Amy L. Eva - Surviving Teacher Burnout: A Weekly Guide to Build Resilience, Deal with Emotional Exhaustion, and Stay Inspired in the Classroom

Surviving Teacher Burnout is an invaluable resource for any educator! The structure around weekly self-care activities make this book especially practical, and an incredibly accessible way to cultivate ones adult social and emotional learning (SEL) competencies while fostering well-being.

Meena Srinivasan , executive director of Transformative Educational Leadership (TEL); and author of SEL Every Day , Teach Breathe Learn , and Integrating SEL into Every Classroom Quick Reference Guide

Amy Eva shares nuggets of wisdom gleaned from research on mindfulness, positive psychology, emotional intelligence, and flourishingand translates them into manageable and engaging action steps for educators. Surviving Teacher Burnout offers an easy-to-use road map for busy teachers that unfolds gracefully over fifty-two weeks of practice. This book offers the gift of a year filled with opportunities for greater compassion, empathy, and self-care, and one that is sorely needed in this moment.

Patricia Broderick, PhD , assistant research professor at the Edna Bennett Pierce Prevention Research Center at Penn State University, professor emerita at West Chester University, and author of Learning to BREATHE

Surviving Teacher Burnout is a hopeful, timely, and practical guide for teachers today who, in the face of unprecedented levels of job demands and stress, are seeking tools for self-care and for rekindling their passion for teaching. This easy-to-use, month-by-month guide is chock-full of wisdom and evidence-based practices that can support all who work in education not just to survive, but also to thrive.

Robert W. Roeser, PhD , Bennett Pierce professor of caring and compassion at Pennsylvania State University

What a timely gift to the profession of teaching! This book turns the big idea of self-care into practical, research-based strategies that educators can use to hit the reset button on their happiness in their careers. The weekly focus makes it so easy to use for busy professionals to not just survive, but to thrive in their careers. Highly recommend for not just teachers, but anyone working in schools!

Rebecca Branstetter, PhD , school psychologist, and founder of The Thriving Students Collective

Surviving Teacher Burnout is timely, relevant, and necessary. In these unprecedented times as teachers face the most difficult challenges in our history, Eva offers hope and proven strategies for building resilience by developing emotional mastery and applying it to improving our classroom interactions in ways that reduce stress and inspire learning. Highly recommended!

Patricia A. Jennings, PhD , professor at the University of Virginia School of Education and Human Development; and author of several books, including Mindfulness for Teachers

In the midst of one of the hardest times to be an educator, Surviving Teacher Burnout becomes an essential tool for educational professionals looking to reconnect with their purpose, build their resilience, and reclaim their well-being. Full of research-based and practical exercises, this book will become a daily companion for many teachers.

Lorea Martnez, PhD , award-winning founder and author of Teaching with the HEART in Mind , and faculty at Columbia University Teachers College

Now is a time like no other for a book aimed at helping teachers weather these unprecedented times, and Evas Surviving Teacher Burnout is a must-read for teachers who wish to have access to the information on evidence-based strategies for not only reducing their stress, but cultivating their own inner strength and resilience. Through its week-by-week, twelve-month guide, this book is a treasure trove of practical strategies that will not only reduce stress, but inspire teachers to be their best possible selves.

Kimberly A. Schonert-Reichl, PhD , NoVo Foundation Endowed Chair in Social and Emotional Learning, professor in the department of psychology at the University of Illinois at Chicago, and coeditor of Handbook of Mindfulness in Education

Publishers Note

This publication is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information in regard to the subject matter covered. It is sold with the understanding that the publisher is not engaged in rendering psychological, financial, legal, or other professional services. If expert assistance or counseling is needed, the services of a competent professional should be sought.

NEW HARBINGER PUBLICATIONS is a registered trademark of New Harbinger Publications, Inc.

New Harbinger Publications is an employee-owned company.

Copyright 2022 by Amy L. Eva

New Harbinger Publications, Inc.

5674 Shattuck Avenue

Oakland, CA 94609

www.newharbinger.com

All Rights Reserved

Cover design by Sara Christian

Acquired by Wendy Millstine

Edited by Jennifer Eastman

Indexed by James Minkin

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data on file

Contents

Dedicated to all educational professionals working on behalf of students

Introduction:

Growing into Hope

Why did you pick up this book? You may feel world weary, exhausted. You may be asking yourself whether teaching is the job for you. Yet you want to feel hope. Despite your worst days, you may often feel committed to your work and your students, yet you crave some emotional sustenance for the days and weeks ahead. Your well-being may be critical, yet larger educational policies and practices leave you feeling helpless and deflated.

The fact isteachers everywhere are experiencing burnout and demoralizationfeeling dispirited, losing confidence and hope (Santoro 2018). The top words theyre using to describe their feelings are anxious, fearful, worried, overwhelmed, and sad (Cipriano and Brackett 2020). While no one wants our pain to be contagious, this predicament can affect our students.

As a long-time educator, Ive experienced all these emotionsoften in cycles (across days, weeks, months, and years). Surrounded by students for much of my life, Ive craved time and space to reconnect with myself, my purpose, and my pathway forward. Sometimes those moments of awareness arrived when I lay on my back in my dark cubby of an office. Other times I simply sat on the beach watching seagulls glide on pockets of wind. Regardless, Ive learned that every time I decide to mentally slow down and live a more deliberate, conscious lifequietly present to both the beauty and suffering around meIm more grounded, peaceful, and dedicated to more hopeful, energizing exchanges with my students and colleagues.

Do you have moments of reckoning when you ask yourself, What do I need to move forward with hope in this career? You can decide to prioritize your well-beingits not something that happens to you. You gather your courage and the tools you need, and you take another step. This daily commitment is a gift to yourself and your students. Your steadfast presence sustains them each day as you journey together, and they respond with energy, creativity, and growth that reinvigorates you. Teaching can be an upward emotional spiral again.

Research tells us that educators who practice mindfulness and other strategies for navigating challenging emotions report improvements in personal well-being and the ability to provide emotional support in their classrooms (Iancu et al. 2018). In fact, theyre also more efficient in their use of instructional timeand their students tend to experience higher levels of motivation and engagement (Jennings et al. 2017). But knowing this isnt enough. Many educators struggle to commit to self-care practiceslargely because institutional demands leave them with little time and energy to invest in themselves. There is a lot that we do not control as educators, yet we can draw on evidence-based strategies to navigate the day-to-day social-emotional dynamics of teaching.