Job Satisfaction: Both underlying and deriving from teachers’ SEL is job satisfaction itself. We include this, underscoring that, after all, the bottom line is the joy and fulfillment of those doing one of the most important jobs in the world.
Attending to Personal Wellbeing: Attending to personal wellbeing is really about self-care—something many teachers tend to overlook during the time that they devote providing their love and care for others.
Managing Own Emotions: Managing our own emotions is about connecting our feelings to our mind and body. The focus here is on being able to recognize our emotions as they come and being able to redirect or channel them in a way that is productive and healthy. This also includes being able to realize when to step back for a second, pause, and take a breath.
Managing Challenging Situations: One of the reasons why teachers tend to experience high levels of stress is because they inevitably have to address very challenging situations and solve innumerable problems on a daily basis. While the challenges and problems themselves are perhaps an inevitable, integral part of teaching, the stress resulting from having to address them is not.
Engaging in Problem Solving
Mindfulness Practices: We have found that one of the wellness areas that seems to hold a key to addressing daily stress and burnout is mindfulness. We therefore include resources on this area as well.
Supportive Communities: Here we largely build on approaches that have been explored and researched in other professions where burnout is viewed as a crisis (among nurses and social workers, notably) to provide information on how supportive community structures can help alleviate teachers’ stress and isolation.
