with Rachel Lynette
It’s time to start saying no. Not all the time, of course, but sometimes. Most of us are not so great at saying no to other people (though we are Jedi Masters at saying no to ourselves). Do any of these scenarios sound familiar? Your principal asks you to run an after-school book club on Zoom and you agree (even though it means even more
Picture what happens when you say those words that every kid in your class longs to hear: Free Time! Most likely, your students immediately engage in their favorite activities. Some color or draw, some chat with their friends, others play games, a few might get out the book they are reading and curl up in a quiet corner. Here is what they don’t do: They
Big Goals are soooooo seductive. You can see your Big Goal out in the distance and it just looks so good. you can picture how incredibly amazing your life would be if you could just reach that Big Goal. So, in order to reach that Big Goal in the fasted, most efficient way possible, you make Big, Sweeping Life Changes. Want to lose 50 pounds?
Your nearly empty plan book is open in front of you. Next to that is a stack of papers to correct. Your email is overflowing with unanswered emails, and report cards, which you have barely started, are due at the end of the week. On top of that, you are responsible for ordering new science materials for your grade level and you haven’t even started
Winter break is nearly here! Hazzah! And even though you know it will speed by, right now it looks like a gloriously long stretch of days with no lesson planning, no struggles to learn new technologies, and no constant pressure to do so much with so few resources. You might be looking forward to hours of binging all those shows your non-teacher friends have been
If you google “Self-Care Gifts” you’re going to see a whole lot of scented candles and beautifully presented spa kits show up on your screen. And while fancy body lotion isn’t a bad thing, it will only get you so far. Rather than adding yet another bath-balm to that drawer in your bathroom that you almost never open, I am going to recommend you give
Imagine having lunch with a girlfriend. You know she has been dieting, so you are a bit surprised when she orders a big slice of chocolate cake for dessert. When she is done (and of course she ate every bite), you say to her. “Wow, I can’t believe you ate all of that. I thought you were on a diet. You’re never going to lose
Does this sound familiar? You have had a long and stressful day at school. The kids were bouncing off the walls, a lesson you had spent a lot of time planning and had been excited about completely flopped, there were tons of tech glitches with the Chromebooks, and you had to attend a mostly useless staff meeting after school that ran way too long. Your
If you are looking at your empty December calendar and feeling sad about all the holiday events that would normally be there, but aren’t because of the pandemic, then this post is for you. Clearly, this Christmas season won’t be as big and as bright as most years, but that doesn’t mean it has to be bad, or sad, or pathetic. Christmas (or Hanukkah, Kwanzaa,
Image by Orna Wachman from Pixabay Here we are, right in the middle of a Pandemic, so starting a blog focused on self-care for teachers seems like perfect planning. But actually, I’ve been thinking about the need for teachers to make self-care a priority for quite a while, long before the pandemic. Even before COVID, teachers have stressed, often to their limit trying to meet
