ART WORKS FOR TEACHERS PODCAST | EPISODE 012 | 34:11 MIN
Don’t Just Survive… Thrive.
What does it REALLY mean to be an effective teacher? Author and former educator SaraJane Herrboldt challenges us to get curious about this question and consider that effective teaching isn’t about staying late and working more. Instead, being effective might look like leaving work at work and setting some new boundaries for ourselves. Tune in as we explore what’s in our control, how to make situations work for us instead of against us, and how to have mini-moments of mindfulness throughout the day.
Enjoy this free download of the Rise Resilient resource.
Susan Riley
Well for those people who may not know of your work, can you just give a brief introduction of who you are and your latest work so that we can kind of dive in?
SaraJane Herrboldt
Yeah, absolutely. So I, you know, I, I like to start not with a career identity title, but just more of like, for as long as I can remember, I have been someone who is really curious and loves to gather information and also find myself in positions that I call kind of like an in-betweener, kinda bridging a gap from one place to another.
And so naturally you… I started my career in education. I worked in education for 14 years, and as a parent and as an educator, you know, living and moving in, breathing in the world of school systems, I became really familiar with the impact that stress and trauma can have on an individual and how it’s actually a frequent visitor that we don’t give a lot of attention to. And so from that, again, just asking questions, my curiosity, leading me to wanting to find ways that we can better support and address this disruption that shows up on a daily basis. So that led to me seeking out a variety of things. The list is quite long there, but the, some of it.
You know, engaging in research and learning for myself that led to access to other modalities that foster supporting wellbeing. And so taking that into the classroom initially as an educator and then as a coach for educators and now more. Currently in addition to coaching educators and still supporting them, I’m also doing some clinical work so that if the need can’t be met and addressed specifically within a school system, that there are, there are ways to continue to support an individual outside of that.
Susan Riley
Wow. Wow. That’s amazing. So what we’re, we’re gonna get to your book in a moment. So we’re gonna, we’re gonna chat about your book, Don’t Just Survive, Thrive. Yes. Which I’m really excited to dig into because there’s some, some big nuggets in there that I want us to talk about, but I’m curious what, was there anything that prompted you to have this shift?
My mother calls them the tweener years, where whenever you move from one yes, one area to another in your life. Was there an impetus or a way that opened the door for you to move into this work around mental health, wellbeing you know, social emotional focus from the classroom? Was there something that started that?
SaraJane Herrboldt
Yes, there was it, was it, you know, really, quite honestly, it was just out of seeing a need continuously within myself, within my students. My partner is an educator with my colleagues, right? So it kind of just felt like, as I was gaining this information and my awareness was growing and I was advocating for my own children to be in circumstances that were trauma informed and very supportive.
I started recognizing that, you know, just as a parent, the health and wellness of my kids is really dependent on the health and wellness of me as their parent. Simultaneously, the health and wellness of our students is really connected to the adults in the room, and in this case it’s our educators. And so I recognized like the conversation was definitely gaining momentum, but it was only able to go so far and I just wasn’t willing to settle for it, not going further.
And it, and it again, it felt as though a curtain was pulled back and I suddenly had identified that this wasn’t just a singular experience, it was a collective experience and just out of pure desire and a need to advocate for myself, for my children, for the, you know, the people that I feel really, really passionate about supporting continuing to pursue it and as I’m pursuing it, recognizing that the conversation didn’t always go into, Okay, yes, we know that stress and trauma are present. How do we respond? It was more of like, we know they’re here. Let’s create this environment, but not the next step of like, Well, how could we be a little more preventative?
How could we shift some of our systems? How could we get creative and think differently so that we’re not having so many conversations that have to be responsive, but can be preventative. And so out of sheer determination and just continually seeking more, it, you know, it led to a lot of conversations happening and, and I’ve realized again, like this, this conversation that I was having with myself and with a few others really was growing echoes, and it was becoming, to me really clear that this is the conversation that we needed to bring in to the collective and start having with more and more people and trying to create space where it, it’s not such an isolating experience that we can kind of normalize, like, Hey, we’re all here feeling some similar things. And, and so I just, you know, I very much steered myself in a direction of trying to gain access to, you know, sitting with people who were ready to have conversation, creating space for those who were maybe questioning, but still curious. And that has just perpetually led from one thing to another, because I think the reality is we all, regardless of whether we’re little or big in a support position or an administrative position, like every human being desires to be seen and heard, and to know that what we’re experiencing is not this crazy journey, like it’s very unique to us, but that likely there are other people navigating parallel journeys and, and perhaps that knowledge can help alleviate some of some of what feels really big and overwhelming as we move through it.
Susan Riley
Yeah, for sure. And I think one of the things that I wanna chat about today with the, your book, Don’t Just Survive, Thrive, the… what I found super powerful about your book, Sarah Jane, was how practical and purposeful it is for teachers when like many other people during the pandemic.
I started to read a lot of books about burnout. Yes, yes. You know, we had a lot of conversations about burnout and what that felt like and looks like, and this year is so weird for educators because it feels like everybody else in the world is like, Great, we’re back to normal. Yeah. But literally I was just having a conversation 20 minutes ago with one of the, our members on my staff.
Just got back from a trip from a, a local school who said, you know, the second graders and the fifth graders are really, really struggling this year. And those teachers are really, really struggling to support them. And when you think back, it’s because, you know, they were, they were either, they’ve never experienced school normally before because of the pandemic, right?
In the case of the second graders or the fifth, that third grade year is typically when you go from, you know, everybody taking care of you to more independence, and they never got that. So now, those teachers are struggling to teach those skills. And so while the rest of the world may feel like it’s gone back to normal, many teachers do not, and they are still struggling with the idea around burnout, whether or not to stay or go, and the feelings of overwhelm.
And so while I was reading all of these books, I was like, this is all great and everything, you know, but a bubble bath is not gonna cure this for people. And I’m kind of tired of hearing the words self care and burnout, but what does that mean and what does that look like? And when I picked up your book and I dove into it, I was like, Ugh, Sarah Jane gets it. Like she understands that it’s gotta be more than this. So that’s one of the things I wanna dive into with you today is some of these specific strategies, tools, things that you’ve learned around our mental health and how to prioritize ourselves and what true self care means. And so I guess maybe my first question actually cycles around to the idea of an effective teacher because I think this is what starts the, the setup for our burnout and our overwhelm is this idea that we have to be a highly effective teacher.
And so I’m curious from the book, like what is a, what is a highly effective teacher? What does that mean? What does that look like in a healthy way?
SaraJane Herrboldt
Yeah. Right. Well, let’s, let’s start with how I identified It’s not healthy, right? I think just societally and then especially in the world of education like we’re led to believe the effective teachers are the ones who basically live, breathe, eat, sleep at school, and all they do is school. And that, you know, educators have a really unique professional identity and that our job is all consuming all the time. And a lot of our effectiveness is the feedback that we’re getting.
Our students from our parents that we’re working with, from our administrators, from our colleagues, and so throughout my career, it was always kind of seen as like, Oh, you’re this amazing, incredibly effective teacher. If you’re showing up early and staying late and joining committees and giving more of yourself and eating lunch with your students and doing all of these things, and really again, right then were led to believe like, Well, we can’t take sick days.
We can’t vacation, we can’t do these things. That’s letting people down and that’s not showing up and doing the work. And as time went on and as my awareness of stress and the impact that it has and how it can lead to trauma and burnout, I started to think like, what if the effects of teacher is not the teacher showing up and joining all the committees and doing all the things and putting in all the hours, but the person who actually has boundaries and says it’s 4:30, I’ve been here since 7, I’m gonna go home and have quality time with my family or a healthy meal or movement or rest, and I’m gonna trust that even if I don’t have the perfect color coordinate classroom or all of this work done in a way that I’m still going to show up tomorrow and be effective because I’m the healthy version of myself, which allows for me to have greater capacity to receive and absorb whatever these little people bring into the room, right?
So when we’re showing up at such a level of depletion, we don’t have a lot of capacity to take on and be flexible and fill in for the teacher who can’t make it. And there’s a sub shortage and there’s nine behaviors that happen in the hallway, right? So it just starts to really drain the individual. And I think, you know, there, there’s a little bit of this idea of like, well, stress is always gonna be present. Absolutely. But if we’re not addressing and dealing with that stress, it turns into chronic stress and that turns into perhaps burnout. And that burnout turns in you know, that moves into perhaps incompetence at doing our job because we’re not thinking clearly and we’re not well rested.
So for me, I think the value and emphasis on being an effective educator is, yes, I want someone who’s passionate and cares deeply about their kids, but I want them to also remember that there is more to them than being an educator, that they’re a human being first and an educator second. And the effectiveness that they bring into the room is really rooted in how aware they are of where they’re at, how they can respond to their own state, how they can advocate for help so that they’re not reactionary with a kid when we have a big, stressful situation, or how we can even do communication with our administrators of saying like, I value this. This is important to me and I simply don’t have the ability to take this on. So what would you like me to prioritize rather than all of that mental energy of behind the scenes problem solving. So I think it’s, it’s been something where, again, this is hard because our society outside of the education, feeds the narrative of, you know, giving your all is the effective person, the person staying in it for the long haul, putting in 60 years, 40 years, 15 years now, right?
Like we, we set that up on a pedestal of high value. But a, again, I, I really like what feels important to me and what I want to value is how well are you taking care of youth so that you can show up and do this good, important hard work. Because it is unpredictable to a certain degree. And our ability to respond to that is very much rooted in, like, our ability to respond to ourselves with some love and some care and not just put it all off until like Christmas break or summer break or you wait until there’s a vacation to suddenly remember like, Oh, let’s check in with all these medical professionals and make sure that my body is doing okay.
Susan Riley
Yeah. I know that it, you know, I was an educator for over a decade in the classroom. I’m still an educator, but I was in the classroom for 10 years and yeah.
And I remember, and this was a really hard habit for me to break. In fact, I’m still working on it. The idea of feedback and where I get the feedback, that positive feedback of, you know, oh my gosh, you put so much work into this. This is amazing. Led me to do even more. Right. Over the top. Over the top all the time.
Yes. Because I got my worth from the feedback and I think, I hope that, that nobody else does this, but I’m sure that we all do that where we get our feedback that we don’t trust our own feedback enough and we don’t listen to our own feedback enough. It took me a long time to understand that everybody else’s opinions are their opinions and they don’t necessarily matter good or bad.
Right? Yeah. That’s easy to say when it’s a bad opinion. Yes. But it’s hard to say when it’s a good opinion because you wanna take that in and be, but the danger of taking that in is that you then continue to overwork and burn out and. Allow their priorities to be your priorities rather than listening.
It’s such a hard habit to break, and I think it’s something that many, many, many teachers struggle with is that we want that gold star, right? We want yes cause we’ve always done that. So what are some of your favorite strategies or tools or ways that we can start to break that cycle.
SaraJane Herrboldt
Yeah, that, that’s a really wonderful question.
And you know what’s standing out to me as I listen to you, right, is this sense of self of like, if we don’t have a strong sense of self of who we are, then we really are dependent and reliant on everyone else defining that and creating that structure for us. And so, you know, I think I say this a lot because it’s a value I hold, but I just, I think like curiosity is such an important practice.
We find it having such great value in the classroom, right? When our kids are curious, they’re often engaged, they’re often asking good questions, they’re seeking out more information. And I think for us, that posture of curiosity, is a really good place to start. It’s, you know, we can really quickly define something as good or bad, but what if we stepped back from defining it as good or bad and just got curious of like, why do I feel the need to show up at 7 and stay till 6 and still take home 3 bags and work 7 more hours for why do I feel frustrated?
You know, on Thursday and so tapped out mentally and emotionally, is there something going on that it could shift and change previously? You know, because again, in the world of education, we’re often handed these ideas, right, that come packaged really nicely, right? And it’s like, you’re gonna get this training, you’re gonna do this thing, you’re gonna be highly effective teacher, your kids are gonna grow.
But it’s not, it’s not like a really laid out step by step process. This is a really individualized process and. And it has to be individualized for it to be effective and responsive to us as human beings, right? We are not all the same. And that is the beauty of our world, is that there is a lot of variance and difference, which then also means like what is helpful for me may or may not be truly helpful for you. I can tell you what has been effective for me, but ultimately it’s gonna, it’s gonna come down to you being willing to engage with yourself, be curious with yourself, ask questions. Consider what is, and does that sit well with you, or do you wanna make some changes?
And if you wanna make some changes, what do you have capacity to change, right? We can dream big and we can say, I’m gonna change every one of these habits, but we also know it’s not just external work that has to happen, it’s internal work, and ultimately some of this remains out of our control. Right. I sat with a bunch of educators last week who are feeling the stress and strain and you know, they’re kind of hitting this lump month of October.
And so we had numerous conversations of what is within your control right now is where we should put our time and energy, right? Like we cannot shift and change what’s going on up ahead of us, three steps away, two miles away, right? We start here and then as we grow our capacity and our energy, then we can start influencing that.
So I think starting with curiosity is my number one recommendation. And, and then out of that, you know, what has shown us through research of having great effectiveness is some practice oriented around a mindfulness approach, because that increases our awareness. So we start with curiosity, asking questions, just acknowledging what is, and then engaging of mindfulness practices, kind of growth, our awareness.
Okay, I’ve asked this question, now I’m gathering. I’m making observations. I’m noticing what’s going on, and I’m able to respond to that rather than react to it. Right. Again, education is such a fast-paced career. Yep. A lot of decision making has to go on. A lot of information has to be held. We are multitasking machines in a world of education and so that, in order to do that and to do it really well, it often means we have to, we have to disconnect a lot from ourselves. We have to disconnect from feelings of hunger or you know, just these basic interceptive type experiences of like, Oh, my heart is racing right now. Why is that racing as Johnny is yelling or this is happening. We disconnect from so much of ourselves. So that engagement and mindfulness is really like getting our bodies and our brains back online and in connection to one another so that we aren’t just quickly multitasking and reacting, but we can take moments to pause and. You know, I worked with an educator last year who was able to identify like a, a space that is really calming and like downregulating for her is near water.
She loves being near the beach and she had a lot of emotionally charged behaviors in her classroom last year. We couldn’t change what was happening, but we could change like her environment in. That allowed for her to impact how she was responding. So she had pictures of her favorite beach locations, like up on every single wall.
And when things would start to escalate, she would place her eyes on this picture and pause and take three deep breaths. And that would, you know, again, like she’s not able to control what’s coming into her room, but she was able to really connect with herself and respond in a way that allowed for her to live in alignment with her values and to maintain that she was still prioritizing relationship with this particular kiddo and responding in a way that wasn’t really reactive and painful.
So, curiosity, you know, some aspect of mindfulness and I offer that too. There’s a misconception that can be held of like, okay, mindfulness, Like I’m gonna have to wake up at 5:00 AM and…
Susan Riley
I was just gonna say like, I’m loving your definition of mindfulness because so many people say, Oh, just practice mindfulness and it feels like you’re gonna sit in a room for five minutes with your eyes closed, thinking about your belly button. And it’s not that at all.
SaraJane Herrboldt
Absolutely. I mean, it can be that right. So, so much more to it. There’s so much more to it. And I think for me, early on in engaging in this practice, it was another aspect of like, Oh yeah, I haven’t yet perfected this in the world of education. Like I’m still a novice learner and I haven’t yet perfected this.
Like I’m not a master teacher in this practice. I have to grow in it. And then I just started to think. Realistically , they’re only 24 hours in a day and I need to figure out like, yes, I could have a great meditation, mindfulness experience at 5:00 AM. What about at like 1:30 in the afternoon when they’re coming in and it’s been a rainy day and there’s no recess and it is chaotic?
Like how do I make that not be such a compartmentalized part of my day and try to integrate it and carry it forward. So for me it was really of like, again, being really curious with myself of like, I, I love what was going on at the 5:00 AM sit, but I need to carry it through my entire day because I’m with a lot of people who have gone through, you know, this was pre pandemic, who have gone through chaotic mornings, who have had stressful events, and I don’t have time to check in with every single one of them. So how do I stay connected to myself? How do I stay regulated so that I can respond to them in a regulated way? And, and so for me, it just started becoming like, you know, habit stacking what, what are things that are already in my day that are going to stay there regardless of whether it’s a rainy day or regardless of whether it’s, you know, me rushing up the door to work or me going to drop off kids at school and putting things in place where it was just like this little pause and.
And a reminder to like, just take a deep breath. Remember to breathe. Remember that you are a human being. So some of the things in the book, right, I, I talk about walking through doorways and recognizing like I was on the go constantly towards, well, during all of my career, but I have to pass through a doorway.
So is there a way that I can just slow that process down and take a deep breath to notice where my feet are at, to check in and be like, emotionally, where am I at? What’s going on? Because that’s the thing I hear so much when I work with educators. There’s no time, there is no time, and I get that and I wanna validate that experience, right?
Like we continuously have more and more piled on our plates. I get that time is limited. But when we continue to believe that there is no time, we will not respond differently. So then we are just repeating a cycle that we already know is not working and that’s not how we approach our students. Right? So I wanna bring self-compassion back if we know something’s not working with a student, we fight endlessly to get curious about what will work for that student. Why are we not seeing for ourselves. So let’s try to just invite in these little rhythms and routines. And what I started to do was just pause before a doorway, take a deep breath and move, and then eventually caught on.
And I think I share this in the book of like then my, my own kiddos that I’m interacting with. My students are like, pausing before they go into the lunchroom and taking a deep breath. And that, and that’s the ripple effect that that stress can have. And that’s the ripple effect that healthiness can have, right? Like we, people pay attention, they feed off of what we’re doing. And it, it doesn’t have to be like this huge reorganization of life, just start small, invite something in. And then when you feel like that’s going really well, where else can you invite something in? Right? We don’t expect kids to show up in kindergarten and start reading at third grade level.
We give them stair steps, right? We do these zones of prep development. Same thing for us. Where can we start small and take one step? And then when we have gotten to that, take another step.
Susan Riley
Wow. I mean, and I think it’s so powerful because it’s so small. So like one of the things that I loved in your book was the idea of sentence, sentence stems for positive self talk.
Like that’s the idea of, and you just talked about this, that we would, we would never say some of the things that go on in our heads to our children. We would, we would fight endlessly for them. How do we then not give ourselves that same gift, right? So I thought the sentence stem strategies that you were talking about for positive self talking, if, if you could talk about that for just a minute, I think that would be really helpful for people because it’s such a powerful component for us.
SaraJane Herrboldt
Yeah. Yeah. So you know, part of my career was working with English language learners, and so sentence frames and sentence stems were like the go-to for structuring and supporting. And I think as I, towards the end of my career was doing more social, emotional, supportive work, I recognized like, yeah, what, you know, it’s, it’s that reflective aspect of what I’m maybe doing unconsciously or consciously is I’m ticking off. Like at the end of the day, here are all of the things that didn’t go well, or Here are all of the things that I need to get done, or, here are all of the things that I need to fix and make better. And so just a simple pausing and checking in and seeing like, you know what?
What is something that I can be proud of from today? I’m, I’m, I’m proud of the fact that when this felt really disruptive and chaotic, that I was able to just sit and maintain and breathe through it. Yes, we’re human. So don’t we want to be forgiven for when we make mistakes? And can we forgive ourselves for when we make mistakes or have a shortcoming?
You know, again, the same grace we’re offering our students, we should be offering ourselves. So I think it’s just that little check in, and again, I feel like such a simple practice becomes so powerful. Teachers are moving at a rapid, fast pace all the time, and we are trained. We are trained to see what isn’t working.
How do I fill in the gap? How do I make growth happen? How do I make it better that we almost forget to slow down and, and celebrate like what is working? What is happening and going really well. So the, the sentence frames, you know, I don’t know if there were any that particularly stood out to you and resonated with you, but it even that idea of voicing that out loud if that’s on the door before you walk out or, or in your car and you just check through that. Right. And acknowledge the full humanity of who you are. You’re gonna have things to celebrate, You’re gonna have things that you wish were different, and you, you can also offer yourself some grace and for forgiveness in, in the midst of that.
I think it’s, it’s so essential for us to consider those messages. We speak to ourselves and, and again, teaching can be a siloed experience and the only time we get feedback is when we’re being evaluated and, and, and being critiqued. So what feedback can we offer ourselves in the meantime? Right?
Again, students, it’s not the job of students to give us that feedback, but again, if we’re not doing some of that work for ourselves, and we’re working with middle school students and all they have to share is not ideal, right? We’re gonna be thinking pretty lowly of ourselves and, and so checking in and, and considering like again, the message.
Speaking to myself, how I’m offering some feedback and some ability to reflect and process. It feels really, really important to consider.
Susan Riley
Good. Well, Sarah Jane, thank you so much for everything today. Can you let people know where they can find you and learn more about?
SaraJane Herrboldt
Yeah, absolutely. So my website and my Instagram handle are both rising resilient.
The website is risingresilient.org and that has a lot of information about the book, how to get in touch with me if you’re curious about coaching work. And then the Instagram handle isn’t as frequent because life is busy and sometimes they don’t keep that up. But also rising resilient.
Susan Riley
Great. Thank you so much.
I really appreciate you being with us today.
SaraJane Herrboldt
Yes, thank you for having me.
SaraJane Herrboldt’s website – risingresilient.org