Staying motivated is a challenge at the end of any "normal" school year, but we all felt the burnout much earlier this year. While January felt like it was 1,293 days long, hopefully, April, May, and June will go quickly with these tips to manage burnout and power through the end of the year.
Reduce, reuse, recycle
It can be smart to have a few extra SEL worksheets and lesson plans in your back pocket for those days when you feel more unprepared or something in your schedule changes. Here is a great list of just a few of the many SEL related activities from our blog for you to use:
- Combating Stress for Educators
- Cultivating Gratitude
- Printable: First 30 Days of School SEL Classroom Activity
- Treat Yourself! Create Your Own Self-Care Kit
- Printable: Goal Setting from Believing to Achieving!
- Printable: Teaching Social Cues
- Printable: Creating Optimistic Thinking
- Emotions Volcano: When Our Feelings Bubble Over:
- Printable: What’s Below the Surface?
- Printable: What’s on My Plate? Holiday Stress Buster
Give Yourself some Compassion
After all that we have overcome, it’s time to treat ourselves with more compassion! We need to reduce the amount of negative mind chatter in our heads and increase our positive self-talk.
(These topics are discussed In the counselor's guide in Emozi® Middle School grade 7, Unit 1.9 Stress, and in grade 8, Unit 1.12 Kindness and Compassion.)
What is Positive Self-Talk?
Positive self-talk is our inner voice that is kind, caring, and supportive. Your inner voice should act as you do for a friend, bringing them up with optimism and problem solving instead of negativity. Too often, we can fall back into a mindset filled with negative thoughts (negative mind chatter).
Ways to Help Strengthen your Positive Self-Talk
- Visualization
- Look at yourself in the mirror and visualize yourself at your best. What would that look like? How would you feel?
- Accomplish small goals
- Set some small goals that you know you can accomplish to help build up your self-esteem. (For example, "I will walk the dog every afternoon for 20 minutes," "I will have at least one serving of fruit or vegetables with every meal this week.")
- Complement yourself
- While this may sound odd or unnatural, you need to be your biggest cheerleader and hype person. Once a day, try giving yourself at least one compliment that highlights your awesomeness inside. (For example, "I love how I can put together fun outfits that make me feel confident," OR "I love how my preparedness allows me to feel confident and ready for the day." Give yourself a shout-out!
We had to rise and rise again to the challenge this school year. Now that you're almost at the finish line is time to treat ourselves with extra kindness. If you enjoy this content, please share it with a fellow educator!
Planning for Next Year?
Support student and teacher well-being, create positive classroom experiences, and improve academic achievement with Emozi® Middle School.
