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Free tools for resilient classrooms

30 Days of Mindfulness in the Classroom

Bring mindfulness to your classrooms with ease. From breathing exercises to meditations to relaxation activities, each day is a new mindful exploration complete with a lesson plan.

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Self Care Guide for Teachers

At the heart of a mindful classroom is a healthy and happy teacher. When you're thriving you naturally have more energy, creativity, and empathy to offer your students. It's a win-win!

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Curated Content

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Day 1 - Finding Calm

Thank you, teachers. We see you.

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Free tools for resilient classrooms Bring mindfulness to your classrooms with ease. From breathing exercises to meditations to relaxation activities, each day is a new mindful exploration complete with a lesson plan. Download At the heart of a mindful classroom is a healthy and happy teacher.

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Put the phone down/away. Perhaps a blocked schedule to not pick it up during certain times.

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Put the phone down/away. Perhaps a blocked schedule to not pick it up during certain times.

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For those of us who insist on seeing the glass half full, even when the miserable brigade point out that it's also half empty, COVID-19 poses particular challenges.

In regular times, our relentless optimism wins us friends and provides us with a host of benefits including higher levels of wellbeing, increased resilience and better health. Normally, the only downsides relate to minor setbacks when things don't turn out the way we would like and the mild irritation of grumpy colleagues when we're chirpy at work.

Now, things are very different. During a pandemic, we need to act as though it's likely we will get COVID-19 in order to keep ourselves safe and avoid spreading the disease to others. So what is an optimist to do?

Looking on the bright side

My definition of optimism is "the belief that things will go well in the absence of sufficient evidence to support this view".

As a fervent optimist, I have experienced the benefits (and minor pitfalls) for myself. I am more likely to assume that it will be sunny on the day I am planning a barbecue, which means that we have some amazing meals in the garden, but I have no plan B prepared in case it rains. I'm more likely to set off on long distances on my motorcycle, which means some wonderfully adventurous rides to beautiful places, but I will be in trouble if I ever break down or have a flat tire because I won't have planned for it.

Whether we are generally optimistic or pessimistic can have a significant effect on our wellbeing. It seems logical that focusing on what is working can lead to more positive emotions and increased satisfaction with life, and this is supported by research.

MRacheron/Shutterstock

The dark side of optimism

In a pandemic, optimism has a dark side. In situations where danger is present, excessive optimism (sometimes called irrational or unrealistic optimism) can have severe negative consequences. What is normally a strength of optimists (risk taking) becomes a dangerous weakness.

Because we believe that things will work out well even where there is little evidence to support this perspective, we tend to minimise risks, underestimate costs and ignore warning signs. We might misjudge our vulnerability to COVID-19, believing without justification that we are less likely to catch it.

We also might be less cautious when walking into crowded spaces and less motivated to obey restrictions. Even when we catch the virus, we're more likely to believe that it is "just a cold" and so more likely to continue going about our daily routines. By doing this we are putting ourselves and others at risk. And the consequences can be deadly.

What can we do to moderate our optimism?

Optimists need to rein themselves in a bit during this crisis. But how? A good way to check if we are being excessively optimistic is to ask ourselves: what evidence do I have to support my prediction? If there isn't any basis for our assumption that, for example, we won't get coronavirus by entering a closed, crowded space for a long time, we should think about changing our behaviour.

Cozine/Shutterstock

Another strategy is to compare our predictions to what experts, specialists and commentators are saying. According to the theory of " optimistic explanatory style ", an optimistic response arises when a person believes that a negative event is external (caused by someone or something else), that it is unstable (not likely to persist over time), and that it is local (only relates to a particular situation). So it would be helpful for us to challenge our thinking. To what extent are the current restrictions about me versus other people? How long is the pandemic likely to be with us? To what extent is COVID-19 a local issue?

As optimists, our natural inclination is not to spend too much time on questions like this. But if we want to moderate our optimism, we must set aside time to think about these things and discuss our ideas with others.

How to govern for optimists

In ambiguous situations, optimists tend to gravitate towards the most positive interpretation of the rules. In situations where confusion reigns due to constantly changing regulations, we will come to our own conclusions. When rules come with exceptions, we will assume that these exceptions apply to us.

UK guidelines on social distancing, for example, say we should stay two metres apart unless we have a face covering "or other precautions" in place, in which case the distance is reduced to one metre. To an optimist, that means that we should stay one metre apart, not the full two. For the messaging to be most useful for optimists, it should be clear and unambiguous. "Stay two metres apart" is better for optimists than giving a range.

Dominic Lipinski/PA

If tight restrictions are eased, as they were over summer in many places, optimists start believing the risk has subsided and the crisis will soon be over. But as we have seen subsequently, that initial optimism has led a second wave, with many local regions and entire countries heading back into various forms of lockdown. Rather than continually changing the guidelines, sending mixed messages about the level of risk and imposing different rules in different regions, governments should put out explicit and unambiguous regulations that are consistently applied if they want to influence the behaviour of optimists.

Optimal optimism

For optimists, the question now is how we can benefit from our tendency towards seeing the upside of life while minimising any risk to ourselves or others. It is important to retain our generalised optimism that we will be able to overcome this challenging time and remain positive as we do so.

At the same time, we should intentionally seek other perspectives and talk to others about our automatic responses to the pandemic. We must dedicate time to weighing up the risks and consequences of our behaviour without being drawn into extended rumination or falling into pessimism.

If we can do this, I am cautiously optimistic that we can protect ourselves and others while bringing positivity and hope to our societies.

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Why optimism can be dangerous during a pandemic

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For those of us who insist on seeing the glass half full, even when the miserable brigade point out that it's also half empty, COVID-19 poses particular challenges. In regular times, our relentless optimism wins us friends and provides us with a host of benefits including higher levels of wellbeing, increased resilience and better health.

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Careful with toxic positivity, sometimes things are bad and there is nothing to it.

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Careful with toxic positivity, sometimes things are bad and there is nothing to it.

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get an "Accountability" partner to help change habits.

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get an "Accountability" partner to help change habits.

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15 Smart Ways to Fight Teacher Burnout That Really Work

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These are the things that veteran teachers say keep them going.

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Burnout. It's something most teachers will face at some point in their careers. While this job is one of the most rewarding out there, it's also one of the most demanding. If you are going to find fulfillment in your career as a teacher, you are going to need to know how to identify and avoid, teacher burnout. Here are some warning signs that may indicate you're on the path to a burnout problem.

Feeling irritable and quick to anger
Most teachers have a naturally friendly personality. You have to if you are going to do well interacting with parents and students day in and day out. When you start to notice your mood slipping, feeling irritable and angry instead of happy and excited, it may indicate you're starting to get burned out.

Typically, this happens because the demands of the job leave little time for self-care. When you aren't getting enough sleep or eating healthy, you are going to suffer low moods and emotions. This leads to a quick temper and an overall feeling of irritability.

No desire to attend social gatherings
Teachers who are burnt out will not want to go to social gatherings. They stay in their classrooms on their lunch breaks rather than enjoying lunch with their colleagues. Outside of school, they turn down invitations when social events take place. The cut themselves off from the rest of the world as they try to manage all that is on their plates. They may even end up taking mental health days during the year to regroup and prepare to return to the classroom. If you notice yourself pulling away from social functions, you may be nearing the burnout stage.

Increased complaints
Burnout often leads to complaints. If you are noticing that the few conversations you have with your fellow teachers are all about complaints, then you may need to take a closer look at your emotional health. While teachers often have legitimate complaints, an overall complaining attitude, with the feeling that nothing can fix the problem, can be due to something a little deeper.

Chronic fatigue or exhaustion
Low energy levels that hit on an emotional level can be attributed to teacher burnout. Sure, all teachers go through periods, like the close of the quarter or the start of parent/teacher conferences, when they have a heavier than normal load and are tired, but if the fatigue and exhaustion have become chronic, leading to a dread of getting up and going to work the next day, then it could be due to burnout.

Chronic insomnia
On the other hand, some teachers will experience insomnia when they enter the burnout stage. If you're finding that you simply cannot sleep at night, or stay asleep, for more than a couple of nights per week, then you may have insomnia because of burnout. Sometimes insomnia and the chronic fatigue seem to be linked. You find yourself fully and completely exhausted long before the end of the day, but when the time comes to actually sleep, you can't. Insomnia, especially when coupled with fatigue, is a sure sign of burnout.

Change in appetite
Teachers who are burnt out may stop eating, or they may find themselves eating more or less healthy options than they normally do. Changes in appetite and eating are often attributed to stress, and burnout is one of the highest levels of stress there is.

Physical symptoms
Physical symptoms, like a headache, stomachache, heart palpitation, chest pain, dizziness or shortness of breath, occur when stress is overwhelming. Someone who has a sudden onslaught of these symptoms is likely experiencing teacher burnout or at least nearing the point of burnout.

Brain fog
Are you finding that it's difficult to pay attention to things that are normally important to you? Are your papers that need to be graded piling up, yet you simply can't seem to focus to get them done? Are you becoming increasingly forgetful? These types of mental symptoms and brain fog concerns are a sure sign of teacher burnout.

The solution to burnout
If you feel that you are facing teacher burnout, or you notice some of these symptoms in one of your co-teachers, it's time to take action. Building up resilience in yourself and the other teachers in your school will help you get through these challenging periods. If you are struggling, Learners Edge offers a free webinar that will help you learn self-awareness, self-care, support measures, fluff-eradication, efficient planning and effective community building. In the webinar entitled "Fireproof: Building Educator Resilience to Decrease Teacher Burnout," Keely Swartzer, director of professional development, will share her personal insights and proven strategies to help teachers build this type of resilience. Access the webinar now, and learn what you can do to prevent burnout for yourself or your staff, or cure it if you're already there.

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Burnout. It's something most teachers will face at some point in their careers. While this job is one of the most rewarding out there, it's also one of the most demanding. If you are going to find fulfillment in your career as a teacher, you are going to need to know how to identify and avoid, teacher burnout.

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forgiving yourself / not feeling guilty when you dont get through your "tasks"

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forgiving yourself / not feeling guilty when you dont get through your "tasks"

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Intentionally choosing relaxation/time for yourself instead of doing something you feel you "should" do.

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Don't take more than what you can handle.

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Stop trying to do the same that before, instead, see what options/advantages this new reality provides

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Stop trying to do the same that before, instead, see what options/advantages this new reality provides

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Be sure to change my expectations of your work.  The "preCOVID" standard for many is simply impossible.  It is not "lowering" standards, but rather, recalibrating what it means to be an "awesome teacher" 

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Be sure to change my expectations of your work.  The "preCOVID" standard for many is simply impossible.  It is not "lowering" standards, but rather, recalibrating what it means to be an "awesome teacher" 

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try to limit drinking during the week, an instead, try to employ other strategies

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try to limit drinking during the week, an instead, try to employ other strategies

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have time dedicated for complaining and worrying.  Set a timer for 20 min and sit with a trusted friend and get it all out...and then leave it there

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have time dedicated for complaining and worrying.  Set a timer for 20 min and sit with a trusted friend and get it all out...and then leave it there

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Being compassionate with myself, and 'measure' my own 'success' through that compassionate lens.

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Being compassionate with myself, and 'measure' my own 'success' through that compassionate lens.

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Doing what I know I can do right. Not trying many new things in classes.

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Doing what I know I can do right. Not trying many new things in classes.

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Taking daily "quiet time" in any way, but certainly without technology... a book, a bath, meditation, a walk -no phone.

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Taking daily "quiet time" in any way, but certainly without technology... a book, a bath, meditation, a walk -no phone.

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Being able to walk away from work.

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Use a routine that includes "me time" self care time. I am at my best when I wake up early to make this happen.

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Having a support community, both within and outside of school. 

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Having a support community, both within and outside of school. 

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Make a Mindfulness part of your life/  Routine

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Make a Mindfulness part of your life/  Routine

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Lower my own expectations and make time to rest and be happy.

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Lower my own expectations and make time to rest and be happy.