Self-compassion for teachers 

It is true that the teaching profession attracts generous people. Teachers are generous with their time, dedicating extra hours to planning, marking and creating to make their students enjoy classes and learn in the best way possible. Teachers are generous with their colleagues, often helping to share materials, bring in cakes and biscuits to the staff room, and attend meetings after hours. Teachers are also generous with parents, taking the time to help them to understand more about their child’s progress. Yet, many teachers are not generous to themselves – they easily get stressed out, blame themselves if a lesson doesn’t quite go as planned, focus so much on their profession that their personal lives can be negatively affected. This is why, on this ‘Teacher’s Day’ on 27th November, I would like for teachers to think about, and then hopefully practice, self-compassion. 

What is self-compassion? 

When a family member, friend or colleague goes through a tough moment in life and you feel nothing but a sense of concern, and wanting to help and support that person, this is showing compassion, not judgement or pity. Self-compassion is to direct that love towards yourself when you face similar hurdles, rather than being angry at yourself, telling yourself off or feeling inadequate. It also involves facing the problem and the feelings involved, rather than ignoring it or burying it inside yourself where it will eat away at your self-confidence and sense of worth and will likely manifest itself later as anger. 

Why is it important? 

Living a life where your inner critic’s voice is the dominant voice is not a nice way to live! Nobody would choose that, and yet so many of us fixate on the negatives, rather than the positives. For example, if we had a good day at school and then one thing went wrong, we would fixate on that one thing rather than remembering all the good that had come before or after it. Such thinking can out us into a bad mood, cause anger, depression or a feeling of wanting to give up. It is interesting to note is that students are very perceptible to how their teacher is feeling, and it has implications for their learning. A study carried out by Moskowitz & Dewaele, 2019 showed that how students perceived the contentment of their teacher was directly and positively linked to their attitude, motivation and relationship with their teacher. If we can practice self-compassion, we will directly be able to help our students learn better. 

Self-compassion stages 

Self-compassion has been theorised to have three components, each with a positive pole and a negative pole: 

1. Self-kindness versus self-judgement. This is where you would talk to yourself as if you would a student – you acknowledge a mistake for what it is but do not let something that happened consume you.
2. Common humanity versus isolation. This is connected to the common phrase: ‘a problem shared is a problem halved.’ By seeking out people to socialise with and talk to, you can be reassured and be helped but keeping away from people will only put the problem front and centre of your thoughts. 
3. Mindfulness versus over-identification. This is where being calm and centred is better than over-dramatising a problem, thus letting it consume you. 

 How can I start to be more self-compassionate? 

It is really difficult to change deeply rooted habits, and to be self-compassionate is to start a long process of change, but one that is really worth it. There are great books and courses on mindfulness and self-compassion that you can read and attend that will offer you much better insight and help than I can write in this blog. However, if you want to start right away, here are some practical tips to begin with: 

1. When you make a mistake, talk to yourself as you would a friend – be compassionate, rational and kind. I often find talking aloud if I can’t find a friend lets those emotions out into the universe and I can vocalise my what-ifs and doubts to help myself to rationalise what happened, rather than let it be emotion-driven.
2. Breathe. Breathing in for 5 second and out for 10 seconds helps the oxygen get to the brain, the adrenalin to calm down and I can process things much more calmly, rather than over-identify (see step 3 above).
3. When you leave the classroom, say out loud to yourself one thing that you were happy with or grateful for that day to focus the attention, rightly, on the good aspects. You can also write this thought down in a diary and then you can have a collection of good memories of the school year. This can also help you to write nice reports too at the end of term as you have a record of some great things achieved in class. 
4. Do something active. Doing sport (don’t groan!) truly does help. It doesn’t have to be a marathon but getting off the bus two stops earlier and power-walking home gets the stress out, the endorphins up and you feel much better. 
5. Seek out people to feel better – have a coffee, play board games, go for dinner. Get distracted, and as time passes, you’ll see it wasn’t that bad whatever was causing you stress.