This past week, my District had a "Wellness Wednesday." It was a day when teachers could dress like a PE teacher for the day and leave work after the students had been dismissed from the school. The purpose was to give teachers time to focus on their wellness and take care of themselves. For all intents and purposes, it was an amazing day that everyone appreciated. I saw teachers reading, taking walks on the track, playing pickle ball, and some just went home to nap because they were exhausted. I am so fortunate to get to work in a school district that values and respects its people enough to give them time to focus on self care and well being. We talk a lot about self care being critically important to keeping our heads above water and being mindful that we are filling up our own buckets so we don't burnout, however, what we fail to recognize sometimes is that we also contribute to the well-being of others based on our own actions that are an external force to those that we live and work with on a daily basis. Don't get me wrong, self-care is critical, but so is reflecting on what we are bringing to the table to impact the culture in our organizations. Self care is AWESOME, but it is not enough. We also need to help contribute to the well being of others.
In the current world of education, it is very hard to find folks that are willing to dedicate their lives to helping students learn and grow. One only needs to look at the current teacher shortage to realize that if we don't do something different, we are going to find ourselves in a real bind. Part of solution is contributing to a workplace culture that is focused on uplifting others rather than tearing each other down. You've seen these behaviors before, but probably haven't realized that they are detrimental to the well-being of your colleagues. No amount of self-care regimen is going to be able to fix these issues and ignoring them won't make them go away. That is why we all are responsible for addressing these behaviors so they don't permeate the culture. You might be asking yourself, what these behaviors are? Well, they are found in the shadows of our organizations because that is the only place they can thrive. If they come to light, behaviors have to be addressed and fixed, but no one wants to spend the time to do that because it is easier to just complain. The time, however, is now. Self care is awesome, but it isn't enough. We need to embrace organizational care as well.
Organizational care is the ability to pinpoint the annoyances and fractures that exist in our cultures and bring them to the light so they can't hide out anymore. It requires that we all do our part and look in the mirror to reflect on whether or not we are contributing to what is wrong and committing ourselves to stop doing some things. It means that we are going to have to take into consideration that our actions may be impacting the ability of others to care for themselves because they don't have control over our behaviors. It is only when we all make the choice to do this that we can have a high functioning team that values and respects everyone. In the meantime, the "Wellness Wednesdays" are a positive step in the right direction. We all just need to figure out how we can care for others on our teams as much as we care for ourselves.
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