Episode 1: Self-Care Soundtrack

Description: Want to reduce your anxiety, depression, blood pressure, and pain? Want to improve your sleep quality, mood, memory, cognitive functions, learning, and concentration? Want to ward off the effects of aging? Find out how this week on Self-Care for Educators with Dr. Tina H. Boogren.

Resources:

1. To access the playlist Tina uses during her workshops, click here.

2. Listening Journal

Episode 1_Listening Journal

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Download PDF • 2.39MB

3. Collaborative Playlist: Educator 911

Note: Unfortunately, we had to remove the collaborative playlist 11/13/2022, because it was hacked with extremely violent music that we don't want your students to accidentally hear. We really enjoyed the 2 plus seasons we had to share it with you! The link above will take you to Educator 911 2.0, which has the original playlist, minus the violent songs. You won't be able to add any music to it, however. Sincerest apologies!

If you have a Spotify account, you can add songs to this collaborative playlist. Together, we can make the ultimate digital mixtape, for educators by educators. Just click the heart under the playlist title to Save to Your Library. Then, search for a song you'd like to add. When you are hovering over the song with your mouse, three dots will appear to the right of the song title like so:

After clicking the three dots, a drop-down menu will appear. There, you will click Add to Playlist. Finally, click Educator 911 to add it to our collaborative playlist.

Listen Now:

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The Self-Care for Educators team cares about the content-accessibility for all educators. If you have trouble accessing the audio for the podcast, the transcription has been provided below.

Transcription: Hi, and welcome to episode one of Self-Care for Educators. I'm your excited host, Tina Boogren. In this episode, we're going to explore the theme of music, and I'm going to offer up some ways for you to play around with this self-care strategy. Okay, quick! What's your favorite song? What is that song or artist or genre of music that gets you up off your feet, or at least tapping your toes every time you hear it?

We know that music is such a powerful tool to help us quickly change our moods. Research shows—listen to this—that it can reduce anxiety, depression, blood pressure, and pain, as well as improve sleep quality, mood, memory, increase some of our cognitive functions and enhance learning and concentration and ward off the effects of brain aging.

Sign me up! For me, I finally decided that it was totally and completely worth it to pay the subscription cost to Spotify. Because, you know what? I use it every single day. I create playlists for everything I need. I have one to get me going in the morning, to calm me down, to focus when I'm working, to use during my workshops with educators, to get me pumped up while I'm working out, and to remind me of special times or events, such as my wedding song or those I associate with vacations or milestones. Like, the song that takes me back to college or high school or even middle school. Right? I love turning up the music loud in the morning. and I love putting my earbuds in when I'm at the airport, creating that soothing kind of soundtrack for the hustle and bustle going on around me. Whenever I do that, I always feel like I'm in a movie. I'm so grateful for the power of music, and I know so many of you are as well.

So this week, let's play with music. Let's think of a couple ways that we can kind of explore this and see how it makes a difference for us. So, one of my very first invitations for you to consider is to start creating your own playlists. You might create your go-to "good mood" playlist. You might create, you could call it your 911 playlist. I got that from Gretchen Rubin. I love that idea. Like your emergency songs, your go-to songs when you need to change your mood. There's so many ways you can do this. You can do this through Spotify or Pandora or Amazon music or whatever tool that works for you.

It doesn't matter. Just get a playlist started so that you have it on hand, and then when you've got that playlist created—use it, crank it up, tap play! Try using it at different times of the day, and then check in to see how it impacts your mood. Does listening to your playlist in the morning, do something to your day that feels different? What about listening to music in the evening? Do you crave a different kind of playlist in the evening?

Pay attention to all of those details. You might even consider engaging in what they call mindful listening, which is similar to mindful eating if you've heard of that. To do this, this is kind of like a break or a respite during the day where you're going to close your eyes and give your full attention to the song that you are listening to. You can really just kind of give yourself over to that, as kind of a form of meditation in a way. And it might just, you know, pull you out of an anxious state, put you back in that present moment. And then think about, what was that like to do that?

You might also consider sharing your playlist. Oh my gosh. People love when I share my playlist. I will absolutely put a link in the show notes to my go-to, good mood workshop playlist that people tend to love. And, if you guys could share your's as well. Like think about it. Remember, if some of you are in a certain age range that I am, we used to create mixtapes right? And we'd give each other mixtapes? I think that the idea of sharing playlists, which I love.

You know, if you are at all with students right now, you know, maybe think about utilizing songs or your playlist. It might be different for students. It might be a different playlist that you play for students than you have for your own self I realize. But what is utilizing music in your classroom do? What about ... I love when schools utilize music during recess or during passing period. Maybe even doing a lunch room karaoke session. What about having a dance party in the morning, or to end the day either by yourself or with your students or with colleagues or with your family? You could have your students or other colleagues share their favorite song and you could make a compilation of everyone's favorite song and play those at different times together.

You could, you know, utilize music before an assessment—ideally one without words, right? And have students do that kind of mindful listening to calm themselves down. It works for you, as well. Or you can play it as a way to celebrate. You can choose a theme song for the week and play it, you know, every time you're in your car. There's so many different ways to put new music into our lives.

So that's what I want you to play with this week. You know, maybe spend a couple of days really pulling together those playlists or adding—I always think it's nice to keep adding—songs to our playlist, too. I get kind of tired of mine sometimes. Maybe you want to find some new songs, and then think about purposely utilizing those playlist throughout the week, and then check in and see if that was a useful strategy for you.

I cannot wait to hear your thoughts on all of this. So again, as always a special thank you to Brooke for making this happen. A very special thank you to Marzano Resources and Solution Tree for allowing me to have a "pinch me" job. And of course a special thank you to all of you—my listeners, my self care squad—for being so amazing.