I’m excited to be back this school year to re-establish long
held relationships with students, families, faculty and staff. I’m also excited that through my work as a
psychologist, I can assist families and students to access needed resources for
their emotional and academic learning.
With this excitement also comes stress, a great deal of it. In the education business, we all feel this
stress, and the most insidious kinds come from things that impact our lives
that are out of our direct control. In the
broad education world, we have the implementation of the common core,
standardized testing, politically based teacher evaluations, school improvement
plans, and other so-called “accountability” measures from the ed reform
movement. More locally, we see budget
cuts, limited staffing, special education legal requirements, locally based
school board controversies, and so forth.
On a personal note, it is special education deadlines, large caseloads,
and striking a balance between strong advocacy of a students and family’s needs
with increasingly limited resources available.
What all this boils down to is
stress. Now as a psychologist, I often
think, ok, my job is to help others manage stress; it may not be a good sign if
I’m not managing my own particularly well.
I do try to do so, with varying degrees of success, and this current
blog post is meant, in reality, to clarify in my mind what it is that I do to
alleviate this stress. If I can figure
that out, I’m much more likely to be able to help students and staff with
theirs.
My first stress tolerance technique is mindfulness. There
are a lot of stressors out there. Again,
they are not under our direct control.
We can, however, control our own reaction to our environment. A great way to direct my focus is the use of
mindfulness. This in short is
maintaining yourself in the present moment.
Focus on every aspect of what you are doing to bring you into sharp
focus. Many take this a step further and
practice meditation techniques to sharpen focus in a quiet setting. They focus on breathing, or on things that
are out of our usual present awareness, to bring them in. Mindfulness can also be a daily work
technique, some psychologists may refer to it as “flow.” Focusing on writing without multitasking, the
conversation in front of you without checking your phone, focusing on student
observation without having your mind drift to what needs to be done later. This focus in the present moment gives you
the pleasure of enjoying what you are doing with your full attention. Then other larger stressors stay off in the
background.
The second technique is a simple reminder, which I try to do
often, of why I’m in this business. --Focus on the students. Many stressors invariably come to impact our
daily work, and we have to address and deal with them to the best of our
ability. However, we need to keep our
eye on the ball of focusing on kids and families regardless of how these other
factors are playing out. This means focusing
on our day in and day out interactions with children and families, making sure
they are positive. It means making sure
that we are, in our daily efforts, in some
way contributing to students and families, whether it is through our teaching
and counseling interactions, or in my case, to get students needed
supports. I have lately been turning to Twitter for these reminders, as there is
daily support there, from my PLN, about keeping the focus on kids.
Finally, take some time to enjoy activities that you are
passionate about. This is certainly true
of focusing on our passions outside of the work setting (for me sports, art,
music, reading, comedy). What’s even
better is if you can bring those passions into your work setting, especially as
a teacher, AKA “Teach Like a Pirate”
– (Dave Burgess) style. Most professions
have a certain drudgery component to them, in my case, special education
paperwork, which is a necessary condition of doing business. However, on a day in and day out basis we
need to enjoy what we do in order to be successful. This means spending time cultivating what you
are good at, and the joys of your job.
Everyone has different stress tolerance techniques that are
their “go-to’s” to keep them sharp. Mindfulness, keeping the focus on the kids,
and cultivating my own interests and passions are the stress tolerance
techniques that keep me relatively sane.
I often need daily reminders of these techniques to reset my own scale,
to make sure I’m on the right path.
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