Taking Care of Yourself

When I hear education experts speak of how we as teachers need to be mindful of trauma and anxiety which students have experienced over these past two years, so often I want to shout out, "Hey, let's not forget about us teachers! We have had to live through this pandemic too! We have experienced trauma too, so do not diminish our experiences!" Honestly I do feel that I have some degree of PTSD still from the sudden, unexpected switch to digital back in March 2020 and then teaching hybrid last year. During that time, I think that I just plowed through it all and never truly gave myself time to react emotionally to the situation while at the same time having to adjust (and still adjusting) to maneuvering through this pandemic and its constantly changing unknown.

So as you begin 2022 and a new semester of teaching and continue to adjust to this weird time in education, here are some pieces of advice for you (and for me) which I have learned during this time:

1. Have a realistic view of your job and performance. One of the biggest revelations which has come to surface for me during this pandemic is that teaching is what I do but it is not who I am. So often our view of ourselves is based on what we do as teachers. Much of this change in my perspective is probably because I am now in my 50's and have taught for over 20 years; however, these past few years have really given me a completely different view on the profession. Now do not get me wrong: I still very much enjoy teaching and learning to become a better Latin teacher, BUT I also am not going to let this take over my life like it once did. This has meant cutting back on how much time I devote outside of the classroom to lesson preparation, the number of conferences I attend or present at, and how much personal time I devote to taking part in professional development and even reading others' blogs. I feel like as recent as 10 years ago, all of those things were my life - that what all I did. Granted those things did give me a great deal of pleasure, but now I am very much enjoying NOT doing them as much. Whatever you are doing in the classroom is your best at this time. I am also so enjoying now being an adequate teacher (NOTE - I am an overachiever, so my idea of "adequate" is probably what most consider to be "very good"). It is incredibly liberating.
2. Do something daily for yourself completely unrelated to your job and education. I work out six days a week. While I have always enjoyed working out, even more now I need to do it for my own mental health. I need to put aside time for myself in doing something that I really enjoy that has NOTHING to do with teaching. During the lockdown, I went to Starbucks drive-thru every day at 3:00pm. Outside of the occasional trip to to the store, that was my one time I left the house during that time. That daily routine gave me something to look forward each day during the lockdown.
3. Enjoy your interests. I love Star Wars - I consider myself one of its original fans, because I was seven years old when Star Wars - A New Hope came out, and I saw it seven times in the movie theater during the summer of 1977. I was the perfect age for all of the Star Wars toys and action figures that come out afterwards (yes, I still have them). However, I was not a huge fan of the prequel trilogy and absolutely hated what they did to the sequel trilogy - the last three movies pretty much killed what I had loved about the franchise. However, thanks to The Mandalorian, I fell in love again with Star Wars. During the lockdown and subsequent months afterwards while limiting my contact with others, I binge-watched the two animated series The Clone Wars and Star Wars: Rebels on Disney Plus. Last summer, I faithfully watched The Bad Batch every Friday morning when a new episode was released, and now the Book of Boba Fett just started! Disney Plus has so many new Star Wars series coming out in 2022, so I am going to devote my Wednesdays when I come home from working out to watching whatever Star Wars series episode has come out that day. So while you may not like Star Wars at all, find what it is that you do like and geek out over it like I do with Star Wars!

Find out who you are outside of the classroom, and enjoy yourself!