Let’s move the spotlight to teachers, certainly one of our greatest assets!
When we talk about human flourishing, we’re talking about everyone in the system. We can’t have student flourishing if our teachers aren’t also flourishing.
But what might that look like? 🤔 Teacher flourishing.
Using Martin Seligman’s PERMA framework, Zachary Herrmann shares some thoughts in his HGSE article, Flourish by Design: To develop students’ well-being, teachers have to think about their own. Here’s how.
- Positive Emotion – Share positive teaching stories.
- Engagement – Fully leverage strengths to address the myriad of teaching challenges.
- Relationships – Prioritize time and space for the building of deep relationships.
- Meaning – Find meaning in an inspiring vision for who your learners will become.
- Accomplishment – Take risks and change practice.
Yes…the article is fairly light, AND I think there are seeds of ideas to engage us in reflection and conversation (regardless of our role in education).
To be honest, there was one sentence, in particular, in the article that drew me to including this as a daily provocation…=
“To gain a true sense of accomplishment, a teacher has to work at the edge of her abilities.”
This work of transforming schools is challenging and uncomfortable. But through the discomfort, the fear, the frustration we gain experience, confidence and a sense of our own accomplishment.
And isn’t that a big part of well-being and what it means to flourish? If we give in to the resistance, we sell ourselves and our communities short of what is possible.
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❓ Provocations:
If you’re a practicing educator, what are some examples of how you are consciously or unconsciously addressing the PERMA elements to advance your own well-being? What do you see in others that you could share with us and consider adding to your “well-being” toolkit?
💎 Resource:
How to Flourish (video – 5 minutes)
🧠 Mindsets:
Well-being
Self-care
💡 Area:
Leadership
📣 Drop your thoughts in the comments, or in the Facebook group, and feel free to share resources. 🔥🔥🔥
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