The Longest Term Ever!
Last week, I spoke with a school principal who described the first term of 2022 as the most challenging and longest-lasting term in school history.
She shared with me the anxiety she experienced daily and wondered why it was that every little noise seemed to make her jump.
Usually a calm and in control sort of person, she found this jumpiness unnerving.
Small sudden noises like the groundskeeper starting up the lawnmower outside her office and the constant bing and bong of incoming emails and texts were putting her on edge.
Another principal shared with me the anxiety he felt opening his emails each morning. The lengthy daily messages from the MoE were taking so much energy and time to read, contextualise and synthesise. The decision making fatigue is a real exhaustion factor for many of our educators. Not just principals but classroom teachers also.
On Monday, I worked with a group of specialist teachers who chipped in for their school and stepped into the classroom teacher role. Their day usually consists of many classes across a day coming to work in their specialist area. Suddenly they found themselves with the same class for a week covering curriculum areas they hadn't taught in some time. To step out of the familiar and into the unfamiliar means workload increased 100 fold.
It is no wonder our education workforce is feeling like it's December already.
Another teacher shared that term one usually flies by. However, it has dragged on and on this year, and she feels ready for a break.
Adam Voigt, founder and creator of real school in Australia, wrote a great article published in Talking Point - Teachers Are Doing It Tough. While he is speaking of the Australian experience of Term one, what he is saying resonates with what I am hearing from educators here in NZ.
Neurologically speaking, you have spent the last ten weeks in a heightened reactive (fight, flight) state - with an active sympathetic nervous system - caused by the following environmental stimulants:
A sense of unease
Uncertainty of what is coming next
Constant change
A perceived lack of control
Ongoing reactive response to the needs of others
Pressures to make up for lost time
A need to keep things as normal as possible.
The alerting system can be set off by feelings of threat, even when there is no real danger. While these are not sager tooth tigers per se, your sympathetic nervous system responds in the same way regardless of the threat. In this state, you experience the need to get to action. To do something! And this constant churn to do something can be exhausting!
Research tells us that ongoing stress and uncertainty leads to higher cortisol levels, leading to ongoing health issues.
It is time to take back the responsive space. It is time to move out of the reactive and back into the responsive. And that movement starts with you. With self-compassion and a heightening of your awareness of self. Being in the present moment rather than in the state of forecasting or ruminating.
This Easter break, I invite you to slow down. It is more important than ever before that you connect with what recharges you during this team break.
Savour the moments and take time to be in the moment. Try not to be rushing from one thing to another.
Slow down.
Stop.
Breathe.
Pause.
Use your senses (sight, smell, touch) to take in the moment.
Give your nervous system time to relax, refresh and recharge.
Seek to reestablish equilibrium and move to a place where you can co-regulate, self-regulate, and connect with yourself, others, and your world. Tune in to the moment and tune out of distraction.
Thank you
So thank you for all that you do.
Grant yourself permission for some self-indulgence. Go on. You deserve it!
You are doing great.
Until next term. go well
