From Susan Hopkins, EdD | Executive Director
This reflection was originally published in The MEHRIT Centre newsletter. Sign up for our newsletter to receive Susan’s latest reflections, Self-Reg insights, and updates directly in your inbox.
Some days, the hardest part of being an educator is being the person everyone needs when you are running on fumes yourself.
When I was still working in schools, I could feel it creeping in every year toward the end of October and into early November. This year I’m hearing it much earlier, and from more and more people.
Imagine how exhausting it can be hearing your name five thousand times a day while the dysregulation around you keeps building. It’s in the children and youth, and in the parents and caregivers. It flows down from our organizations and from leaders much further up, carried in pressure and mixed messages. And through all of it, we’re human beings living in a world that feels pretty unsettled right now.
And still, so many dedicated people keep showing up, in every role and under every title, giving everything they have to the children and youth in front of them. That commitment is what holds our schools and centres together, and right now it’s being stretched further than anyone can keep up for long.
Getting it from every direction
Yesterday I heard about a school where grade six is part of junior high. A new group of grade sixes walked through the doors this fall, and already a group of grade eight girls has started targeting them.
Think about everything sitting underneath a moment like that. Young people are in the thick of figuring out who they are and where they belong. Educators are trying to keep them safe, help them through it, and still teach. And those educators are humans who are still growing too, carrying their own stress into the room.
And that’s one of dozens, maybe hundreds, of areas of work in schools today, from safe schools and mental health to math scores and inclusion. The pressure comes from every side, too. It’s so easy to see why many are caught in a stress cycle. My goal in sharing this thought isn’t to bring a doom and gloom outlook, it’s in hopes that I might invite you to consider how Self-Reg could help. Because I believe that it can.
Working on the right problems
When we look at stress across Stuart Shanker’s five domains, biological, emotion, cognitive, social, and prosocial, what I hear so often is, “Yes, I see it. Now give me the strategy.” Reframing behaviour, recognizing the stress load, and reducing stressors become strategies the moment we act on them.
And by stressors, I mean from a neurobiological lens things like: sleep deprivation, being gossiped about, having someone doubt your good intentions, feeling unheard. Strong emotions like fear and frustration are stressors too, and so is a sense of injustice. Each one draws on our energy, and they add up. When the load gets too high, the brain shifts toward survival, and thinking clearly and connecting with others gets harder for all of us. A treat in the staff room mailbox rarely touches any of that.
Reducing stressors goes hand in hand with lifting expectations. To lift them, we need to understand what is getting in the way, for students and for every adult in the building. We all make the weather for the people around us, and our leaders carry a great deal of that while under enormous pressure themselves. When anyone feels they aren’t capable, trusted, or safe in their role, it undermines the very goals we share.
I have never seen educators need us to come together the way they do now. Advocate for change, and notice the people doing the work. If a teacher, an educational assistant, or a principal made a difference for your child, tell them.
World Teachers’ Day was this week. To every educator, in every role: I see you, and thank you. I hope you feel how much what you do matters.
