Written by: Dr Debra Phillips
There’s one thing teachers must put at the top of their long to-do lists as Australia marks World Teachers’ Day today (Oct 25) – a mental health care action plan (MHCAP). Not for a student, but for themselves. Yes, today, of all days, teachers need to put themselves first. The stakes are too high not to. I know this all too well, both through my academic research and lived experience.
I experienced two episodes of clinical depression during 2010 and then again in 2014 from teacher burnout. In mid-2010 I walked away from a profession I loved believing I would never teach again. Although I told no-one of the shame of having failed to be the ‘perfect’ teacher, I suspect that some colleagues and friends had intuited my state of being. I was determined to rebuild myself and re-enter teaching simply because I needed an income to survive. The fear of poverty and poverty itself is one of the key precipitators of mental ill-health.
I came back into teaching and invested all my emotions into making it work. While I tried to maintain the exacting deadlines and administrative demands, burnout had scorched my confidence and subjectivity, and my known coping mechanisms faltered and were extinguished. The shame of having failed again to be a teacher and failed at being a competent adult was debilitating.
Nurture a fresh perspective
‘While the second episode of burnout was intense, I developed a different perspective and was eventually able to enter academic teaching for I had invoked the essential reminders I had set myself in 2010 should this despair happen again.
In her diary of Friday 26 January 1940, Virginia Woolf, after another episode of melancholia, wrote, “A hint for the future. Always relieve pressure by a flight. Always violently turn the pillow: hack an outlet. Often a trifle does…. These are travellers notes which I offer myself shd I again be lost.” (Bell and McNeillie, 260).
Woolf’s advice of ‘travellers’ notes’ has become a core element in my current work and Education lecturer role with undergraduate and postgraduate students at Australian Catholic University (ACU). Traveller’s notes with its self-care for now and the future was a key idea in the design of Australia’s first Graduate Certificate in
Mental Health for Teachers and Educators, as well as an undergraduate Supporting Teacher Mental Health: The First Five Years unit.
At the heart of these study patterns is the development of an individually tailored MHCAP for graduate teachers. The MHCAP is like being prepared to put your own oxygen mask on when the inevitable turbulence hits so you can be in a fit state to attend to your students. In the same way families develop bushfire or flood emergency survival plans to implement immediately when disaster is probable, a teachers’ MHCAP is tailored to their idiosyncratic needs and situation.
A good set of individual teacher’s traveller’s notes will include suggestions for emotional, psychological, spiritual, social and physical domains that can be implemented during the day-to-day of school life. A care plan for the self includes reminders to engage in simple, daily psycho-social activities as well as the pushbacks to systemic practices and hazards that undermine appropriate work conditions.
It could offer suggestions such as:
- going for a walk around the school’s perimeter at lunchtime to capture the sun’s Vitamin D, and to re-regulate breathing patterns. Best of all, walk with a colleague and debrief about the morning’s events
- stopping work during recess and lunchtime to recharge the physical, emotional, and spiritual self – regular rest breaks during the day ensures there is sufficient energy to manage complex challenges
- establishing a formal or informal buddying or mentor relationship with a teacher within your current school or in another school
- seeking out an early career teacher or more mature teacher to discuss teaching strategies and ways to manage the work-place stressors
- developing cordial relationships with your peers and supervisors. Ask them questions about their day or tell them about your day’s achievements. The most powerful protective, preventative, and restorative factor for teachers’ overwhelming stress and burnout is their social and collegial relationships
- making and packing a nutritious lunch the night before
- using public transport to sit quietly, read or listen to music
- setting daily limits for chocolate, alcohol and snack foods
- restricting screen time and work after 7pm at night
- keeping a sense of joy in place by anticipating key future moments, such as a holiday, or family milestones
- attending to a creative activity once a week, such as community choir, pottery classes, or bush care regeneration
- becoming aware of life’s strange presentations such as the changing colour of daylight, the capacity of rain clouds, or the way moss grows. A daily reminder about the curious nature of the world builds a sense of awe and develops a future-orientation that pulls us to be within tomorrow.
Self-care matters
Article 26 of The United Nations Charter of Human Rights stipulates that all people have a right to an education and that the early years of schooling are compulsory for all and must be free. In Australia, our communities rely on trained and qualified teachers to achieve this outcome.
Currently, Australia is confronting the challenge of increasing teacher attrition and reduced enrolment numbers in education degrees because the practice and profession of teaching has not yet resolved teacher burnout.
Our students require a rich, positive relationship with their teachers to learn about the social and emotional world that they live in and will enter when they complete their schooling studies. For Australia’s teachers who are driven by social justice to ensure their students receive a quality education, relational pedagogy can and does lead to emotional and cognitive fatigue, and – if unresolved – burnout.
As we celebrate teachers’ invaluable work and the importance of this noble profession on World Teachers’ Day, it is a timely reminder for all educators to address their own needs for their sake as well as their ability to uphold Article 26.
Put simply, to teach well is to be well.
Dr Debra Phillips is a Lecturer, Faculty of Education and the Arts, Australian Catholic University (North Sydney campus) and has an ongoing commitment to work into teachers’ mental health.
