1 minute read
Summarizing Thoughts
from Educator Wellness
around, and once again, I would sleep seven hours a night, shun the drive-through food, have no late-night snacks, and stick to my workout routine. And as you can imagine, my new routines—the new me—lasted anywhere from one week to a few months, but never a full school season.
The daily grind of our profession would often wear me down. It was hard to get into a fixed routine during the school year when it felt as if my lesson design and delivery; formative and common assessment design and scoring; and the time and energy required by my interventions and constant communication with parents, students, and colleagues consumed every waking minute during the week (often bleeding into my weekend time with my family). The time I needed for positive food, movement, and sleep routines often felt selfish to me, and I would sacrifice my own well-being for the sake of others. Simply stated: I often placed my own physical health on the back burner.
Sometimes, however, you wake up to the reality of the choices you make. Our physical wellness routines are really internal choices. In my case, and as I document in my book HEART!, I had a heart attack at too young an age because I lived on the extremes of my food, movement, and sleep routines.31 Yet, in some ways, my heart problems were a blessing. I don’t have the choice to ignore my physical wellness routines anymore. My life depends on it.
To go deeper into this thinking and watch us (Tina and Tim) in conversation about this dimension of educator wellness, scan the QR code using your smartphone or device, or visit go.SolutionTree.com/educatorwellness to access the URLs for all videos.
Physical Wellness www.SolutionTree.com/PhysicalWellness
Working on our physical wellness isn’t easy, and yet it is the foundation that pulls together our other dimensions of educator wellness. We are a highly relationship-driven, high-energy profession and therefore need to bring our best physical selves to work each day.
Remember these core takeaways regarding your daily physical wellness routines. 1. When we feel better, we are better. 2. Food, movement, and sleep are interconnected routines.
