There is no doubt that the past years have proven that teachers are superheroes. The ability to take on virtual learning at sudden notice, face months of uncertainty, and still provide the academic and social learning students need was not easy. As teachers continue to provide attentive care to the evolving social emotional needs of students since the pandemic, it is just as equally important for that same care to be provided to teachers. As administrators, you can provide the support and encouragement your teachers need now more than ever. 

Why your teachers’ emotions are important

Some emotions your teachers are most likely feeling right now: anxious, worried, overwhelmed, sad, frustrated, and lonely. Teachers may often express feeling overwhelmed and stressed whether it be from lack of support, trying to meet the needs of the students, the expectations of their parents and balance their personal life.

The Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence studies on the importance of teachers’ emotions. Just as a child’s emotions plays a role in their ability to learn well, a teacher’s emotions play a role in their ability to teach well:

• Some emotions such as happiness and calmness creates stronger engagement and helps teachers build positive relationships with their students, whereas other emotions such as stress and anxiety can cause detachment, interfere with concentration, and an increase of a release in stress hormones that can have a negative effect on memory. 

• Our most creative selves are present when experiencing emotions such as joy and curiosity, however, emotions like fear and anger can make it more difficult to engage in creative and flexible decision making. 

• Expressing emotions like anger, anxiety, sadness or fear can be off-putting for students, they won’t feel like they can approach their teacher if they are portraying stress, anxiety, or frustration. Students will be less likely to feel safe if they are alienated by their teacher’s emotions and this can further affect the relationship teachers have with parents.

• Our emotional well-being affects our mental and physical well-being. Our resilience will be stronger if we are equipped to regulate our emotions and experience gratitude, joy, confidence, and excitement.

• The more stressed teachers are, the less engaged and motivated they might be, making it more difficult for them to set a positive example for students and their families. Overwhelming stress and poor mental health can also lead to higher teacher turnover.

Additionally, teachers may be experiencing stress over meeting their students' growing needs since the pandemic such as fine motor skills that have fallen behind, constant chatting, difficulties focusing, lack of independence, lagging social skills and self-regulation. Combined with learning losses, declining school attendance, and parent disengagement, teachers’ mission is increasingly challenging.

How do teachers want to feel at school?

During any kind of circumstance, teachers begin each school year wanting to feel supported, positive, inspired, excited, and hopeful for the year ahead. Here are a few tips for how administrators can support their teachers: 

• Be patient and have realistic expectations

When setting expectations for your teachers, make sure to ask them what they need to be successful. Together, you can brainstorm ways to ensure expectations are clear on both sides and achievable. Each day may bring new challenges and it is important for school leadership to be patient and flexible. As things evolve over the school year, you can check in regularly and review your expectations together.

• Establish a shared vision 

In any work setting, a team will feel more united when it is working toward a shared vision or goal. For schools, this may be one that is aimed toward helping students learn and grow and is also understanding of alleviating stressful expectations on teachers. Administrators can encourage a continuous dialogue during the school year through informal settings such as an idea box, a book club, or other team-building and professional learning opportunities (see ideas below).

• Communicate rules and guidelines to parents, students and teachers

Each school year presents new challenges for teachers, parents, and students. Administrators can help alleviate misbehavior and misunderstandings by providing clear guidelines for everyone. Administrators can also communicate with teachers on what these rules might look like. For example, if a parent has an issue with the lesson they should communicate with the teacher or administrator directly, rather than taking to social media to criticize. Parents might also be worried about how their child might catch up for school days missed. While some teachers have virtual learning resources readily accessible, there should be clear expectations to ensure it doesn’t create an additional burden for teachers who provided that day’s lessons in a format that requires a significant amount of work to adapt and share.

• Create a positive and supportive climate

School leadership sets the tone for the environment in which teachers work in. Establishing a positive and supportive climate early on is critical as teachers navigate new and unexpected challenges throughout the school year. Sometimes teachers just need to talk and if they are having a particularly difficult day they may need someone to listen. Having an attentive listener can be helpful to someone who finds talking through things is the best way to find a new approach to a new challenge. Some other suggestions for creating a positive environment:

• Send positive emails

• Encourage teachers to focus on the positive by participating in a Teachers’ Bingo

• Organize a sleep challenge

• Surprise everyone with a treat

• Be present for morning arrivals

• Be a positive role model

• Offer an after-school yoga session

• Organize a bi-weekly virtual happy hour or teachers’ night where you stream a show, listen to an inspirational talk or a fun comedian. You can even use themes and easy costumes! 

• For your next team meeting, ask every participant to bring a box with 5 things that epitomize their “Why” (e.g. a letter from a student or a parent, a book, a picture etc.) and share with others

• Another fun idea for a team building activity is to create a poster (or a powerpoint) where each teacher contributes a childhood photo of themselves. Everyone must then guess who’s who, you can count points and reward the winner with the printed poster for their classroom!

• Create office hours for teachers to stop by, and create a shareable spreadsheet for teachers to ask questions and see responses to other questions

• Provide extra support to teachers with students who have challenging behaviors

• Give space and time for self-care

If you have the extra staff you can send someone in to watch a class for a minute to give a teacher time to take a deep breath, gather their thoughts, and feel ready to rejoin the class. You can also share self-care ideas with your teachers.

Students' emotions may be extra strong- your teachers are feeling them too. Encourage your teachers to reach out if they need a quick break to refocus and problem solve if emotions are running high. For example, a teacher has a group of pre-k students some of whom are sleeping during rest time and others are having a difficult time calming their bodies which is distracting for the other students still awake. This can be overwhelming for the teacher going back and forth between students and extra assistance may be needed, for example by having someone take over while the teacher takes a few calming breaths outside of the classroom. 

Each teacher will have different self-care strategies that work for them. Take time to get to know your teachers and how they can be encouraged to take time for themselves, especially when they get home from work or after the school day is over if they are doing some preparatory work or lesson planning from home. When you are working at home it’s much more difficult to leave work “at work” so it is important to encourage and offer support for a work-life balance. Administrators can encourage teachers to set hours when they check emails and they can model this by setting hours themselves and inform teachers of the hours they will be no longer checking emails. These suggestions should be communicated with the parents as well to avoid frustration when a teacher isn’t replying to an email after 8:00pm or over the weekend. 

• Provide resources and training for SEL: tools that will help both students and themselves

If teachers don’t have the training, education, and tools for regulating emotions how can we expect them to feel confident with helping students with those very skills? Administrators should also be developed in these skills in order to provide the empathy and understanding teachers need. Create time for professional development in which teachers can learn more about SEL and offer resources they can use in their classrooms.

As an administrator you may also be under the stress of balancing regular school responsibilities in addition to new regulations, unexpected natural disasters, grief in your school community, and maintaining your own work-life balance. Being present for the emotions of your staff and the students may be a lot on your own emotional well-being so remember to take time for self-care and be honest to your staff about how you are feeling. There will be good days and bad days, and it’s okay to cry. Always remember to be gentle with yourself, practice self-compassion and make sure you have a support system. When you look back at everything you have accomplished over the past months, you may find strength for tomorrow.

A prior version of this article was originally published on September 28, 2020.