rest in there, and it doesn’t necessarily mean this hour-long nap in the afternoon. It could just be turning off the lights in your classroom for a few minutes after dismissal. Or for many people, they find themselves checking their phones all day long, checking social media, checking email. If you can substitute one or two of those checking times with just silence and stillness, that can make a huge difference in your energy levels and your ability to focus and concentrate.”
Quick Tips for finding a moment of rest in your day:
Turn the lights off in your classroom for a few minutes during a planning period or after dismissal.
Substitute a time when you usually check email or social media for a moment of silence and stillness.
2/// STREAMLINE YOUR SCHEDULE BY DOING FEWER THINGS, BETTER.
“Self-care can’t just be one more thing you add to your plate,” Angela says. “You have to eliminate things that are not the best and highest use of your time.” Instead of trying to fit in as many things as possible, she says, think about things you can let go of to create space for your higher priority of self-care.
“Productive people are always analyzing whether something is really necessary, and whether it’s really necessary right now. They’re always re-evaluating their priorities and shifting tasks around, because there’s just no way you’re ever going to have enough hours in the day to do everything that you want and you need to do.”
This is where saying no becomes vital, and one of the best ways to get better at it is to just do it once. “If you say no once,” Angela says, “you’ll find that people will stop asking you so many times. They realize, ‘Oh, okay, this is a person who really protects boundaries around our time, and doesn’t just say yes to be a people pleaser, and isn’t just going to bend over backwards any time I need anything,’ and they will stop asking you so much.”
Quick Start Self-Care:
Ask: What can I eliminate from my schedule that isn’t the best use of my time?
Practice saying “no” as an act of self-care and opportunity to develop healthy boundaries.
3/// PAIR A SELF-CARE HABIT WITH YOUR REGULAR ROUTINE SO IT BECOMES AUTOMATIC.
“This is a really powerful principle that is based heavily on neuroscience,” Angela explains, “this idea that you can pair a new habit with an existing habit to make it easier to lock that new habit into place. Look for something that you already do automatically, and integrate self-care into that.”
“So, when you get in the car in the morning, you put on your favorite song that uplifts and inspires you. Do the same thing, time after time, and it will create this almost Pavlovian kind of response, where as soon as you finish cleaning up dinner, you crave that nice hot bath, or as soon as the kids leave the classroom at the end of the day, you’re craving that 60 seconds of deep breathing to just clear your head and to energize yourself for the rest of the day’s tasks. You’re relying on the strength of an existing habit to make that new habit automatic, and it’s a lot easier than relying on willpower or trying to make a decision..should I do this, or should I not do it? When am I going to take care of myself, when will I have time for this today? You’ll follow through a lot more easily with your self-care goals if it’s part of a habit.”
Daily Routines that you can pair a self-care habit with:
During your daily commute put on a song that uplifts and inspires you.
Pair encouraging podcasts or audiobooks with your exercise routine.
Breathe deeply and intentionally for 60 seconds while you wait for your coffee to brew.
4/// FOCUS ON THE HABIT OF THE HABIT, SO YOU’LL VALUE RIGHT ACTIONS OVER RIGHT RESULTS.
New habits are really easy to skip because they’re not well-established, so it’s essential that you prioritize creating and sticking to a habit if you want your self-care to become a regular part of your life.
“Each time you go back to the old habit, you are strengthening neural pathways in the brain and muscle memory in the body that will make you want to default to that habit again in the future. So breaking the habit ‘just this once’ won’t hurt you in the sense that it will wreak havoc in that area of your life…it will wreak havoc on your HABITS. Assume that what you’re doing today is what you’ll do tomorrow, next week, next month, next year, and so on and so forth. This will make you hyper focused on the choices you’re making now in the moment, rather than assuming your future self will be more disciplined or will have more free time.”
Quick Tips for Forming Healthy Habits:
Give yourself a clear goal of at least 21 days of consecutively practicing a new habit.
Find ways to reward yourself along the way that keep you hyper focused, whether it's visually on a calendar or a promise of a treat after you complete your goal.
Don’t assume your future self will be more disciplined or have more time—start your healthy habit today!
For more teacher wellness ideas, view this one hour professional development session on Mental Wellness for Teachers with School Psychologist, Kristin O’Nesky, MS LEP, and Friendzy Co-founder, Julie Widman.
