“Tired, stressed, overwhelmed.”Īccording to Aguilar those aren’t even words that describe a singular emotion.
“If you ask a teacher, 'How are you doing today' or 'How are you feeling?' Eighty five or ninety percent of the time the response I hear is one of three words,” says Aguilar. She says emotions are educators’ “greatest untapped resource” because they provide information about growth areas and important boundaries. “I think there is no other conversation which has greater potential for freedom, for figuring out how we can serve kids, living the kind of lives we want to live, having the kinds of relationships we want to have than having that conversation about emotions,” says Aguilar. Teachers and school leaders can develop strategies to ensure their staff are recognizing and navigating challenges in a way that promotes health and authentic healing for all.Ĭentering teachers' emotions is a critical step that many schools miss in their focus on productivity and positivity, says consultant and educator Elena Aguilar. However, those emotions can help teachers maintain their boundaries and keep toxic positivity at bay.
One commonality between these two events is that teachers were told to ignore their emotions. “They were being told to be gracious with the kids, to understand what they're going through, it's like that wasn't being offered to them.” “The way the teachers were being treated, that's how they were treating kids,” says Casimir. Toxic positivity can also harm students, according to Arlène Elizabeth Casimir, an elementary school teacher who taught in New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and saw how blind optimism rolled down from teacher to classroom to student. And studies have found that Black and brown teachers are doubly burdened because they are both dealing with their own grief and stress while showing up to support students of color who are disproportionately affected by the pandemic. Teachers typically fall into – or are forced into – the teacher martyr stereotype. “I'm a senior person in the school and I was completely unable to lead because I couldn't function in the framework that they had created.” “Everything was framed in such an overwhelmingly positive way that I felt really alone and really unheard,” says Yannascoli. But she was concerned by this attention to mindset.* Irene wasn't trying to criticize her administrator because she knew everyone was trying their best and no one was prepared for teaching during a pandemic. Even though positivity and optimism are good things, many teachers, including Irene, were tired of being complimented while being told they have to do twice the work and risk their lives with almost no structural support. ” It’s a well-intentioned video about how reframing one’s mindset towards stress can lessen its negative effects on a person’s health.īut to Yannascoli, these were all displays of toxic positivity – a phenomenon that was acute during the COVID-19 pandemic – in which people focus on the good and reject the bad in a way that is unrealistic and borders on gaslighting.
#BLIND OPTIMISM HOW TO#
Then, her school leaders sat the staff down to watch Kelly McGonigal’s 2013 TED Talk entitled “ How to Make Stress Your Friend. They all seemed out of place in what had been an extremely challenging year. What she had experienced was in stark contrast to the meeting’s tone: bright decorations, icebreaker questions and energetic affirmations about how hard the school and staff were working. “I had a lot of concerns on a lot of levels: the condition of my old school building, whether I was going to have the support or the PPE to do my job properly and safely,” she said. So when Irene had to come into school to have in-person meetings about whether or not school buildings would be reopening, she felt even more depleted. New York-based English teacher Irene Yannascoli was already drained after jumpstarting distance learning in March 2020 and facing uncertain school plans for the fall. You can listen to this episode of the MindShift Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, NPR One, Spotify, Stitcher or wherever you get your podcasts.