The Empowered Educator

1

Open the Door for Change

On a particularly busy morning in the first few months of the school year, I heard a whisper inside my head.

"Sing, Jen. Sing."

This wasn't entirely out of the blue. I was a music teacher, the conductor of the school choirs, and a lifelong singer. I did (and do) love to sing, although at the time, other than singing with my students, I didn't have time to sing my own music outside of class. Nevertheless, I did what most people do when their inner voice surfaces: I ignored it.

Instead, I scrambled to pack up my stuff, rushed to make my kids breakfast, got them off to school, got myself off to school, and launched into a jam-packed day of instruction, faculty meetings, prep time (wherever I could squeeze it in), and after-school clubs.

I'd listen to the whisper when I had more time, I reasoned. Singing was going to have to wait.

Well, the whisper kept getting louder and louder until I just couldn't ignore it anymore. I hadn't taken a voice lesson since college, but I reached out to one of my former professors and scheduled a session. Since my graduation, Carol and I have kept in touch. We often exchange recommendations for TED talks we've watched (like Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor's) or interesting books we've read (one of our personal favorites: Brené Brown's Atlas of the Heart). Carol is brilliant and I'm always learning from her, whether it's about musical artistry or where to get the best quiche in Ithaca.

Still, I was really nervous about singing for her again-especially since I was showing up just because of a whisper in my mind.

At the start of the lesson, I sat at her piano and tried to sing "Back to Before" from the musical Ragtime, but I could barely make a noise. There was this strange pressure in my chest and my throat felt tight. Even though I'd sung this song a million times before, I was totally blocked. Then, with my fingers still on the keys, a wave of emotion overtook me. The tears were forming right behind my eyes, and I knew there was no holding back.

"Sing through it, Jen," Carol said.

I did. I kept playing and singing, even while my fingers shook and my voice trembled.

"That's okay," Carol said gently. "Keep going."

I sang on until suddenly I stopped singing and started sobbing. I'm talking head-in-my-hands, snot-bubbles-coming-out-of-my-nose sobbing.

I was overwhelmed. Not just by the strength of the emotions washing over me, but by the realization that I had no idea that my body and mind were so desperate for an emotional release. Maybe I'd been so busy trying to be Supermom and Teacher of the Year that I didn't notice I'd been neglecting myself. Maybe I'd been ignoring the physical signals that had been creeping up on me, like that tightness and pressure I felt when I actually tried to sing. But when I finally noticed what was inside me, when I let my body actually feel what it was clearly desperate to feel, it was like years of stress, grief, and pain were pouring out of me. And while I was wildly uncomfortable, the release felt necessary-good, even.

Once I composed myself, I felt lighter, like a weight I didn't even know I was carrying had been lifted off my shoulders. Carol encouraged me to keep going. So after a deep exhalation, I could finally sing my heart out.

Even though it felt scary at first, I’m glad I listened to that inner voice. I’m glad I opened myself up to that moment of vulnerability. I’m glad that I took the time to simply feel what I was feeling and express it in a real, meaningful way. And I’m glad I paid attention to what I needed.

As educators, we are intensely focused on the well-being of our students. We care deeply, we work hard, and we are the ultimate doers, forever juggling a hundred different tasks and making it look effortless. No wonder people often compare us to superheroes-even though that is, frankly, a dangerous narrative to internalize. (Teachers are heroes, definitely, but we aren't invincible-you never hear about Wonder Woman needing a mental health day.)

Yet even as we're taking on the world around us, showing up and turning out, supporting our students with whatever we can, we tend to neglect the world within. Too often we completely ignore our inner voice, that inner knowing that's trying to protect us from burnout, redirect us toward a good work-life blend, and reignite the passion that inspired us to become teachers in the first place.

As a result, we hold all this tension and stress inside. We soldier on in the classroom. We prep and plan in our "free" time. We sacrifice our sleep so we can grade tests and email frantic parents, and we show up the next day ready to roll.

But is that really what it looks like to show up as our best selves and to do our best work?

If my experience has taught me anything, the answer is a resounding no. Powering through a "random" headache that we've actually had for three weeks, surviving on iced coffee and protein bars, ignoring a worsening toothache because we can't find time to get to the dentist . . . none of this is showing up at our best. Not for our students, for our colleagues, or even for our friends, partners, and kids at home. (And certainly not for ourselves.)

You deserve more. And so do they.

The only way we can keep showing up for our kids day after day, engaged and committed, is to tend to our emotional needs. As counterintuitive as it sounds, the most generous thing you can do for the people in your life-your students, your fellow teachers, your family-is to take care of yourself. Really take care of yourself. By that, I don't mean the bubble bath, massage, get-your-nails-done one-off mental health day. I mean taking care of yourself through self-awareness, self-regulation, and emotional expression at the very least.

When that inner voice was telling me to sing, it wasn't just inviting me to do an activity I found fun and distracting. It wasn't about lifting my spirits or even finding time for myself (although music offers both of those). Somewhere, deep down beyond my conscious brain, that voice knew that my body, my physical self, was out of touch with the feelings brewing inside me. When you sing, though, you can't help but engage with your physical self. You need to breathe deeply. Engage your muscles for support without tensing up. Feel grounded and firm on your own two feet even if chaos is swirling around you. (In hindsight, even the song I chose-"Back to Before"-was a hint to myself!)

Without a doubt, we educators deserve to live from a place of peace, ease, and calm. Not just to preserve our own sanity, either. The school system is rife with problems; we all know it. But systems change from the inside out-when the people within them change. And the only person you genuinely have the power to change is yourself.

The Cliché That's Actually True: The Oxygen Mask Principle

We all know that in-flight safety instruction: "Put on your own oxygen mask before helping others." You've heard it on planes, you've heard it in workshops, you've probably even read it in a few books before this one.

It's absolutely a cliché . . . and it's a powerful metaphor for what we need to remember as teachers. (Two things can be true at once, remember?):

Yes, I said as much earlier in the book, and I'll say it again now. I can't say it enough, honestly. As a teacher, as a human, you need oxygen, too. And you can't help other people-especially kids-to get what they need if you're holding your breath and powering through. Still not convinced? Imagine trying to exhale for ten minutes straight. Impossible, right? Your body isn't built for that. You have needs that require both giving (exhaling) and receiving (inhaling).

I'm going to be bold and say the quiet part out loud: Teachers are the very best humans. We signed up for the most important job in the world. We lay a foundation for every other career. We inspire curiosity. We ignite passion. We embolden creative thinkers. We foster a love of learning. (And that's just our day job!) So it's very natural that we want to spend all our time, our energy, our everything in making that happen for our students. But if we spend all of what we have and don't do the work to replenish it, then we're going to end up running on empty pretty quickly (and feeling out of breath, if you will).

Moreover, because of our deep commitment to this profession and our students, what we do becomes a part of our identity. But when we notice how teachers are praised and revered for being these compassionate martyrs, we start believing that our unlimited ability to give and sacrifice is actually what makes us special. We lose ourselves to our long list of job responsibilities and the high (and sometimes unrealistic) expectations of others. We assume that to teach is to sacrifice ourselves and suffer.

This means that often we simply don't think about shifting some of the energy that we spend helping others back to ourselves. Or if we do, it comes with a healthy side of what might be the most common disempowering emotion among teachers: guilt.

Teachers encounter guilt on the regular (amiright?).

When we take a real lunch break, we feel guilty for taking time for ourselves instead of teaching through it for students who need extra help, catching up on grading, or planning lessons.

When we go out for a short walk before or after school, we feel guilty for not spending that time on replying to parent emails or gathering data for our administrators.

When we short-circuit in front of our students because we are fed up with all our noninstructional duties, we feel guilty for taking our anger out on them.

While the guilt is understandable, it's also a choice (which we'll get to in depth later on). We start to believe that we're not worthy of love and care, that even things like taking a lunch break, eating healthy food throughout the day, or taking five minutes to go to the bathroom make us selfish or put our students at a disadvantage somehow.

Is any of this true? Of course not! Because remember: The most generous thing you can do for the people in your life, especially your students, is take care of yourself.

It's the oxygen mask principle. To be anything, to do anything, you have to be breathing. To teach-and to teach well-you have to take care of yourself.

The bottom line is, our impact as teachers (and humans in general) is always going to be greater when we invest in ourselves. Putting more time, energy, resources, and attention into ourselves expands our capacity. When we become more emotionally and mentally available to everyone in our inner circle-our coworkers, students, families, and partners-we communicate more clearly and are more purposeful with our words and in our actions. We can deal with our stress and regulate our emotions so we have more energy and resilience when things are unpredictable (which, as every teacher knows, is every minute of the day).

Maybe this idea still feels totally radical. Maybe you know this is true intellectually, but you struggle to put it in practice in real life. Especially when the stakes are high, it's so easy to default to help others . . . and end up gasping for air. (And the stakes for us as teachers-or at least the pressures around us-are often high.)

That's okay. After all, we're just getting started here. For now, we can continue to look at what we're feeling with a sense of curiosity, so we can really see what's going on inside ourselves.

Why Emotions Can Feel Scary

Humans aren't built for this high level of constant stress, and it takes a huge toll on teachers-whether we want to admit it or not.

For one thing, the educational system we work in, live in, and breathe in is on shaky ground. We teach in suboptimal conditions with not enough resources; our current kids are more anxious and depressed than the generation before them; every day there seems to be another budget cut, another contract dispute, or another discouraging news story about the state of education in our country.

On top of that, the world at large seems to be constantly in turmoil. Thanks to our smartphones and the ever-present social media, we have a front-row seat to every single local, national, and global crisis, twenty-four hours a day, school-related or otherwise.

We secretly break down whenever we're alone because the emotional onslaught we experience on the regular is much too great. Or we compartmentalize our feelings to the point where our bodies begin to succumb under the pressure. Maybe we even self-medicate with a bottle of wine or some gummies so we can be blissfully numb for a few hours. (No judgment here!)

I say all this not to complain about our situation, but to invite you to start by giving yourself grace. Whatever coping mechanisms you've developed to deal with your stress were created with good intentions. They all came from a place of protection and self-preservation. There is a tidal wave of uncomfortable feelings inside you-inside all of us. Reckoning with what is causing them can seem impossible, so we duck and run for cover. There is no shame in that at all. This is of course easy to say, but a totally different thing to take in. We are not broken or to blame for trying to power through the storm of emotions we're feeling and pretend that we're fine.

Because compounding the very real, very stressful state of things for teachers right now, most of us were never shown how to express or even acknowledge our emotions in a healthy and productive way. Our parents didn't have access to the tools or language to help us out-and neither did their parents or grandparents.

Thankfully, the tools are within our reach. Recent discoveries in neuroscience and psychology make it possible for us to teach ourselves these essential skills. By the end of this book, you'll have everything you need to navigate your emotions without fear or shame, as well as regulate them-rather than control, suppress, or ignore them-with ease.

Still, that doesn't mean that change doesn't feel scary-it very much can and often does. Moving through the world in a new, unfamiliar way can get all your physical systems sounding the alarm, making it feel incredibly uncomfortable.