Recognizing the Need for Self-Care
Teachers in previous eras certainly encountered their share of high hurdles. As education historian Dana Goldstein (2014) observes in The Teacher Wars, at different times in American history “teachers have been embattled by politicians, philanthropists, intellectuals, business leaders, social scientists, activists on both the Right and Left, parents, and even one another” (p. 5). In the 1960s, national paranoia swept the land as Americans feared their Soviet counterparts would triumph over them in the disciplines of mathematics and science. The 1970s were embroiled in racial tensions stoked by concerns about integration and busing. The 1980s bemoaned a lack of cultural literacy. While many of these concerns have faded into the background of the nation’s consciousness, the essential role the teacher plays in the maintenance of a growing and vibrant society firmly remains. This is why it is important to explore why there is something fundamentally different about the nature of teacher morale and strain in the 21st century. As Patricia Jennings, a professor of education, notes (as cited in Garrison Institute, 2009): We ask an awful lot of teachers these days. . . . Beyond just conveying the course material, teachers are supposed to provide a nurturing learning environment, be responsive to students, parents, and colleagues, juggle the demands of standardized testing, coach students through conflicts with peers, be exemplars of emotion regulation, handle disruptive behavior and generally be great role models. . . . The problem is we rarely give teachers proper training or resources for any of them. (p. 1)
In April 2015, Steven C. Ward (2015) of Newsweek sought to answer the question, “Why has teacher morale plummeted?” In his article, he offers a variety of diverse and insightful explanations, ranging from teachers’ “lost control of curricula” and the embrace of “edu-fashions” claiming to be one-size-fits-all solutions (for example, competency-based education, flipped classrooms, and the charter school movement) to “enrollment declining in teaching programs” (Ward, 2015). And as 2012 Connecticut Teacher of the Year David Bosso (2017) writes, “For a variety of reasons, but most certainly due to the increased demands of the evolving educational landscape, teachers often experience a discrepancy between the moral and affective purposes of their work and the external forces that affect it.”
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care of themselves while taking care of their students? What if it weren’t an either-or situation? What if you split your time between your own and students’ needs in a new way?” (Boogren, 2018, p. 4). But why these questions? Why now? Why is self-care quickly becoming an increasingly talked-about subject in the realm of professional development?
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