The Paradox of Self-Management
Self-Management is the ability to regulate one’s emotions, thoughts, and behaviors effectively in different situations. This includes managing stress, delaying gratification, motivating one’s self and setting and working toward academic and personal goals.
- Core Districts, 2017, Coredistricts.org
The field of Education looks at Self-Management as a core competency of Social Emotional Learning (SEL) and a skill that can be taught to students in order to improve their academic and long-term outcomes. TeachWell looks at Self-Management through the lens of the educator. We ask educators to consider how time management, stress management, and behavior management impact one’s teaching practice and long-term goals. We recognize that in any given day a teacher may find a half hour, maybe an hour, to teach a SEL lesson on Self-Management, but within that very same day there are innumerable opportunities to model the skill, deepening the learning for the student. However invaluable these teachable moments are, we must acknowledge the impact on the educator. Children rely on the guidance of adults to self-manage, but for a teacher self-reliance is critical. Self-reliance, however, within a system that consistently challenges self-management. Where and when does an educator have true agency within a system where time is scarce, stress is high, and there is little time for personal reflection? The external demands of teaching/instilling self-management on their students depletes a teacher’s personal self-management resources.
Compassionate people ask for what they need. They say no when they need to, and when they say yes, they mean it. They’re compassionate because their boundaries keep them out of resentment. - Brene Brown
This quote by Brene Brown is provocative among educators. Compassion and boundaries are seemingly in conflict. Boundaries are difficult to maintain in such a relational institution – saying “no” does not feel like an option. We must accept the complexity of this tension. Many of the stressors and time constraints on educators are outside of their control. And so what are they left with? For educators, this gets to the core of Self-Management, discovering and accepting where one has control and working within that sphere of control to build resilience. We can begin with a practice of mindfulness.
Think of mindfulness as simply paying attention, without judgement. Mindfulness allows one to more deeply understand and control external triggers and more easily access internal agency to respond. Building a mindful practice helps one drop into an experience, recognize what is triggering, acknowledge the physical or emotional manifestation, name the emotion, and respond intentionally. Any educator can tell you that this takes practice. With so many demands, needs, conflicts, and emotions pouring out around them, managing oneself in the moment is challenging. It requires regular mindfulness practice outside of the stimulus of a classroom. And then, with practice, the mind can more easily access that state of calm consideration when immersed in the demands in the classroom. With a mindfulness practice a classroom teacher can reach a calm and centered place within just a few breaths or recognize the need to carve out more time/space to respond. They can establish a boundary that mitigates the urgency of an external demand, create a timeframe that generates more spaciousness, and offer a response that is compassionate to the real needs of those around them. This five minute guided meditation by Tara Brach may resonate.
Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom. - Viktor E. Frankl
I deeply believe that mindfulness and peer support can mitigate some of the stressors experienced by teachers. I believe that teachers can realize their internal resilience and thrive in their teaching practice – I witness it in every school I visit! But, I would be remiss to end this blog without recognizing the real institutional change that is needed in our education systems. My concern is that currently so much of the onus rests on the individual teacher. We will only move the needle on teacher wellness when we begin to address the institutional frameworks that lead to burnout, compassion fatigue, and secondary trauma. Schools will thrive when teachers have time for reflection; when self-care is valued and permitted for with time; when the culture of urgency shifts to a measured pace; and when educators experience an internal sense of value that is reflected in the external systems around them.