Educational Leadership-Mental Health for Educators

This month, the theme for articles from the journal Educational Leadership is 'Mental Health for Educators'.  Typically, it requires a subscription to access these articles, but this month, ASCD is opening these up for anyone who might be interested. 

One article by Phyllis Fagell is on "Coping with Change and Uncertainty" and focuses on 6 actions to regain a sense of control during tumultuous times. 

1. Reframe your personal narrative.
2. Prune and preserve relationships.
3. Build community and foster collegiality
4. Be specific when naming emotions
5. Exercise agency.
6. If you can't fix it, aim for acceptance.

Many of us have seen the quote "Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle".  Susan Johnson writes about "Caring for Colleagues in Crisis" and offers some concrete examples for what 'taking care of each other' means.

• Create an environment where mental illness has no stigma
• Share mental health resources with colleagues
• Inquire sensitively when a colleague is sick
• Listen...without platitudes or false hope
• Drop off a pick-me-up
• Offer to watch their children

And Doug Fisher and Nancy Frey frame self-care as an important tool for building resiliency in their column "Regaining Compassion Satisfaction".  They suggest that during your next collaboration meeting, you might want to open with some of the questions below:

• What's on your mind?
• What a recent challenge or success?
• What are you thankful for?
• What are you looking forward to?

This column also includes a short video on how educators can build resiliency in times of stress.

As we enter the holiday season, you might want to consider giving yourself the gift of some quiet time to review the ideas and resources in any of these articles.  Also, remember if staff members or their families need additional assistance, please contact our Employee Assistance Provider, Employee Family Resources (EFR) at 800-327-4692. EFR staff are available 24/7. Beginning with the 2020-2021 school year, staff are provided with six confidential, in-person assessment and counseling sessions with a licensed mental health therapist.  Each member of your family is eligible for counseling services for each separate incident or set of circumstances within a rolling 12-month period.

The full table of contents for this month's Educational Leadership may be found below as well as a link to the full issue.

Mental Health for Educators

Feature Articles

Reader's Guide / There's Always More to the Story

Sarah McKibben

How Cognitive Distortions Undermine Well-Being

Chase Mielke

Taking time to address our "thinking traps" is a form of self-care all educators can use.

Coping with Change and Uncertainty

Phyllis L. Fagell

How educators can regain a sense of control during these tumultuous times.

Opening Up About Mental Illness

Sydney Chaffee

A Teacher of the Year's struggle with anxiety opened her eyes to the stigma around educators' mental health issues.

Breaking Through the "Burden of Strength"

Kel Hughes Jones

Black women in education are often harmed by conflicting stereotypes. More responsive and accepting school cultures can help.

Teaching While Black: An Open Letter to School Leaders

Sharif El-Mekki

To better support Black educators, schools need a stronger grasp of their realities.

Being Accepted, Not Just Tolerated, Is Good for Mental Health

Peter DeWitt

To truly thrive, LGBTQ educators need to feel a sense of belonging in schools.

The Mental Balancing Act for School Leaders

Baruti K. Kafele

One educational leader's story of learning to acknowledge and manage stress.

When Netflix Isn't Enough: Fostering True Recovery for Educators

Allison Rodman, Alissa Farias and Shannon Szymczak

Schools must attend to the social-emotional needs of educators, not just students.

Morale-Boosting Educators

Naomi Thiers

How three Connecticut teachers came up with a plan for educators to tackle schoolwide SEL needs.

Interrupting Doom Loops: Reflections on Mid-Year Teacher Exits

Henry Seton

How do we break the cycles that send promising young educators out of the profession too early?

Fueling Teachers' Passion and Purpose

Ian Parker Renga, Frederick Peck, Ke Wu and David Erickson

Educators need collaborative opportunities to renew their love of learning, not just to review data and rework lessons.

Caring for Colleagues in Crisis

Susan Johnson

A co-worker may be silently caring for a loved one with mental illness. Here's how to help.

Columns / Departments

Research Matters / Restoring Teachers' Efficacy

Bryan Goodwin and Susan Shebby

Teachers' sense of efficacy has taken a hit—and it's closely linked to well-being.

Show & Tell: A Video Column / Regaining "Compassion Satisfaction"

Douglas Fisher and Nancy Frey

We need to be highly resilient now—which means practicing self-care. Watch the video.

Leading Together / We're Not OK, and That's OK

Jill Harrison Berg and Henry Oppong

Educators must cultivate empathy in trying times.

Confronting Inequity / Honoring Black Educators' Right to Heal and Thrive

Dena Simmons

Schools need to affirm Black identities always, not just when it's trendy.

The Resilient Educator / The Lowdown on Burnout

Elena Aguilar

It's real, but it can be overcome.

Whole Child Spotlight: Supporting Educator Mental Health

Sean Slade

Workshop Wednesday: Tiered Task Cards

One of the many challenges of the pandemic has been the shifting between learning pathways.  This week's Workshop Wednesday will share a technique to help with these shifts from Bill Ferriter called "Tiered Task Cards." Tiered task cards have many benefits, including:

• Support student ownership of learning
• Transfer well between learning pathways
• Connected to unit outcomes and standards
• Aligned to the learning progressions of proficiency scales
• Can include interdisciplinary tasks that support authentic learning and transfer
• Provide an appropriate level of challenge for all students

Examples will be provided at both the elementary and secondary level as well as for different subject areas.  If you would like to participate, please join the workshop this Wednesday at 7:30 AM (secondary) or 2:30 PM (elementary) at the Zoom link below:

Workshop Wednesday-December 9th

Newsela Follow Up: 12 Days of Good News Challenge

Thank you to those who were able to join Workshop Wednesday to review some new features in Newsela. Today's blog will have some follow-ups to these sessions, including:

• Newsela's 12 Days of Good News Challenge (including Pear Deck support)
• New features to support integration of Newsela with Google Classroom
• The recording of Wednesday Workshop for secondary teachers
• The cross-curricular guide with Newsela text sets for elementary teachers

12 Days of Good News Challenge

I think we can all agree that 2020 has been a challenging year.  However, we have all found 'silver lining' moments that include how people have dealt with the pandemic as well as unexpected bright spots. 

Newsela has created 12 special text sets that highlight good news from 2020.  These text sets each support a theme of news from throughout this past year. In addition, Newsela has partnered with Pear Deck to create Daily Decks that support these text sets with ready-made pre-and post-reading activities.  For example, one of the 'good news' articles is "How Bored Families are Getting Through The Coronavirus Lockdown"  highlighting a trend called the "Quarantine Olympics". 

The support this article, there is a prepared Pear Deck that teachers may use, edit, and add to when assigning and discussing this article with students. 

As we move to winter break, we have an opportunity to refocus on the stories from the year that we can truly celebrate.  If you would like to join the Newsela Reading Challenge, you may post examples of sharing these resources with students using the #12DaysofGoodNews hashtag, and be sure to add the #sepolk hashtag as well.  More information on this reading challenge may be found at the link below.

Newsela 12 Days of Good News Reading Challenge

Newsela and Google Classroom

Teachers can now search, preview and embed Newsela article content while creating assignments on Google Classroom. Students will also be able to access the same search tool to embed content into discussion posts. This update helps Newsela align even better with Google Classroom and can save some steps and 'clicks' for both teachers and students. To add this feature, please follow the steps below:

1. Go to the Chrome Web Store to install the Newsela Chrome Browser Extension
2. Select Add to Chrome to install the extension
3. While creating a Google Classroom instructional activity select the Add/Link option and then the Newsela icon to launch the search experience
4. Once you find something for your students, select Add Link to embed the link.
5. Note: This process will only assign the selected article on Google Classroom. You will need to also assign the same article on Newsela to view student completion. 

Wednesday Workshop Recording

The recording for the secondary Wednesday Workshop that highlighted new features from Newsela may be found at the link below as well as on the Southeast Polk Professional Development site. 

Workshop Wednesday: Secondary Session 12.2.20

Elementary Cross-Curricular Guide

Our representative and partner from Newsela has linked text sets to support our units of study on the K-5 Cross-Curricular guide.  These text sets are linked on the document below as well as on the Southeast Polk Professional Development site. 

SEP K-5 Cross-Curricular Guide with Newsela Text Sets