Please enjoy this interview with Stephanie Dougherty, a principal Lafayette-Pershing Elementary in Salem County.

Please enjoy this interview with Christine Improta, an educator at Weymouth Public Schools in Atlantic County.

Please enjoy this interview with Yvonne Reitz, a principal at Howard Yocum Elementary School in Maple Shade School District.

If you think it’s difficult managing students in a structured classroom, consider what it’s like in a large mechanical room with tools that could seriously injure. Listen to how Trevor Geisz, an educator from Mercer County Technical Schools approaches his HVAC-R class.

Please enjoy this Q&A with educator Nicole Cocco, about the life and work experience in a New Jersey school district. She is interviewed by the TeacherCoach representative, Mark Gallo.

Please enjoy this Q&A with educator Nahrwold, Nicholas, about the life and work experience in a New Jersey school district. He is interviewed by the TeacherCoach CEO, Dr. Jared Scherz

Please enjoy this Q&A with educator Devon Murtagh, about the life and work experience in a New Jersey school district. She is interviewed by the TeacherCoach CEO, Dr. Jared Scherz

As the holidays approach, we are reminded about the goals we have yet to accomplish. New Year’s resolutions are one time we universally reflect upon the future we wish for. Here is a short story to help you begin your process, so we can improve the likelihood of meeting these goals and fortifying ourselves in the wake of unhealthy stress. This conversation takes place in a teachers lounge, somewhere in NJ.

Ms. R: This time I’m really going to do it.  No more junk food, and no more extra weight.  I’m also resolving not to take so much work home with me every weekend.  I have to get a better work/life balance.

Ms. I: I hear you.  I’m hoping for a healthy year too and looking forward to creating some special memories with my son. He is 5 already! I have set an intention to make healthy choices and slow down when I’m with my son.

Ms. R: I do this every year.  But this time it’s going to be different.  I want to lose 20 pounds and work out three or four times a week so I can be the size I was when we first got married.  I have a high school reunion this year and I want to be able to hold my own with my classmates.

Ms. R has set some firm resolutions for herself.  She has identified what she wants to change and has a plan for how she’ll make it happen.  Ms. I, at first glance, doesn’t seem to be as focused.  So who’s more likely to see the changes she hopes for in the new year?

Let’s take a closer look at what’s happening.  Ms. R is focused on what she sees as problems she wants to fix.  She knows a lot about what she doesn’t want and some idea of where she hopes to be – 20 pounds lighter and perhaps not grading papers on the weekend.  So she’s holding two sets of information in her head at one time, what she wants to leave behind and where she hopes to be, or, what exists in the past and what might exist in the future.  Ms. I also has a vision for what she hopes for in the coming year.  Because she hasn’t started from a place of fixing a problem her attention is focused on the change she hopes to experience.

So who’s more likely to be successful?  Ms. R. has a specific number of pounds she wants to shed, so she can easily measure when she’s a quarter of the way there, a half, etc. Ms. I’s goal to be healthier in the coming year seems to lack a measurable outcome.  What constitutes greater health?  How will she know she’s on track?

Imagine we’re back in the lounge a couple months later.  Ms. R is picking the cheese off a piece of pizza some parent has provided for the staff.

Ms. R: I know I shouldn’t have this.  In fact, I don’t know who I think I’m kidding, I’m going to eat the crust anyway.  I am so bad at dieting! I lost 7 pounds in January, but I put them all right back and then some!  It’s all the stress of this job.  It just gets to me. How about your ‘intentions’?  How do you work on those with all these tests to mark?

Ms. I: It really is tough.  I hate when I have papers to grade at night.  My son and I have a little game we’ve been playing lately when I bring work home.  He puts on my old reading glasses, gets out his coloring book and starts circling the words and letters.  Then he writes A++++ and laughs and laughs!! It helps make the work seem less intrusive.   I also tend to eat a little more during exam season.  I’ve been trying out new healthy recipes, though and the family seems to approve.

The challenge Ms. R is having is that she is not trying so much to BE something, rather she is trying NOT to be what she currently is.  All of her attention is focused on what she doesn’t want.  Our actions tend to move in the direction of our focus.  Think of the Pink Elephant experiment.  If I tell you that for the next three minutes you must NOT think of a Pink Elephant, that pachyderm is going to creep right into your thoughts – if even to note that you are most definitely not thinking of it.

Ms. I’s intentions allow her to imagine and hope for changes. Her energy is future focused and the desire is present for her in her daily routines including preparing meals.  She hasn’t stopped taking work home, but her intent to make memories with her son has shaped how she meets that demand.

What is likely to happen in December?  Ms. R may or may not have been able to shed the pounds.  If she has lost anything less than the 20 she resolved to lose, she is likely to count this as a failure.  She may feel resentful of the work she is still bringing home, possibly increasing how out of balance her work and life feel.  If she stays mindful of her intention, Ms. I will make moment to moment choices throughout the year that are directly related to the change she wants to see.  As she sits to write her lesson plans, she is aware of her intent to create memories with her son and actively looks for ways to attend to him and incorporate him into what she’s doing. Her intention becomes a force of energy rather than a chore or obstacle and is likely to lead to a more sustainable change long term.

So what intentions do you plan to set for the coming year?

We know this school year represents the unknown. We don’t know how health will trend, how student behavior will evolve, how the public will support educators, or how our our resilience will be impacted.

This is a quick note to let you know that we are here to provide support and are always seeking creative mediums and content areas. If you have suggestions, please let us know. You can write to us directly at info@teacherooach.com.

We are looking forward to working with you again this year.

The Problem

We are a society of quick fixes, conveniences, and immediate gratification. Our intrinsic inclination to avoid pain and seek pleasure makes us susceptible to reflexive decision making, setting the trap for a cascading effect of more complex problems.

Whether it’s putting in stents for heart disease or prescribing medication for anxiety, we have a healthcare system that encourages dependence without exploring the etiology of dis-ease, helping to make us amongst the wealthiest yet sickliest countries in the world. The drug companies, medical device manufacturers and corporate healthcare insurers profit off our quick-fix myopia.

Fast Food Genocide is a powerful book by Dr. Joel Fuhrman warning us about the dangers of processed foods, another convenience-turned-deadly syndrome. When inflammation, reportedly instigated by sugars, salts, fats and chemicals, causes the majority of our health problems including childhood obesity, heart disease, strokes and cancer, we don’t ask why. Instead of exploring our diet we jump on the carousel of emergency room visits and pharmacology.

Education has also been influenced by this trend of immediacy. With declining academic achievement on the world stage, we turned to testing and standardization of curriculum. While we made testing companies wealthy, we did little to help educators better engage with regressed and infantilized students. In class we have cut back on writing assignments because English teachers are too busy to grade 30 papers and now we have a generation of kids who can’t construct a simple cover letter. And we have turned to technology to make learning fun without any idea how to discern the plethora of data available to them.

While this brief article is not focused on medicine, nutrition or education, it is important to understand trends taking place across society. Our 280 character movement is not learning pith, but a dumbed-down manual on short cuts that bleed us of our tolerance for distress.  Our low threshold for emotional pain is the primary factor in nearly all psychological distress which we seldom consider. Our inability to endure unpleasant feelings (what many call negative emotion) is analogous to hidden damage done by inflammation and depleted probiotic production. In fact emotional stress and physical dis-ease are inextricably connected.

It isn’t reasonable to expect classroom, school or district leaders to protect the well-being of students when there is so much suffering among the adults. Schools look for help, considering outsourcing prevention or intervention, but there are too many competing products and services with too little time or expertise to adequately vet the right one. Experienced leaders may realize the need for support with a strong paradigm but most will be seduced by cost or quick application.

The Solution   

If we prioritize etiology as the foundation of any solution, we decrease the risk of falling into the immediacy trap. If we ‘treat’ the underlying causes of dis-ease instead of the symptoms, empowering the ‘patient’ to become the expert, we have a new model of wellness. Empowering people to take charge of their well-being is the first step. Understanding how nutrition feeds our immunity allows us greater agency around health, much the way we can curate student voice in stimulating engagement.

When people feel empowered with knowledge and understanding they are better positioned to determine what they need to learn and how. If K-12 developed ecosystems where older students learned how to create learning for younger students, we could help unburden educators, address shortages, and infuse new energy into the system. Esther Wojcicki and her CEO Ari Memar are pioneering that very paradigm through their Tract App. The medical school model of see one, do one, teach one can also work in primary education. And, this same model can be used to promote mental health and SEL in a similar manner, saving teachers the unfair burden of being classroom therapists.

It’s time for a meaningful change in how we approach teaching and learning, both to grow resilience in the wake of spiking mental health problems (which also give rises to school violence) but also to improve academic success. We simply won’t have enough educators and support staff to maintain our antiquated model of education and the ones who do endure are too close to burnout to maintain their current level of responsibility. In order to help educators become facilitators of learning, they will need support both personally and professionally to evolve this new role.

The support we provide currently isn’t enough and in some instances made it worse. Teachers got tired of hearing about self-care during the pandemic because it felt prescriptive to them. “You should meditate or do yoga” many would say with good intention. The degree of stress saturation was too much however to believe reducing the source or improving the remedy was or is adequate for improving resilience. Educators need opportunities to understand their duress, recognizing how to get their needs met without overutilizing their protective mechanisms. This is ultimately the definition of SEL or more aptly, psychosocial emotional learning, which is part of Prosilience (the art of growing our tolerance for distress).

Strong PSEL programs incorporate equity, mental health, organizational health, school violence prevention (bullying, suicide and more), as well as recruitment, retention and burnout for the adults. Effective prevention and intervention includes the way we differentiate between real and perceived threats or how we fortify our ego strength. Our intra and interpersonal skills are a result of what we learn about ourselves, and are only valuable when we can apply them reflexively because they make sense.

Time is not on our side to escape the allure of immediate mental health solutions. Our growing reliance, dependence, and addiction to technology is the latest quick fix plaguing our society and much like the innovation of opioids during the civil war which alleviated suffering on the battlefield, it quickly became an obsession out of control (and continues today at epidemic levels). Technology is having a deleterious impact on our mental health including concentration, attention, and mood. With the pandemic serving as a catalyst for sensory deprivation and stress overload, the impacts of this tech addiction-induced a sharp spike in mental health issues.

We can’t look to government bodies to solve this problem. The same people who subsidize corn, sugar and wheat instead of carrots, legumes, and seeds will put profits before wellness. We can’t look to school boards, parent-teacher organizations or even vendors to solve this problem for us. Expertise is lacking and opportunities for profits influence bias. It’s well worth it to take time this summer and read about the importance of adult SEL, helping adults to embody important principles of living as opposed to implementing another curriculum. SEL is a lifelong journey requiring self-examination, which can then ready us for new ways of getting our needs met.

SEL is not, or more accurately, should not be a convenient system of skill building for students. That’s like saying that exercise alone (for the kids) will improve the entire family’s health. Skill building is generally the very last step of personal growth work we introduce to stressed people and needs to follow understanding of the “why.” Unless we want to repeat the same patterns in how we respond to stressful situations, which beget largely the same outcome, we require a multimodal perspective that inspires self-generated solutions. Those answers will come when educators become facilitators who can inspire rather than bludgeon with information.

Here is what we know for sure. Health, physiological and psychological, is heavily influenced by lifestyle. We know that education continues to be among the most stressful jobs in the country. We know that stress impacts telomeres (in our genes) which shortens our lifespan. And we know that quick fix solutions are not sustainable solutions for any of these problems. Let us ensure that that we don’t get led astray by tempting offers to solve our mental health crisis, but instead look with a more critical eye toward rebuilding from the devastation of these past two years.

Stephen Cappello is the Superintendent of Cinnaminson School District in New Jersey. He is well aware we are in a long cycle of rebuilding, requiring greater attention to community well-being. He isn’t convinced however that anybody has the answer to how to accomplish this but remains open to looking for support that is anchored in theory and amenable to regular evaluation. This guarded openness is a thoughtful leadership approach to growing our school communities.

In the meanwhile, as we iterate new approaches to growing resilience that don’t dilute the important missions of academic success, let’s not reinforce the widely adopted model of societal sickcare inside our schools teaching children that quick fixes and fast remedies are the answer. Whether it’s punitive responses to student behavior, sugary foods in the teacher’s lounge bringing temporary happiness and long- term misery or buying expensive SEL programs that don’t address the larger picture of mental health, we need to do better by our educators and subsequently, our students, in order to break the toxic, quick-fix culture we’ve created and cultivate one of sustainability and longevity.