I recently read a few titles from a new collection of short and very didactic books for teachers (in English only… for now maybe, who knows?).
One of them, Little Guide for Teachers. Teacher Wellbeing and Self-Care, by Adrian Bethune and Emma Kell (Corwin, 2021), deals with their well-being and the care that we owe to ourselves when we practice this profession. There are a few secrets in there that deserve to be shared, more than ever in these hours when the exercise of the profession is difficult.
Here are a few. This will be my holiday gift…Christmas or light, depending on what you are celebrating.
My values and why I teach
Why do you teach? What values encourage you to do so and to persevere? These are unavoidable questions and it is with them that the book opens.
To help answer this, we suggest several very concrete things, including a Japanese model called ikigai (the word means: raison d’être, roughly…), which I did not know.
This helps to visualize the link between well-being and professional accomplishment. It is, we write, a useful model to help define where we are at the moment in terms of our identity as a teacher and as a person and what small steps we could take to approach the center, which designates the highest level of achievement. »
The Good Enough Teacher
Tolstoy said that if you aim for perfection, you will never be happy. This quote opens a passage in the book dedicated to this idea that it is better to be a sufficiently good teacher, rather than the best teacher.
This idea was formulated by the British pediatrician and psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott about mothers. Her experience had shown her that mothers who aspired to be the best, to be perfect, could end up harming themselves and their child: it was better to try to be a good enough mother (” good enough mother “). This advice applies to teachers, especially at the start of their careers.
How to do ? Here are some examples. Accept to make mistakes and even that the students see them; accept that they must make an effort and not cajole them constantly; celebrating small victories; recognize that we will have to keep learning.
Better manage your workload
In teaching, especially these days, the workload is heavy. But it is not always so in the usual sense of these words. Teaching, many people who have done it or do it will tell you, it is often much more than a job: it is a way of life.
You go home carrying your students there in your mind, remembering a question asked by Sophie, with concerns for Xavier, and all that lives in you and sometimes even keeps you awake at night.
How to effectively manage your time? How to correctly prioritize your tasks? How to avoid what is harmful to their accomplishment, such as multitasking?
Among the advice given, another thing that I did not know: the Eisenhower matrix. It’s a time management tool — apparently named after US President Dwight D. Eisenhower. I hope it will be useful to you.
In control of what matters
The book ends on the importance, for their well-being, that teachers feel they have a say and some control over the decisions that are made concerning their role and their status.
A 2006 study is cited on this subject which concluded that there is, for teachers, “a close association between their positive and stable sense of identity, their personal effectiveness and their capacity for action, that is to -express their belief that they can make a difference in the learning and education of children”.
To develop, strengthen this feeling, we suggest determining what we can control and concentrating on it; choose the right school; to assert oneself and sometimes know how to say no — which can avoid a burnout. They suggest three interesting strategies for this.
Within reason. As in: I would gladly do so, but is it really reasonable given these copies to be corrected?
Not now. As in: of course I can do it, but by such and such (later) date, after finishing rehearsals for my class play.
What to blow up? As in: yes, yes, it is important and I can do it for you. But help me decide what I need to take off my to-do list to get there.
It also remains, of course, that the profession will be more attractive and will retain its people better if the training given to teachers is up to the immense challenges that await them. She should have introduced them to and practice proven ways of teaching and managing classes. Otherwise, it starts badly…
Happy Holidays.
This column will resume on January 7.