Tina H. Boogren - Take Time for You: Self-Care Action Plans for Educators (Using Maslows Hierarchy of Needs and Positive Psychology)

TAKE TIME FOR YOU

Self-Care Action Plans for Educators

TINA H. BOOGREN

Copyright 2018 by Solution Tree Press

Materials appearing here are copyrighted. With one exception, all rights are reserved. Readers may reproduce only those pages marked Reproducible. Otherwise, no part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without prior written permission of the publisher.

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Printed in the United States of America

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Boogren, Tina, author.

Title: Take time for you : self-care action plans for educators / Tina H. Boogren.

Description: Bloomington, IN : Solution Tree Press, [2018] | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2017049714 | ISBN 9781945349713 (perfect bound)

Subjects: LCSH: Teachers--Psychology. | Teachers--Job satisfaction. | Self-help techniques.

Classification: LCC LB2840 .B66 2018 | DDC 371.1--dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017049714

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Solution Tree Press

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

T his book is for all the amazing educators Ive had the pleasure of working with over the years either as colleagues or as participants in my workshops and trainings. Thank you for relentlessly pursuing excellence for the students that you so beautifully serve and for doing the work with grace and determination amid a world that sometimes forgets just how important you are. I will forever be your fiercest advocate.

Solution Tree Press would like to thank the following reviewers:

Pam Ertel

Third-Grade Teacher

Minden Elementary School

Minden, Nevada

Stephanie Gurule-Leyba

Biomedical Sciences Teacher

Capital High School

Santa Fe, New Mexico

Amy Hysick

Science Teacher

Cicero-North Syracuse High School

Cicero, New York

Argine Safari

2017 New Jersey State Teacher of the Year

Education Advocate and Clinician

Music Teacher

Pascack Valley High School

Hillsdale, New Jersey

Jason Sickel

Choral Director

Blue Valley North High School

Overland Park, Kansas

Amber Vlasnik

Mathematics Instructional Coach

Lincoln High School

Lincoln, Nebraska

Shelly Vroegh

Fifth-Grade Teacher / Instructional Coach

Lakewood Elementary School

Norwalk, Iowa

Visit go.SolutionTree.com/instruction to download the free reproducibles in this book.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Reproducible pages are in italics.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

T ina H. Boogren, PhD, is a former classroom teacher, English department chair, teacher mentor, instructional coach, professional developer, athletic coach, and building-level leader. She has presented at the school, district, state, and national levels and was a featured speaker at the International Literacy Association annual conference and Barnes & Nobles educators nights.

Tina was a 2007 finalist for Colorado Teacher of the Year and received the Douglas County School District Outstanding Teacher Award eight years in a row, from 2002 to 2009. In addition to writing articles for the National Writing Projects The Voice and The Quarterly, she authored The Beginning Teachers Field Guide: Embarking On Your First Years; In the First Few Years: Reflections of a Beginning Teacher; and Supporting Beginning Teachers. She coauthored Motivating and Inspiring Students: Strategies to Awaken the Learner, and contributed to Middle School Teaching: A Guide to Methods and Resources and Becoming a Reflective Teacher.

Tina holds a bachelors degree from the University of Iowa, a masters degree with an administrative endorsement from the University of Colorado Denver, and a doctorate in educational administration and policy studies from the University of Denver. She is currently pursuing a master of fine arts degree from Regis University.

To learn more about Tinas work, visit www.facebook.com/selfcareforeducators or follow @THBoogren on Twitter and Instagram.

To book Tina H. Boogren for professional development, contact .

Introduction

W hile I was sitting in the back of my Weight Watchers meeting, my phone notifications started piling up. Something I said while conducting teacher training a few days prior had gone viral. (By viral, I mean within one day of the original post, a meme attributed to my name had 6,200 reactions. There were well over 400 comments and 7,300 shares on one site.) Oh boy.

Ill be perfectly honest with you; my first thought was I hope I didnt screw this up. I scrambled to the internet, typed in some key phrases, and was unbelievably relieved to see that yesnumerous articles, education blogs, and reports backed up what I had said. Thank goodness.

You see, during that teacher training, I said, Teachers make more minute-by-minute decisions than brain surgeons, and that is why youre going home so exhausted each day. Now, we can certainly argue the merits of my wording. For instance, I believe brain surgeons are called neurosurgeons, and Im not sure we want said neurosurgeons making a whole lot of decisions when theyre operating on our brains. However, my point is the average teacher makes 1,500 educational decisions every school day. In an average six-hour day in front of students, teachers make more than four educational decisions per minute (BusyTeacher.org, n.d.), and that is exhausting.

Next, I made a fatal decisionI started to read the comments. I know it was foolish. I really do know better than to do this. I once heard someone say reading the comments is like eating a sandwich that might have broken glass in it, but I did it anyway. For every wonderful shout-out to a teacher, there were (grammatically incorrect and wildly misspelled) posts about how lazy teachers are (only teaching half the year); how these data are stupid; how teachers are dumb; how my last name, Boogren, looks like booger; how teachers are overpaid; and on and onand I couldnt stop reading them. I felt exposed and vulnerable. (Let me remind you that I was at a Weight Watchers meeting, stripped down to my tank top and shorts to get on the scale in front of a strangeras if I didnt already feel vulnerable enough.)

I was devastated. These comments simply were not in line with my worldview. They didnt match my experience as a lifelong educator and an educational researcher, nor did they match the data regarding teacher retention. Those data claim that the profession loses 50 percent of new teachers within the first five years due to excruciating demands; 4 percent