It is important to recognize that not everyone is equipped to or has the stamina to dive head-first into the holiday season. So, whether you’re a festive fanatic or not, here are some tips to help any teacher navigate this holiday season, so they can return to the classroom feeling a little more recharged and a ready to tackle the rest of the school year come January.
In “normal” years, there are somewhat predictable wellness patterns with the teachers we work with; the challenges that teachers experience and when they tend to experience them have a general flow. In 2020 though, the word “unpredictable” just doesn’t seem to do it justice. Teacher wellness was challenged in unexpected and difficult ways. And, with today marking the first day back in the classroom for many, we think it’s a good time to look back at some of those unique struggles that emerged for teachers throughout 2020 and that we should keep in mind as we move forward into 2021.
As the school year approached in August, teachers, and those of us who support teacher wellness, were firmly focused on COVID-19 and the upcoming school year. And, rightly so. No one knew what was to come, and it seemed as though things were changing by the hour. However, buried in the non-stop health information that was coming at us before the start of the new school year was the fact that the Canadian obesity guidelines had been updated for the first time since 2007. While we don’t know exactly how many Canadian teachers are affected by obesity, we do know that approximately 26.4% (8.3 million) of Canadians over the age of 18 are classified as “obese” (Twells, Janssen, & Luk, 2018). And, if this proportion translates directly to the Canadian teacher population, we could estimate that roughly 202,849 teachers across Canada are struggling with obesity – a not insignificant number.
What I wish people would remember about teaching in the time of COVID, is that teachers have been asked to do what most others have been vehemently told to avoid. Teachers have ultimately been asked to go into public settings with groups of people who are outside their own bubbles, sometimes will little guidance or resources on how best to implement new and evolving government guidelines and health regulations. While most of us were still figuring out how best to work from home, teachers were considering how to return to school and keep themselves and their students safe during a global health crisis.
Teaching is such a mentally and physically demanding profession that transitioning from the classroom to home life can feel downright impossible. We have heard many teachers struggle with feeling like they are present at home in body only. No matter the job or the workload, the inability to coalesce both body and mind into the present can leave anyone with an unhealthy sense of imbalance.
There are very few professions where there is more vulnerability in openly sharing mental health-related challenges than in education. The stigma around educator mental health is generally driven by the presumption of how it would be interpreted by others.