Take Care of Yourself!

My 250th Check-in on August 8, 2016. 

As we are getting ready for the upcoming school year (some of us in our minds as we relish the last days of summer, some pre-planning, and some already in the midst of students),  I  wanted to take a few moments to remind myself  about the relationship that I need to continue to build with myself.  My next step will be to build relationships with my students and colleagues, but first I need to take care of myself, aka teacher self-care.

 Teaching is an incredibly demanding job like many jobs where you are care-giving. It gets intense responding to the needs of students throughout the school day.  My work week sprints from the starter gun on Mondays to the finish line on Friday. When I started doing yoga, I just scoffed at the idea of laying down for ten minutes on a mat to breathe. I rarely had ten minutes to pee during the day much less breathe.  Self-care, however, is a valuable component to my teaching life.

I do Camp Gladiator most days as part of my self-care routine. Based on the photo to the left and my current data, I have spent a minimum of 135 hours doing CG this past year. I will add about 45 Sundays of net-walking and an assortment of swim days at the springs and the beach.  I can sprinkle in days spent hiking too.  All of that motion adds up. During my best of self-care weeks, I workout at least 5 times, the worst three times.  I think do a solid job of physical self-care.

Reading each night is a my form of mental self-care.   I read each and every night,  some nights more pages than others. I am sure the number of books by my pillow is annoying to my husband at times and I often wake up with my glasses lost in the blankets, but reading nightly is my self-care ritual. My daughter has joined me in this practice since she was born, which makes it seem a little less selfish as a parent.  I say this because self-care can feel selfish, but it is a valuable practice to model this for your kids.

My self-care is a work in progress though. Last year, I made a conscious effort to do no work for my day job on Saturdays.  I tried to live my Saturdays throughout the year as summer days.  I also hermit-ed on Sundays afternoons by getting my exercise and grocery shopping for the week completed by 10 am.   This year I resolve to write more, blog weekly, attend that yoga\mediation class that I have been researching for four months.  These are some steps I want to take to better my care and the start of the school year is always a fine time to do that.    How will you put yourself first this upcoming school year?