5 Self-Care Ideas for Teachers in 2021
Self care has been a big buzz word for a while. I used to hear the term ‘self-care’ and internally roll my eyes. I interpreted self-care as the kind of thing that childless people who didn’t work multiple jobs had time for. It sounded self-indulgent, and even a little selfish.
But let me tell you what I learned in a year of being locked in a house with a fellow teacher and two preschoolers: self-care is essential. And, it doesn’t actually include any of the fluffy, indulgent activities I used to think it did.
Self-Care vs. Self-Comfort
When you see people post pictures of their new manicures, or the shoes they just bought, and they label it with a caption like, ‘self care is so important, y’all!’, what they actually are practicing in that moment is self-comfort. Self-comfort includes the things that you do that make you feel better in a moment, but they don’t actually replenish your needs.
Self-care includes the things you do that actually fulfills the needs of your mind, body, and soul. Hydration, exercise, alone time, self-improvement activities, time with friends, etc. Now, a self-comfort activity could also include a piece of self-care. That time you take away from your busy household and demanding inbox to get a manicure may be exactly the mental break you need from the noise. But, the manicure itself is not what just replenished your spirit. It was the time you had to yourself with your own thoughts. Pretty nails make you feel good, but they are fleeting. The alone time you just got is what will actually carry you through to the next day.
Teacher Self-Care
The biggest problem that teachers run into (in my experience as a classroom teacher), is running so hard, for so long on empty, that you totally burn out. We tell ourselves this lie that there’s no space for self-care, because our to-do lists are too long, and the days are too short.
Let’s just dispel this myth real quick. You have time for self-care, because it should be a constant. Simple acts like making yourself a balanced lunch, or pausing a lesson to send a kid to re-fill your water bottle so you don’t get dehydrated are all things that need to be done so you don’t completely run out of steam. You don’t need to black out hours a day for ‘self-care time’. In fact, if you wait until after the day is over to plan some self-care as a reward, you’ll never get to it. Your list will never be done, and you will run yourself ragged.
Today, I have 5 simple things you can do in 2021 to take better care of yourself. These are merely suggestions, of course. Something on this list may not speak to you, so feel free to sub it out for something else!
Self-Care Ideas
Set sleep goals. I did some quick research for y’all (and for myself), because none of us are getting enough sleep. Here’s a short list of benefits of a good night’s sleep:
A strong immune system
Easier to maintain a healthy weight
Lowers risk of serious health complications
Reduces stress
Better mood, and clearer mind
I meannnn…could there BE a more compelling list? (I hope you read that in a Chandler Bing voice, because that was my intent.) Set yourself some sleep goals in 2021. You can do this on your phone, or in several sleep apps. Decide how much sleep you want to get in a night, and how much time you need to settle down and fall asleep. Get in bed with enough time unwind, quiet your mind, and fall asleep so you will meet your sleep goal before your alarm goes off the next morning. I think a year of quarantines and remote teaching has made this easier than ever, but so many of us waste time in front of screens for hours after we should have just gone to bed.
Take that sick day, even if you’re healthy. This is a secret confession that you can’t tell any of my former principals, ok? I scheduled mental health days for myself.
Ok. I guess that’s not crazy revolutionary or anything. Plenty of people do that. But we feel this huge stigma around taking a sick day if you’re not sick, or a personal day if you don’t have some major event happening. Do it, friend. Look at the craziest weeks of your year: conferences, ends of grading periods, data team meeting week, etc, and book a mental health day for one or two days after it’s over. You will feel better during the crazy week of stress if you know you have a day coming up to just BE.
Sick days often feel like more work than just pushing through and going to work dog-tired. So, I made these sub plan packs, and these prep-ahead emergency sub plan templates. If you know the day is coming, go ahead and make some copies so you don’t have to stress about taking a day off. That defeats the purpose, after all!
Find a hobby. What helps you take your teacher hat off at the end of the day, and let’s you get back in touch with who you are? My first few years of teaching, I worked late into the night, and then all weekend. Every. Single. Weekend. When Monday would roll back around, I was miserable, and an extremely unpleasant teacher for my kids.
Taking some time to not be a teacher at all can work wonders. If you find it hard to separate yourself from school work, fill that time with something you really enjoy. Take up hand-lettering, join or start a book club (or just become an obsessive reader like I did this past year), find an online yoga challenge you can join. Challenge yourself to cook or bake your way through an entire cookbook in batches over each weekend. If teaching is your biggest passion, that’s fantastic. But I’m here to tell you that a single-passionate life is one that can lead to collapse.
Create daily & weekly rhythms. Y’all. I have a lot to say about this. In fact, I did say a lot about this in this post here. Daily rhythms are sooooo important for mental health (in my experience). Have a rhythm for when things will get graded, when you will empty your dishwasher, when you will communicate with parents, when you check and respond to emails, etc. This is the difference between ending a week feeling like nothing got done, and ending a week with absolutely everything crossed off your list. This blog post talks all about my own classroom rhythms.
Preserve your personal time. So, if you applied all of the above tips, you will automatically preserve more of your time for yourself. But, the added piece is that you create boundaries around your personal time. Set the one day a week you’ll come in early or stay late. Or the one night you’ll allow yourself to bring things home. Be disciplined about it.
if you’re saying to yourself, “These ideas are great, but I’m spinning my wheels to get things done each week’, I’m going to say something hard to you: you are doing too much.
One of my biggest talking points here on this blog, and just in my life with fellow teachers, is the danger of working harder and not smarter. It is actually dangerous to your career. Few people can thrive on 30+ years of feeling like they never have a handle on their career. Teaching makes it extremely difficult for us to feel settled and comfortable from one year to the next, so it’s critical that you control what you can in your own room. In this post, I have a list of 6 ways for you to work smarter and not harder. Maybe that list will have some ideas on how you can log fewer hours, but be as effective as your students need you to be!
