Back in the day when I was doing my social work internships, I worked in a college counseling office. This was awesome because it allowed me to apply my passion for and knowledge of education to my training as a psychotherapist. Two loves bundled into one. I was in heaven.
One of my fellow interns, who had joined us from a different college counseling office, shared with our staff a ritual she had learned at that previous internship:
Every Friday afternoon, right after they locked the door to the center, the counseling staff jumped up and down together and raised a huge hurrah because they had made it through another week.
I loved this idea. I loved the acknowledgment of how hard the work of psychotherapy is. I loved the coming together of the staff to mark not just their own triumph but their colleagues’ as well. I loved the celebration. I loved the camaraderie. We never tried this in the staid counseling center I interned at, but the idea stuck with me.
Teaching is also super hard. And it tends to happen in isolation, just as psychotherapy does. You get in your rooms and welcome in a whole slew of students and close your door and concentrate and care and perform for 45 minutes or so then do it all over again. You barely have time to race to the bathroom or eat lunch.
Isolation is an insidious cause of burnout. Teachers have to battle it.
Tip #6: Celebrate with your colleagues regularly.
I think the word “celebrate” is important. It insists that this thing you’re doing, this teaching, no matter how exhausted or demoralized or befuddled you are, is important. It is hard. It can be a slog. But this is the truth about your job: It is one of the most valuable and significant things a human being can do.
Celebrating allows you to remember that last bit and dwell on it for a minute or two. Or twenty. Every week. Or, better, every day. You know how Thich Nhat Hanh encourages us to smile? Smile a lot, he says. One reason smiling is essential is that the changes in our facial muscles change our feelings. We feel better. Automatically. It’s weird. (Try it. Right now. A genuine smile, not a smirk.)
And smiling affects other people. When we smile at someone, their insides change, too. They smile back. Which means their feelings lift a little.
I wonder if celebrating, even just little bouts of it, has the same effect on us as smiling does. (Especially since celebrating tends to elicit smiles.) I’m gonna go with yes.
So how can you celebrate regularly? First, pre-arrange a meeting time and place with a bunch of colleagues at the end of every day or every week. Invite everyone in the school to join you! This is not an exercise in exclusion. The more inclusive the more effective the celebration will be!
Then join together and try any of these activities:
Do a mass happy dance (minus the shame in the video).
Blast a pre-chosen anthem and sing it together at the top of your lungs.
Swing dance. Or waltz. Or do some hip hop. Better yet, choreograph a faculty dance that everyone can do together.
Congratulate each other: “You made it.” “I know you had a hard day on Wednesday, yet here you are.” “You are awesome.” “Thank you for being you.”
Share success stories from the week. Applaud each other.
Hug and laugh and cry.
I’m sure you’ve got your own ideas. You might already do this. Please share the ways you celebrate having simply survived the week, let alone slam dunking it. (Slam dunks are fantastic excuses for spontaneous celebrations.)
You might be thinking, “Cute, Betsy, but I’m a professional. I don’t have time to celebrate. Nor would I lower myself in such embarrassing ways.”
Sad face.
Celebrating does a few things that I think all teachers, even the most professional, need frequent doses of. It’s fun. It fills us with good feelings. It stymies isolation. And it fosters detachment from emotions and experiences and negative beliefs that can drag us down over time. Practicing emotional detachment, thumbing your nose at bad beliefs or feelings by laughing and moving and joining with friends and colleagues, is another antidote to burnout.
Try it. I’d love to hear how it goes.