When high levels of stress are present, it is important to find ways to engage in self-care, both at a systems level and at an individual level.
Self-care involves any action during the day that helps maintain a feeling of calm, balance, and wellness (e.g. setting boundaries, mindfulness, movement breaks, self-advocacy).
Individual self-care is any intentional action that is done by an individual to take care of their own mental, emotional, spiritual, and physical health. While individual self-care is vital to maintaining balance in life, individuals do not exist in a vacuum. This is why community self-care is also important. Community self-care are intentional actions done by community members to take care of the community they live in by leveraging their privilege to be there for others. A community can include the community in which you reside, or your school community.
Often, the events of daily life take over the intentions of engaging in self-care. This is why self-care planning can help to ensure self-care practices occur. These pages were designed to assist individuals and school communities with addressing self-care and self-care planning, and promoting a feeling of balance.
Self-Care Resoures for Educators
Individual self-care planning involves identifying and incorporating specific self-care strategies for promoting resilience and maintaining a healthy work–life balance (e.g., exercise, good nutrition, supportive networks). Individual self-care plans involve scheduling restorative activities, recognizing personal triggers, and planning an action response that supports well-being.
Links to local and national resources and tools for educators appear below.
Compassion Resilience: A Toolkit for Schools
Compassion resilience is an approach to building resilience in both an individual and an organization. This includes acknowledging and supporting concerns of others in their well-being while recognizing the roles that a compassionate approach can take. This toolkit provides resources to address compassion resilience in the field of education through a focus on development of compassion resilience and addressing self-care at an organizational level. A specific focus for individual educators on Wellness and Resilience Strategies geared toward the Mind, Spirit, Strength, and Heart may be a helpful starting place.
Developing Your Self-Care Plan
To develop a self-care plan, this website will help people identify what they value and need as part of their day-to-day life (maintenance self-care) and the strategies they can employ when or if facing a crisis along the way (emergency self-care).
Equitable Practices Hub
The purpose of the Equitable Practices Hub is to establish a coherent collection of resources that an educational community may use in promoting intentional equity in their communities. The resources featured on this website have been hand-picked and reviewed, and represent best practices, models, and guidance from all their component parts.
Support for Teachers Affected by Trauma (STAT)
Geared toward preK-12 teachers, STAT (Support for Teachers Affected by Trauma) was developed over a two-year period by a group of experts in the fields of secondary traumatic stress (STS), education, and technology. STAT comprises five online modules that explore the concepts of secondary trauma, risk factors associated with susceptibility to STS, the impact of STS across multiple life domains, and tangible self-care skills.
Teacher Well-Being Workbook
Download the Wellbeing In School Environments (WISE) Workbook, which was designed to help educators develop their own personal well-being plan. It was written for teachers, educators, and those working in schools, but can be useful to others as well.
Trauma Sensitive Schools Training Package: Secondary Traumatic Stress and Self-Care (PDF)
Developed in collaboration with the United States Department of Education, the Trauma Sensitive Schools Training Package provides introduces school staff to the concept of trauma sensitive and provides examples of trauma-sensitive practices. Resources focused on staff self-care is a core part of becoming a trauma-sensitive system.
Organizational Wellness
School self-care planning involves creating a culture that fosters staff resilience that includes fair leave policies, adequate benefits, a physically safe and secure working environment, sufficient supervision, support and resources to do the work, and processes for shared decision making. School self-care plans offer a process similar to an individual self-care plan but for the whole school.
Center for Disease Control: Healthy Schools – School Employee Wellness
The CDC has provided resources and strategies to support employee wellness programs and foster the physical and mental health of school employees. Resources included from the CDC include Healthy School, Healthy Staff, Healthy Students: A Guide to Improving School Employee Wellness.
Compassion Resilience: A Toolkit for Schools
Compassion resilience is an approach to building resilience in both an individual and an organization. This includes acknowledging and supporting concerns of others in their well-being while recognizing the roles that a compassionate approach can take. This toolkit provides resources to address compassion resilience in the field of education through a focus on development of compassion resilience and addressing self-care at an organizational level. System drivers of compassion fatigue and Staff culture may be helpful starting places.
Equitable Practices Hub
The purpose of the Equitable Practices Hub is to establish a coherent collection of resources that an educational community may use in promoting intentional equity in their communities. The resources featured on this website have been hand-picked and reviewed, and represent best practices, models, and guidance from all their component parts.
Hallways to Health: Creating a School-Wide Culture of Wellness
Wellness is determined in great part by where children live, learn, and grow. Recognizing the, schools across the country are collaborating to create a culture of wellness that extends beyond the health clinic walls into school hallways, classrooms, cafeteria, teacher's lounges, and campus spaces. This toolkit focuses on creating and fostering systematic conditions that promote health and enable all children to thrive in the classroom.
Trauma Sensitive Schools Training Package: Secondary Traumatic Stress and Self-Care (PDF)
Developed in collaboration with the United States Department of Education, the Trauma Sensitive Schools Training Package provides introduces school staff to the concept of trauma sensitive and provides examples of trauma-sensitive practices. Resources focused on organizational self-care is a core part of becoming a trauma-sensitive system.