Amid historic burnout, Taos Municipal Schools is replacing some professional development days with teacher wellness retreats
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NOVEMBER 17-23, 2021
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SFREPORTER.COM
BY WILLIAM MELHADO w i l l i a m @ s f r e p o r t e r. c o m
T
AOS - On a sunny day in early November, teacher Trish Curran wasn’t corralling elementary phys ed students as she normally would be. Instead, she was educating her colleagues at Taos Municipal Schools on the benefits of walking. “If nothing else, we’re spending our work time just rejuvenating a little bit,” Curran tells SFR. The point of the walking session at the well-being retreat for school staff members was connection, she says. “Connecting your feet with the earth and your moment with the mountain or catching up with colleagues you work with but never see.” Despite a knee replacement a couple years ago, Curran walks briskly around the track outside Taos Middle School, which has a view of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains and Taos Pueblo to the northeast. About 10 of her colleagues, forgoing jackets to bask in the fall sunshine, walk in groups of two or three at varying paces around the oval loop. Technically, it was a normal district-wide professional development day: one without students where school staff members are expected to come and learn something
new, refine existing skills or plan upcoming lessons. But with teachers and custodians walking the track together in one session and counselors and administrators learning about homeopathic remedies side by side in another, it was obvious that this had little in common with traditional professional development days. Instead, the event, “Reconnect and Reinvent,” was meant as a retreat, a chance for educators and other school staff to step away from their daily responsibilities and focus on themselves. It was the second of its kind, following one in August. Jennifer St.Clair, who works in Santa Fe Public Schools, didn’t attend the retreat. But she knows why such events exist. “This year is in a class of its own in terms of difficulty and low morale,” says St.Clair, a 29-year veteran teacher. Between asking students to wear their masks properly for the hundredth time and constantly worrying about close contacts with people who tested positive for COVID-19, the year has left teachers “hanging by a thread,” St.Clair adds. The well-being of educators everywhere has been stretched to its limits over the last year and a half, teachers and experts say. And continued high-stress working conditions
