Looking Back. Moving Forward.
“Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better.”
–Maya Angelou
The end of the year brings reflection and forward thinking. At TeachWell we are tracking right along with you. We value your feedback and choose to evaluate our programs every year to ensure that we offer you the most effective and appropriate support to meet your needs. Here are a few of our key learnings and a peek into our offerings for next year.
Tier-one work is challenging and important. When groups are compulsory, we strive to meet the diverse needs of staff.
We will continue to offer our tier-one, all-staff learning opportunities to build a common language and connections among staff. We will work with our beginning-of-the-year assessments to identify which TeachWell practices are the most meaningful for you and your staff: peer learning and support, mindfulness and movement, or adult SEL strategies for wellbeing. We will continue to identify the areas of resilience and strength already existing in staff culture and will elevate those throughout our time with you.
Focusing on personal needs and well-being is a paradigm shift for educators who focus so much of their care and energy on students. We strive to maintain our focus on your well-being and make explicit the connection to your work with students.
We understand the challenge for educators to shift their focus to personal well-being. And we are committed to bringing this more and more to light. Research has shown, and TeachWell stories confirm, that a focus on personal well-being and social-emotional literacy for adults, positively impacts students.
Regulated educators help regulate a student’s nervous system so students can access higher learning.
Organized educators bring clarity and predictability to learning and procedures giving students the agency to succeed.
Educators with self and social awareness create inclusive spaces of belonging where students feel safe and can learn.
Educators who can model conflict management and cultivate authentic, connected relationships create communities of care.
We will allow time in our sessions for educators to dig into personal wisdom and insight, and to set goals for integrating wellbeing and TeachWell frameworks into their professional practice.
Wellness is nuanced and specific to an individual's values, culture, worldview, needs, and sources of resilience. We strive to tailor our offerings so that they are responsive to a diverse range of educators.
Agency and choice are key factors in well-being and resilience. In the fall we will offer various options for educators to access directly. We will continue our one-on-one coaching support for individuals. And we are bringing back our online peer support and learning groups. Groups will reflect a variety of educator demographics such as a group for male educators, a group for educators who are parents, a group for new educators, and a group for veteran educators.
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As the school year wraps up, we encourage all educators to pause and reflect. We so rarely have the opportunity or time to reflect. It is a powerful tool for our sense of efficacy, our feelings of resilience, our capacity for self-compassion, and our ability to maintain an optimistic, hopeful perspective on our work with students and families. We are inspired by Dr. Shawn Ginwright’s book, The Four Pivots (make note - it is a great summer read!). In his book, Dr. Ginwright talks about Hindsight, Insight, and Foresight and the power to leverage them in creating a vision for our future that learns from the past but is not tightly bound to it. The following questions are based on some of his work. As you move into your much-earned summer months, we support you in exploring these questions.
What am I proud of?
What brought me joy?
What are two unique attributes (qualities) I bring to my work as an educator? How have those attributes shown this school year? How have these attributes impacted my students?
Knowing what I know now, what might I do differently?
What have I learned about myself this year? How will this year help me in the future?
What have I learned this school year that can offer a valuable lesson for my school community?
What do I want next school year to look like? Envision details - what am I doing; what am I no longer doing? What do I need to change to make this happen? What support do I need?
As in all of our practices, put self-compassion first. As educators, we often put others’ needs before our own. We can feel we are not enough because we work in an environment with so many needs and in a system that often fails to meet those needs. We encourage you to practice self-compassion. This self-compassion meditation is our offering in recognition of all your efforts this school year. Go easy this summer, beautiful people, and BE WELL!