INDIVIDUAL – Personal Learning, Self-care & Identity
Fill out this survey to find out where you fall on the compassion continuum.
“Further, participants expressed their sense of helplessness with regard to changing larger social issues that affected their students, including the lack of adequate government funding for public education, the lack of access to mental health treatment and prevention programs for struggling and vulnerable students, the lack of parental support, and peer-on-peer bullying (both online and in the classroom).”
Phase Two Report, pg. 20
Individual interventions are self-directed strategies that build a person’s well-being. Try a well-being streak – do something for yourself that you enjoy every day for as many consecutive days as possible.
Try out mindfulness from an arts-centered lens using this curriculum developed by Dr. Mary-Ann Mitchell-Pellett.
Individual or Self-Directed strategies could include:
- Talking to friends or family about feelings of stress or distress
- Enjoying physical activities like gardening, running with a dog, doing yoga with an online instructor, playing pick-up soccer with neighbours, or training for a marathon.
- Eating nutritious comfort foods or talking time to enjoy a quiet lunch
- Implementing mindfulness strategies
- Scheduling time to prepare and organize for the school day
- Attending to other areas of self-care beyond the physical, including environmental, financial, social, mental, emotional, and intellectual health and well-being.
- Connecting and building on areas of spiritual health
- Drawing, painting, singing, dancing, or other art-based strategies
Burnout is the result of ongoing stress and increased workload on the job.
In educational settings, having more students in a class, taking on extra volunteer duties, or learning a new report card software can increase the symptoms of burnout.
Implement individual interventions as soon as you start feeling any of the symptoms of burnout.
Symptoms of Burnout
- Exhaustion
- Lack of energy
- Sleep disorders
- Reduced performance of work-related tasks
- Concentration problems
- Memory problems
- Inability to make decisions
- Reduced initiative to complete work-related tasks
- Reduced imagination or creativity
- Reduced desire to help students
- Reduced desire to help colleagues or other staff
- Apathy or lack of emotional commitment to work
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