Teacher self-care is often overlooked, but it shouldn’t be. Teaching is undoubtedly one of the most difficult professions. From designing effective lesson plans and engaging the entire classroom to forging meaningful relationships with students and staying up to date with professional development, life as a teacher is exhausting.

And with the recent push toward remote learning, the distinction between work and home has collapsed, making teaching an even more challenging and exhausting profession. Developing a proper self-care routine, then, is extremely important for teachers navigating the complexities of the education world today.

Below, we’ve compiled a teacher self-care kit filled with self-care tips for working from home, self-care ideas for teachers, scholarly articles on teacher self-care, and more! We live in a complex time, so it is imperative that we remain.

Why Teacher Self-Care Matters: 5 Big Reasons

1. As the cliche goes: you must care for yourself before you can care for others

Sure, this phrase has been used so many times that it’s probably lost its potency. But a cliche is a cliche for a reason, and in order to cultivate an external garden, one must first cultivate the garden of self. An effective classroom stems from an effective educator, and if that educator is neglecting self-care then their classroom is likely following suit.

Managing hundreds of students is a near-impossible task, and if you begin to neglect your mental and physical health then you’ll soon notice that deterioration in your professional life.

Just taking the first steps and recognizing that all of us are “under construction,” as actor Jonah Hill once put it on the Ellen Show, can do wonders for your psyche and physical health, and it can set you in the right direction toward achieving your best self.

2. Self-care allows for greater productivity

Adequate rest, exercise, and other modes of self-care allow you to pause, recollect, and recharge, which, in turn, strengthens your own productivity. Teaching is such a chaotic, always-on profession that it can sometimes lead to burn-out. Indeed, teacher burn-out statistics are disheartening, with 40-50% of teachers leaving the profession within the first five years.

Self-care can help you avoid hitting that impasse because it forces you to inhabit a space other than one related to work. Through moments of rest, activity, reflection, and rejuvenation, self-care ultimately functions to make you more productive in your professional life.

3. Maintaining a regular self-care routine can help reduce bad habits

Planning and sticking to a self-care routine forces you to focus on positive behaviors and repeatedly engage in activities that promote a healthy rather than detrimental lifestyle. Creating a self-care calendar or using a self-care app like Aloe Bud, for instance will help you defeat bad habits and create a routine of good health.

When self-care and positive health becomes daily routine, it becomes easier to ward off and defeat habits you’d much rather live without. The ultimate goal is to make self-care an automatic reflex.

4. Self-care can help you recognize and achieve your goals

Once self-care is integrated into your daily routine, you will notice newfound senses of clarity and confidence. By strengthening your physical and mental health, your goals become more discernible and more accessible.

For instance, self-care activities like maintaining reflection journals, going for long walks, using a meditation app like Headspace or even taking relaxing baths can reward you with time and space to think, and within that meditative space it becomes easier to recognize your goals and begin thinking of ways to achieve them.

Once you do recognize your goals, write them down in a journal and begin working to achieve them.

5. Self-care can actually take you outside of yourself

Though self-care is often discussed as a method to strengthen your own health and develop your own positive habits, it can also force you to recognize that not everything is on you, that many of the world’s ills and many of the difficulties surrounding teaching lie outside of your own control.

By properly managing your own healthy habits, you can finally locate time and meditative space that places the spotlight outside of yourself. Ironically, the more you better yourself through self-care, the more you can begin to turn attention toward others and recognize that not everything falls on you.

 

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Physical Teacher Self-Care from Home: How to Stay Fit

1. Go for a socially-distanced jog

Jogging is a tried-and-tested, all-time classic stalwart in the physical self-care department, and for good reason. It has been scientifically proven that jogging can help weight loss, develop muscles, improve bone strength, and keep your mind healthy. If you haven’t run in ages, however, and generally despise jogging, we’re here to help: first buy a pair of good running sneakers (Nike and Hoka are always solid options). Then download a fitness tracker like RunKeeper to manage and record your jogging activity, so as to develop your running into a habit.

If you haven’t jogged in a while, or you’re typically not a hardcore runner, start your run with a 15-20 minute walk, and build up to a steady jog. This will help you get back in the swing of running, and make exercise more accessible.

Start slow and at smaller distances like 2-4 miles before working your way up to a consistent 5-6 miles per run. Locate an uncrowded park or a less-populated neighborhood to run in to preserve social-distancing measures. Jogging can feel quite liberating, and once you develop a routine, it can do wonders for your physical and mental health.

2. Do yoga from the comfort of your own home

Another self-care classic, yoga has been proven to improve sleep, help with weight loss, promote muscle and bone health, and strengthen cardio.

One of the best aspects about yoga is that it can be done from your own home thanks to an increasingly large plethora of at-home YouTube yoga instructors and online classes. Yoga with Adriene and MadFit are two good places to start. If you’re totally new to yoga, consult this NYT guide, which covers a variety of common poses and modifications. Yoga always provides a convenient yet challenging workout.

3. Start an at-home full-body workout routine

You don’t necessarily need a gym membership to maintain a daily routine of full-body workouts. Just like the yoga world, the at-home workout world has taken off in the last few years, with a variety of YouTube channels and online instructors producing daily videos and virtual workouts.

Pamela Reif offers some great full body workouts and the SELF channel contains tons of exercise videos with a particular emphasis on at-home cardio. Darebee, an at-your-own pace training system, also offers plenty of full-body workouts, and it would be a great way to get started on developing an exercise routine. Full-body at-home workouts can be great for those looking for a more intense fitness routine.

4. Become a cycle master using at-home spin classes

Of course, in order to partake in these workouts, you need a spin bike. But if you’ve already got one or if you decide to buy one, you’re on-track to become seriously fit because spin classes are no joke.

One of the best workouts for strengthening cardio and burning calories, spin classes typically include an instructor who leads you through challenging stationary bike workouts, informing you when to adjust speed, resistance, posture, and more. StudioSWEAT is probably your go-to YouTube channel for at-home spin classes.

5. Dance your way into good health with an at-home dance-fitness routine

Dancing is a convenient and downright fun way to burn calories, increase your muscular strength, lose weight, and more. And since dancing provides a full-body workout, you can use it as your primary mode of fitness.

Like many of the other listed modes of fitness, dancing has also blown up online in recent years with PopSugar Fitness and MadFit leading the way.

6. Go for a hike (or a long walk if you’re in a mostly urban area)

Hiking is a fun yet challenging way to burn calories, strengthen muscles, and develop your cardio. And it’s a great way to get outside of your home and commune with nature or explore a new environment.

If you live in a heavy urban area, either find a nearby park and take a long walk or simply step outside and walk around your neighborhood. Whether you’re hiking nearby woods or simply hiking your neighborhood, you’re engaging in a mode of fitness.

7. Develop an at-home barre routine

An increasingly popular workout, barre uses a variety of postures inspired by ballet, pilates, yoga, and dance to focus on strength training, cardio, and muscle development.

Most classes require a barre—similar to a ballet barre—or some sort of prop that can be used to balance while exercising. Like a suped-up yoga, barre is a convenient yet challenging way to exercise. YouTube channels like NourishMoveLove and Coach Kel offer tons of at home workout videos.

 

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Social Teacher Self-Care from Home: How to Stay Connected 

1. Create a weekly Zoom or Facetime schedule with your friends, family, or colleagues

Now that the divisions between home and work have become even more blurry, it can be difficult to maintain a regular social life as part of your teacher self-care routine. One way to combat this is to create a virtual meetup schedule with either your friends, family, or colleagues. Reach out to them and ask what day might work best for a mass digital gathering or digital happy hour and try and stick to that schedule.

Create and share the event using Google Calendar to make the whole thing more official, too. Gathering with others (even if it’s through a digital unreality) can work wonders for your mental health.

2. Play online games with friends

Online games are not just for kids. Studies have proven that online games can actually help adults mitigate stress, increase social skills, and promote your overall well-being. 

While there’s literally an online vault of games to choose from, we recommend classics like Words With Friends or Codenames. We also can vouch for Board Games Online, Chess, Monopoly, and Risk. 

Or, you can always fire up a Zoom or FaceTime conference call and play trivia or another traditional game with all of your friends in real time. Games are a great and fun way to stay connected.

3. Start a groupchat with your friends, family, or colleagues

This one may seem like a no-brainer, but, hey, we live during a strange time, so it’s easy to forget about things that may seem obvious on the surface. Probably the most convenient and direct way to stay connected from home is simply starting a groupchat with your social circle. 

You can maintain a groupchat via basic text messaging, but we recommend you download either WhatsApp or GroupMe because a text message-based groupchat can get pretty hectic with a barrage of notifications, and it helps those who may not be on the same operating system as you (Android vs. iOS).

4. Celebrate happy occasions like job promotions, birthdays, engagements, etc. with a mass video call

Be sure to celebrate your friends’ and family members’ achievements, birthdays, and other happy occasions by linking up on a video call using Zoom, Skype, or FaceTime. This will demonstrate that you still care, and are still willing and excited to be in your friends’ and family’s lives.

If you’re typically shy or not the first person to reach out, this is a great opportunity to have a reason to make contact. And it’s typically just a ton of fun and mentally healthy seeing everyone in a celebratory mood.

5. Stay in touch with your friends using walkie talkie apps like HeyTell.

While it’s easy to make a phone call or shoot a text off to your friends, both methods of communication feelvery commonplace, somewhat unexciting. And sometimes innovation can be found when we look toward the past, when we seek the new in the old. This is where walkie talkie apps like HeyTell and TwoWay come in.

These apps combine your telephone microphone and a walkie talkie-style interface into a truly memorable and fun communication app. Perfect for anyone looking for immediate yet short lines of communication, or anyone looking to just have fun.

 

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Mental Health Self-Care for Teachers Working from Home: 7 Suggestions

1. Get an adequate amount of sleep

According to Sleep Foundation, we spend about one-third of our lives asleep, so it is imperative that we maintain what they call “sleep health.” While sleep needs vary across ages, it’s highly recommended that most adults aged 26-64 need at least 7-9 hours of sleep per day to get adequate rest. Most of us consider sleep important, obviously, but sometimes we forget to make it a priority when it absolutely should be your number-one self-care concern.

Getting a proper amount of sleep has been proven to increase focus and productivity, and decrease the risk of stroke, heart disease, and more. If you struggle with getting a good night’s rest, we recommend you download a sleeptracker like Sleep Cycle to monitor and adjust your rest.

2. Carve out time to meditate everyday

Meditation, the habitual process of training your mind to focus and redirect your thoughts, is quickly becoming a fixture in the self-care world, and for good reason. It has been scientifically proven to reduce stress, control anxiety, enhance self-awareness, promote good health, and much, much more.

One study in particular saw nearly 1,300 adults reduce stress levels via meditation. Apps like Headspace and Calm are good places to start because they walk you through individual meditation sessions at varied paces. They work great, and can be good primers to get invested in the wide and rewarding world of meditation. We highly recommend giving meditation a try if you’ve never attempted to do so before when creating your teacher self-care routine.

3. Read fiction or poetry

While reading one of the many self-help books on the market is still a great idea, and one that can obviously have positive impacts on your mental health, reading fiction or poetry can have equally effective if not better effects on your mental well-being. Fiction and poetry can force you outside of yourself and make you inhabit the space of an other.

Getting involved in a fictional character’s life or spending a week within a fictional psychology can place you outside of your own sense of self, and thus, make you recognize things about yourself that you might not see when directly looking inward. Browse Penguin for a list of classics or check out the NYT Book Review for more contemporary work.

4. Plan healthy meals

This tip really applies to all categories in this article, but we chose to place it here because diet is not as often discussed in the context of mental health. Maintaining a proper diet, though, is essential to not only maintaining physical vitality but keeping a positive headspace.

A recent study revealed links between poor diets and worsened mood disorders such as anxiety and depression, and it also found links between healthful diets and improved mood. It’s safe to say that maintaining a healthy diet will work wonders on your mental health. Make a weekly meal plan with a calendar or consult one of the many dieting apps such as Noom or Calorific to start eating healthy.

5. Get organized

Piles of dirty clothes. Unwashed plates. Cluttered bathrooms. Just the phrases themselves give us anxiety. There’s nothing like mess and disorder to spike your stress levels, so it’s important that you keep your house or apartment clean and organized if you want to maintain a positive mental health.

Disorder and messy living spaces can increase anxiety and force your brain to lose focus by allocating attention toward the disorder and mess rather than the matter at hand. So when the mess begins to infiltrate your professional or personal life, it’s probably time to start cleaning up.

6. Make or follow a playlist of ambient music

While this might sound silly and too new age-y on the surface, ambient music can seriously clear your head and help you refocus your thoughts and enhance self-awareness. There are even certain ambient producers who make music to deliberately quell your anxieties and free your mind. Brian Eno, for instance, crafted Ambient 1: Music for Airports, an entire album of soothing tones and ambient bliss, to help people with flight anxiety mitigate their fears.

Moreover, German electronic group Oval revised and adjusted the sounds of broken CDs skipping into a tranquil blend of loops and sequences on 94 Diskont, a stunningly beautiful work of ambient electronica which one YouTube commenter likens to the sounds of “a pond ecosystem.” Try out Spotify’s comprehensive playlist for starters.

7. Make a goal to do something new everyday

While WFH life can be stultifying, stagnant, and particularly difficult to locate moments where you can step outside of your comfort zone, it is possible to do new things daily. Doing something new or outside of your daily routine can energize you and provide new doses of confidence. By the way, check out our free teaching strategy discovery tool.

Make a journal or a daily log of new things you plan to do. These things can be small like simply sending a text to a friend you haven’t spoken with in ages, or big like making your significant other a stellar dinner. Start small and work your way up.

 

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Professional Self-Care for Teachers from Home: 5 Suggestions

1. Keep up to date with the current news and trends in education by checking EdWeek

Since virtual teaching is, well, virtual, it can be difficult keeping up with the newest trends and pedagogical methodologies in the ever-expanding world of education. So we recommend that you bookmark a major publication dedicated to educational news such as EdWeek to stay informed.

EdWeek covers all things education, including current events, effective instructional strategies, educational policy, and more. It’s a reliable and comprehensive news publication, and you’ll find it a helpful tool navigating the distance of remote learning.

2. Complete your PD hours using an online educational module

While schools vary in their PD requirements, we highly recommend you consult an administrator or department head and learn what you can do to take care of your required professional development during your time working from home. Use your time to construct new and compelling goals and share them with your administrator using either Eduphoria or whatever professional development software your district provides. Whatever is required, be sure to stay on top of it as it will keep you in the loop of the newest and best pedagogical practices.

3. Watch education policy panels and lectures

If you’re feeling like making a hardcore dive into the complex and changing world of education policy, then we recommend you dive into some panels and lectures on YouTube before digging into policy itself. It’s just more accessible this way, and can help you develop a piqued interest into something substantial. The Brookings Institution recently held an interesting one on the 2020 election and the future of educational policy, and TedTalks offers a variety of different and compelling lectures as well. They’re insightful and sure to keep you up to date.

4. Meet with other teachers via Zoom or FaceTime and share instructional strategies

This is a simple and (often fun) way to catch-up with colleagues and share what has and hasn’t been working in the digital classroom. Collaboration is truly key, and every other teacher is currently going through what you’re going through right now, so why not band together and drum up solutions?

Schedule a meeting using Google Calendar, and start sharing your ideas with each other!

5. Stay up to date with the latest in Social Emotional Learning by exploring CASEL

The Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning, or CASEL, is a company leading the way for all things SEL. Their mission is to “help make evidence-based social and emotional learning an integral part of education from preschool through high school,” and they have spent more than 20 years chasing their ambitious dream.

CASEL offers tons of material on SEL, including its history in educational settings, case studies, webinars, further reading, and more. SEL is becoming more and more important throughout districts, so it’s best to stay up to date with it.

 

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How to Create Your Own Self-Care Kit: 5 Steps

1. Pick a day of the week to focus on self-care and mark it in your calendar

First and foremost, to begin creating your own teacher self-care kit, you must pick a day of the week to dedicate time toward self-care. If you’re more a weekday person, then choose a day during the working week that you could allocate time to yourself after the workday. If you’re more of a weekender, choose to dedicate Saturday or Sunday to yourself.

Whatever you prefer, just be sure to set a time for yourself and stick to it. Mark the day in your phone’s calendar and set an alert of reminder. Additionally, Aloe Bud is a great app that sends you reminders throughout the day with self-care tips and advice.

2. Minimize distractions

Once you’ve picked a day of the week to focus on yourself, be sure to begin minimizing and limiting distractions. For instance, if you decide that jogging is your go-to self-care routine, then put away the groupchat, throw on your running shoes, and allow yourself to be with only you. 

Conversely, if you decide that your favorite self-care activity is a Zoom happy hour with your friends, then turn off the TV, put away any work distractions, and dedicate your time to them. Whatever you choose to do, just make sure you minimize distractions.

3. Begin assembling your teacher self-care kit

Once you’ve chosen a day to dedicate time toward self-care, and after you’ve thought about minimizing distractions during your routine, then begin assembling your teacher self-care kit. By this, we mean that you should begin choosing a variety of self-care activities and logging what works and what doesn’t. 

If you decide that a group chat is too stressful, make note of that in a journal, log, or a reflection app like Day One, and choose a new self-care activity to embark on. Work through a variety of activities before you land on what works.

You may find that having a teacher self-care planner can be a helpful way to keep track of different activities in the case where you do not want to use a reflection app.

4. Once you’ve built your self-care kit, stick to it

After deciding which self-care routines and activities work for you, work them into your schedule and stick to it. Set reminders on your phone, use any of the aforementioned apps like Aloe Budd and Day One to keep you on track, and maintain a routine.

Sticking to a self-care routine is vital. While an activity here and there can be nice and prove beneficial, self-care works best when you make it part of your daily life schedule.

5. Adjust your self-care kit if you notice things begin to stop working

If certain activities or routines start to become either too exhausting, too difficult to manage, or just boring, then adjust your self-care kit. Add new activities to the mix, or remove ones that have grown stale. The great thing about self-care is that it’s very broad and flexible, so you can always revise and add to the kit. If meditation, for instance, isn’t working, then try out ambient music.

 

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How to Teach Self-Care to Students via Remote Learning

1. Create virtual SEL activities

Perhaps the best way to get students to begin thinking about mental and physical health—and self-care in general—is through activities involving social emotional learning. SEL requires students to pay more attention to their emotions, their empathy for others, their personal goals, and more, so it is a great primer to developing a healthy lifestyle if not integral to self-care at large.

Pathway2Success offers all kinds of SEL activities that could be translated virtually through Google Classroom assignments or online journals.

2. Start a daily virtual reflection assignment

Create a daily assignment on Google Classroom which requires students to “check-in on themselves.” Have them write a paragraph or two on how they’re feeling, what they could improve on, what they think is going well in both their academic and personal lives. This will allow them to inwardly reflect, and it will give students time and space to focus on personal development. And it will help you forge more meaningful relationships with each student. A quick Google image search yields tons of printable self-care prompts you could use.

3. Encourage students to make a self-care plan everyday

In addition to the daily reflection assignment, have students chart their own plan of self-care or SEL. Perhaps at the bottom of their reflection journal, they could respond to self-care primer questions:

• Who will I connect with today? 
• When will I get into nature today? 
• How will I move my body today? 
• What am I grateful for today?
• How will I be creative today?

These questions will guide students toward shaping a self-care routine, and it will allow them to begin thinking about self-care in a personal and meaningful way.

4. Share video and multimedia self-care content with students

Since many of today’s media-saturated students are visual learners, a weekly stream of video content involving self-care will be a great way to engage students with the importance of healthy living. TedTalks, How to Adult, and the School of Life offer great videos on self-care, SEL, and more, and their content features high-quality and engaging production. Students will find these videos super fun and informative.

5. Share some of your successful teacher self-care routines with your students through a daily or weekly blog

While your students journal and reflect on their self-care routine, you can do the same! For example, if you’ve been cultivating a healthy lifestyle through meditation or enjoying a good novel, share your experiences with your students in a daily announcement on Google Classroom or another virtual classroom platform. This will not only promote self-care but set an example of how to live a positive, healthy lifestyle that your students will be able to clearly visualize and use as their own template.

 

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How Admins Can Promote Teacher Self-Care While Remote Learning

1. Assemble and share teacher self-care surveys

One way to promote self-care among faculty and staff is to create a self-care survey that asks teachers to reflect on recent healthy living routines, what is working in the classroom, what isn’t, and how to improve work culture, etc. Just simply checking in on teachers will show you care, and it will help build a sustainable culture for teachers while still teaching remotely. The University of Buffalo’s Social Work department offers a great self-care assessment survey that may prove useful.

2. Hold a virtual prize raffle

If there’s one attainable truth in this world it is the fact that teachers love free stuff. By holding a virtual prize raffle, you not only demonstrate that you care about your faculty and staff but that you are willing to take the extra steps to show your support. And, like we said, teachers love free stuff. Amazon or Starbucks gift cards are never-fail classics, and they can, of course, be distributed virtually.

RallyUp is a great online tool to create virtual raffles, too.

3. Let teachers know you’re open to one-on-one meetings if needed

The chaotic and unpredictable nature of our time is hard on everyone, especially teachers who are responsible for shaping the next generation, so it is important that you reach out to faculty and staff on an individual, more personal level.

In a mass email or weekly newsletter, let teachers know you’re open for one-on-one conversations about professional or even personal issues and share a meeting signup excel sheet or Google doc. It may eat up some time, but it will 100% show your faculty and staff that you care and are ready to lead your school through the complexities of the school year and virtual learning.

 

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Wrapping Things Up: Teacher Self-Care When Working From Home

While the comfort of teaching from home may seem like a dream come true during those first few days, it quickly becomes clear that removing the barriers dividing your work and professional life can make for a truly difficult reality to navigate. After all, what is home if it is now work? Therefore, it is imperative that we as teachers develop a healthy lifestyle and learn the importance of educator self-care.

To begin cultivating a healthy lifestyle, first carve out time from the week to do so. Pick a healthful activity such as jogging, barre, meditation, reading, or even a hyper-social group chat, minimize distractions, and let yourself focus on that singular thing, whatever it may be. Once you find some activities that work for you, chart them in a teacher self-care planner or an online log, and keep at it until it becomes as habitual as brushing your teeth.

And remember: remote learning is not only hard on teachers but also students. It is vital that your students also receive the same attention toward self-care that you give yourself. Create online reflection journal or log assignments and share them with your students so they can begin engaging with self-care, too. Self-care shouldn’t just be for adults. It’s too important.

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