ABSTRACT
“Teachers influence their students not only by how and what they teach but also by how they relate, teach and model social and emotional constructs, and manage the classroom”. Intuitively, administrators and educators know that self-care is good for teachers’ efficacy and for their personal quality of life. A teacher’s self-care practice, for example, might set them up to have the patience and the capacity to connect with students more frequently. The delayed benefits make teacher self-care and, consequently, teacher–student relationships challenging to recognize at that moment without extensive and long-term tracking of students. Many teachers conflate behavior management, social-emotional learning, mindfulness, and self-care practices. Modeling self-care and building relaxation into the school day can be simple and easy. There is no need to rearrange desks or burn through instructional minutes with lengthy transitions. As is the case with many efforts in education, teachers’ self-care is an iterative process without a silver bullet.
