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February 11, 2025
Amber Chandler explores the importance of prioritizing health, recognizing personal limits, and allowing others to help lighten the load. Packed with insights and practical strategies, this piece is a must-read for any educator looking to recharge and bounce back stronger.
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As educators, we are often concerned about our students’ stamina (or lack thereof), their lack of resilience and the “invisible backpack” of problems they often carry. I absolutely feel for them, often trying to ease the load. I think most of us do. However, I think we are often oblivious when it comes to our own stamina (or lack thereof), resilience and “invisible backpack.” January, as we all know, had 459 days, it was a long year—you know all the memes and jokes, but the truth is this: January knocked the wind out of me, and I saw it with many of my educator friends too. I don’t remember it being this bad before, but let me tell you—indulge me—I’ve never been happier to embrace February, which in Buffalo, N.Y., isn’t always the friendliest of months.
My January had two snow days (yeah, but disruptive too, right?), a Bills loss that broke my freezing city's heart, a sinus infection, bronchitis—and to top it off, I had to have two teeth pulled. One of them was a wisdom tooth that was partially pushing through my gum. For reasons that never became clear, my dentist numbed my mouth, but I was awake without laughing gas, while these very rough extractions took place, and saw actual thread stitch me up! But I survived, right? Well, it turns out I’m allergic to the pain medicine I was given and had to call my husband home from work because I couldn’t get up off the floor where inexplicably I felt the least terrible, to let the dog out. I missed an entire week of school. If you’ve ever missed school when you least expected it, I know you can feel my emotional, if not literal, pain. So here I am: I need to bounce back. We’ve all been there. How is that going to happen? I’m going to actually pay attention to myself. Here are some ideas about how I’ll bounce back and maybe make a few changes in 2025. I’m not a big fan of resolutions, but I do love a good plan.
I’m generally healthy, but I need to admit I can’t go as fast as I have been since I began kindergarten in 1980. The sinus infection and bronchitis, I’m sure, were exacerbated and wiped me out because I am terrible at slowing down, saying no, and any form of admitting my weaknesses. I am, unfortunately, one of those who have glamorized “busy” and celebrated the grind. (I’m working on it in 2025!) We all need to reclaim our time and take care of ourselves before we get too sick to go to school. What if we didn’t go to school when we felt icky, rested up instead, and let our immune systems get to work while we binge Netflix? What if we didn’t schedule all manner of self-maintenance appointments during our breaks or in the summer? What if we acted like our health was the most important thing? Ask anyone who has had a health scare, and they’ll affirm that it is sometimes the only thing. Our bodies will eventually make us shut down if we don’t do it on our own. Remember in college how we were always sick when we came home for Thanksgiving? It’s because we ran ourselves into the ground. Repeat after me: I shall not glamorize unhealthy habits like “pushing through.”
As far as 'pushing through' is concerned, I think it is fair to say that if you are still a public educator today, you have resilience.
Share My Lesson has a great community with free health and wellness resources. Within that community is the No.1 Wellness Resource of 2024, an amazing webinar “Dimensions of Wellness: Self-Care for Educators.” Our jobs are different from others because we are responsible for other people’s children, so learning to balance that responsibility with taking care of ourselves is essential.
As far as “pushing through” is concerned, I think it is fair to say that if you are still a public educator today, you have resilience. It has been a tough time to be a teacher, and I don’t think it is going to get easier anytime soon. We are the lifeline for some of our students, and deciding to stay in the classroom is our own form of resistance. We need to realize that COVID-19 impacted every aspect of our life, and sometimes we overlook that we have a specifically relationship-driven job; and that means we are managing our kiddos at home and at school. For those of us who feel that we used to be able to handle more, we’d probably be right. However, when a global pandemic shuts down the world, the political landscape is a dumpster fire, and we are constantly cast as either the “superhero” or the “villain,” it takes resilience to keep bouncing back. We are doing just that!
The old adage of “you can’t pour from an empty cup” is one that we’d all be best served to remember.
Dawn Czaja’s blog “Keep the Cape—Teachers Are Not Superheros” is an eye-opening read, which highlights that our “superhero” resilience is often at the expense of our health and our time. On average, the blog explains, educators spend 12 hours of “overtime” trying to meet the needs of our students. The old adage of “you can’t pour from an empty cup” is one that we’d all be best served to remember.
In my role as union president, I often know about the difficulties a member is facing and work to help ease the load. Over and over though, I find that the people with the heaviest backpacks don’t always let on to the rest of the world that they are carrying around bricks of burdens. Teachers caring for their aging parents, the mental health of our teenagers, the disruption to a spouse's job, bills coming due, the cost of everything skyrocketing, and the constant anxiety we are feeling right now are indeed a backpack of bricks. While it is tempting to pull our superhero invisible cloak over that backpack, we have to allow those around us to help.
In these trying times, we must allow others to help us—to give them that chance to do good-—without feeling weak.
In 2021, I lost my dad, my brother and my brother-in-law within three months of each other. None of those losses were from COVID-19, but since they happened then, there wasn’t closure and mourning in the ways we are used to. Did I mention that an unlicensed driver ran a red light and totaled my car while I was leaving the hospital? Or, that my role as union president was all encompassing while trying to deal with some serious issues in my district? My backpack wasn’t only heavy, I needed to hand it off to someone else or at least set it down for a bit.
If you know me at all, you know I don’t sit things out, I love challenges, and I am very good at compartmentalizing my personal problems while out in the world. Yet, thanks to many of my union members, I was allowed to slip that backpack off for a little while and catch my breath. I don’t know who started it that summer, but there were a few weeks when I’d go to the mailbox and there’d be thoughtful cards, funny notes, gift cards to my favorite restaurants, and even a spa treatment. An edible arrangement, beautiful windchimes, and flowers were all dropped off on my porch, and I never found out who sent them. I have never before, and maybe never again, will feel the relief of others carrying my backpack for me like that or simply making me put it down for a bit. In these trying times, we must allow others to help us—to give them that chance to do good-—without feeling weak. Instead, once we catch our breath, we should look around and help someone else whose backpack is too heavy. We can, and should, lighten each other’s load.
Taylor Ann Gonzalez’s blog “Unpacking Teachers’ Invisible Backpacks” is a thought-provoking piece that examines how teachers may actually have difficulty fulfilling Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. Surprised? She challenges us to think carefully and ask ourselves if we know the answers to these questions:
I loved this blog because I think we often forget that we have needs! I am going to “bounce back” by consciously paying attention to myself. What are my needs? How far can I stretch without breaking? When can I help others? I’d love to hear how you “bounce back” from difficult times as a teacher.
Stressed? Tired? Frustrated? Join Amber Chandler for this free, for-credit session. She will share strategies that will cut all the busy work in half. Tips for grading? Yep. Tips for time management? Yep. Tips for Serotonin seekers? This session has it. Teachers have repeatedly been asked to do more with less, all while gathering data about it!
We are bringing fitness instructors, social-emotional and mental health leaders, and nutritionists together so we can collectively “workout” and de-stress our bodies and our minds.
