How teaching staff can unwind over the Christmas period.
Did you know that it not that uncommon for teachers, TAs and other teaching staff to put their pupils before themselves? Consequently, this can make many have difficulty unwinding. Sometimes teaching staff can carry the mindset of putting others before themselves into the holidays when it’s as an ideal time to de-stress.
Christmas can be a key time to feel overwhelmed for many. The pressure to do extra tasks from buying presents, writing out cards and seeing people can lead to a very long to do list. Sometimes inner beliefs of what we think we should be doing worsens it, along the notion of making things perfect. Additionally, a lot of us may worry about the cost of it all. So perhaps it’s time to challenge some of your own expectations to better manage it financially and emotionally. Its ok to scale things down and look for alternatives. For example, send Christmas emails or what’s app messages to people rather than buying cards, which you must write out and stamps to buy. Here is a link to free messaging templates, please click here
To look after yourself generally, look at our list that we have put together to help teachers and supply teachers to manage Christmas tasks but unwind too.
Teacher wellbeing tips over Christmas
- Start the holiday by getting out of teacher mode and doing something nice for yourself.
- Make a list of what you need to get done.
- Number your list in priority order.
- Estimate a realistic amount of time for each task.
- Double check that its realistic.
- Double check its essential.
- What can you delegate? May be have a family meeting and say this is what needs to be done, how can we do it between us?
- Monitor your guilt when you let others do things for you; its ok!
- If you have too many people to see over Christmas, can you group people together?
- Be mindful that there is balance of people visiting you and you visiting others. Travelling or hosting can both be tiring, have a balance.
Wishing all our supply teachers, TAs, senior leaderships teams and school heads, a Merry Christmas and a relaxing break! Remember to pay attention to your teacher wellbeing over Christmas.