End Of Term – Keeping Up the #101 Self-Care Basics

As teachers we know that the end of school term comes with deadlines. It is consistent and occurs each term. At this time, it is easy to snaffle the extra time needed for reporting and marking by dropping the ball on basic self-care #101s and the aspects of our lives which actually support us.

The obvious ones are sleep, diet and exercise. In the past I have sometimes found I have dropped the ball to a great extent, almost abandoned the basics and used the ‘busy’ time as a reason to leave self-care completely behind ... I even heard a wellbeing presentation which suggested saving the pizza coupons for ‘marking’ weekends – no judgement on eating pizza but as a self-care tip, it is probably known by most, that takeaway pizzas may not offer the nutritional foundation to sustain a long weekend of working.

There is no doubt that time needs to be found to tend to the end of term requirements. But over the years of teaching, I’ve played a ‘science’ game, and discovered that instead of dropping the basics that support me, I have brought a greater focus to them to make sure I do not drop them.

Food, exercise and sleep literally ‘nourish’ me to help me through the two or three weeks of greater workload.

Tailoring the self-care basics can assist. For example, buying food that makes meal prep simple, making walks a bit shorter, and shortening my on-line exercise routines to ten-minutes. It’s the consistency in attending to taking care of our body that is important at these peak times when we are asking more of it.

The science that I have discovered in ensuring that I keep up my self-care with a food, exercise and sleep regime is that when I maintain them, somehow more time opens up to get the needed end of term jobs completed.

This makes sense to me because self-care basics ensure a stable focus and productivity that sees the work achieved in a steady way. This steady focus on work ensures that if space arises, I use it to mark a few papers or complete a few reports, rather than heading to other activities/distractions or the tendency to procrastinate, or be stressed about it all, which I’ve been pretty good at in the past.

Longer periods of time also present and are planned for in order to achieve the reporting and marking deadlines. However, having expectations that longer periods of time will see the work get done, sometimes leads to disappointment because disruptions can arise.  This ‘time lost’ can lead to distress and anxiety. Which is why combining marking in short bursts often supports to offset this tension. 

I have become highly structured and productive at the end of term. I maintain the time to cook, and enjoy these moments cooking, walking, getting ready for bed, and listening to podcasts or music. I offer myself this space because it is important, and it is the bedrock from which everything else flows.

There’s no doubt teachers are asked to accomplish a lot at the end of any school term. But not leaving ourselves or our #101 self-care basics behind or making the care for us last, is important as a foundation to support our bodies to move through and accomplish what is needed.