Description: This week, Dr. Boogren invites you to revisit thinking about how you want to feel as you move into the new school year.
Resources: Marc Brackett's Permission to Feel and the Mood Meter.
Listen Now:
Transcription: Hi! Welcome to season five, episode one of Self Care for eEducators. I am your host, Dr. Tina Boogren. I am so excited that you are here as we kick off, I can't believe it, our fifth season of the podcast. Some of you have been with me from the very, very first few episodes and some of you are just joining us and I'm just so happy and grateful for each and every one of you.
I've had the opportunity to meet so many of you these last few months during my season of sacrifice where I've been on the road conducting workshops and leading events where I get to meet so many of you. And here's what I know, this is, man, the most amazing group of educators in the planet! I just am in awe of you.
Every time I meet you and get to know you and engage in conversations and hug you and laugh and all of the pieces, I'm just reminded again that this work is so important, that I truly believe I was put on this planet to help figure out ways to take exquisite care of all of you so that you in turn can take exquisite care of your students.
And it is my deepest honor to do that. And so I am thrilled to be back for Season 5 of Self Care for Educators. And we're going to continue with the same format. Seems to be working. These little bite-sized episodes where we dive into one specific thing that we can think about for the week. And trust me when I say that I am doing this work beside you; that typically whatever it is that I'm asking you to do is something I am working on myself. And what happens, invariably, is that we revisit many, many, many strategies because I know in my life, I'll be really good at a strategy, I'll use it for a while and then poof, it's gone. And so, reminders of old strategies that we've used before, I think can be really important instead of clinging to the next new shiny thing that we need to grab onto. Revisiting, reminding, regrounding ourselves in some core habits and strategies is proving to be really, really, really essential for myself and my guess is for you as well. And so, we're going to start off this week and we are going to revisit something that we've revisited before. In fact, the last episode of Season 4, I asked you to do exactly what I'm going to ask you to do again.
I want you to identify how you want to feel this school year. In the last episode of Season 4, we talked about how we want to feel this summer. And so now I want us to kind of regroup and pause and get real quiet and think about how do we want to feel this school year. I want you to go ahead and imagine, go ahead and do this, that it is the last day of school, that it is 2025, the springtime, and you are pausing to think back on this 2024-2025 school year.
And how do you want to be feeling? How do you want to close out the year? Let's identify that now. Cause here's what I know- none of us want to be feeling totally depleted and totally exhausted and overwhelmed and stressed. Instead, here's what we know. What we know is we're looking for those, those positive emotions that we want to feel connected, that we want to feel grounded, that we want to feel balanced, if at all possible.
And so those ideas, those words might get you started. And I want you to just spend a little time; I really encourage you to journal if that's something that works for you. It's something that works for me. It's something I spend a lot of time doing. And I just, Encourage you to sit down and just start writing words, feeling, feeling words. Pull up Marc Brackett’s incredible chart where he lists all of these different emotions. You know, I talk about this in workshops when we talk about emotional wellness. Most of us really can only identify three emotions- happy, mad, and sad. And the reality is, there's a whole slew of emotions. Marc Brackett has a wonderful list to choose from. Brene Brown, utilizing her work from Atlas of the Heart, has a whole slew of words. So maybe you jump over to the computer and you kind of pull that up and you take a look at those, all of those words and identify which are the ones that stand out to you for this particular year.
Recognize that each of our school years are different, even if it feels like it's going to be, maybe we're teaching the same grade level, the same course somehow, some way every year is different. Whatever's going on in your personal life may change. Your relationships maybe have changed. Maybe your own children have gotten older; they're in different stages. Maybe you're taking on a new role or responsibility. Maybe you're working with new team members. Maybe you're welcoming a brand new teacher onto your team. Maybe you are sponsoring a club and you've never done that before or you're coaching a sport and maybe it's the same sport but your athletes are different- things have changed. Maybe you're using a new curriculum. So whatever it is, even if it feels like eh, this year is going to look a lot like last year, invariably, it doesn't. And so spending time regrouping, regrounding can be really helpful.
So just spend a little time doing a little bit of journaling or just quietly reflecting and see if you can identify those core feelings that you really want to embody this year. And I encourage you to put those on a sticky note, write them in your planner, take a picture of them so you can put them on your screensaver on your phone. Just do something where you're reminded of those feelings. When we do that, that can act as a way for us to set our intentions, especially as we get the school year started. So I'm picturing writing those feelings that you're aiming for on a sticky note, putting that sticky note on your bathroom mirror at home. And when you wake up in the morning, you pause and you're looking at those feelings; make sure that they're positive feelings, and that you are determining how you can put those into play each and every day.
So let's say that one of the feelings that you have is that you want to be energized this year. Well, think about what can you do to energize yourself. And this goes back to something else we've talked about, which is the idea from Gretchen Rubin of acting the way we want to feel. So you might not feel energized in that moment, but if you act energized, what's amazing is our bodies and our brains kind of catch up with that, so that serves as an intention for us. Now, maybe you want to get specific and you want to think a little bit more, kind of narrow your focus. And instead of thinking the whole year, how do you want to feel this week? Or how do you want to feel in August? Or how do you want to feel in this first semester or quarter? Whatever your year looks like, make this work for you. But I encourage you to just pause, think about, oof, how do you want to feel? Get crystal clear on that, record it so that it's somewhere that you can revisit it, and start putting those feelings into practice as you move through this week. I'm going to do the same exact thing. I'm excited to spend a little time getting real specific on this myself.
What is really exciting, you guys, is that I panicked when we lost Brooke. So, Brooke is the one that's been helping me with my podcast for the first four seasons and her life turned a little bit in a new direction where she needed to let go of the podcast and focus on her family and her career and we sent her off with a huge hug and a huge amount of gratitude. And Brooke did a great job of kind of helping me understand the process of everything that goes into getting this podcast from what I'm doing right now to all of you and it completely overwhelmed me! And so I reached out to one of my friends, one of my associates, one of the greatest educators in humans that I know, Adrienne Turner, and I asked if she would help me and she so graciously said yes. In fact, I'll probably be pulling her into episodes as we move along because her wisdom is profound. And so I want to give my heartfelt thanks to Adrienne for truly making this podcast continue because I fear that if she had said no, I would have just given up.
And so her yes, It brings tears to my eyes because it allows me to continue to do this work and not get caught up in the stuff that I just am not very good at. And so, a heartfelt thanks to Adrienne for the behind the scenes work that is no small feat and we welcome her this team with all of us. She's been an avid listener forever, and she actually does this work; many of you may know her. She visits schools and carries this work forward too, so I'm so grateful for her. Okay. I'm at the 10 minute mark right now, so I'm going to stop myself and just say, thank you. I want to say thank you, of course, to Adrienne and to Solution Tree and Marzano Resources that I get to continue to do this job, and to all of you, my badass self care squad, welcome back. It's going to be a great year!