If you’ve ever flown on an airplane, you’ve seen the flight attendants explain what to do in the event of an emergency. (I’ve always thought this was an unsettling, yet necessary, way to start a flight.) In the event that the cabin pressure should drop, oxygen masks will drop out of the overhead compartment. If this happens, the flight attendants say, “Please place the mask over your own mouth and nose before assisting others.” The point is, you can’t take care of others unless you’re taking care of yourself.
This is a great metaphor for teachers. A teacher can’t take care of others, primarily students, unless he takes care of himself first. We need to put the mask on before we can put the mask on our students. So, if we’re not taking care of ourselves physically, emotionally, psychologically, and even financially, we’re going to be in the best condition to take care of our students and teach at our best level.
With that in mind, I’m setting off on a mission to learn how teachers, myself included, can take better care of themselves. Personal care has not been a great quality of mine in the past, but I’m determined to change that over the coming months.
I found a fantastic article in the New York Times titled “How to Be Healthy, in Just 48 Words.” As the title suggest, it contains health tips in just 48 words. It is such a wonderful, concise article to get started. I decided to use it to reflect on whether my habits are healthy or not and identify where I can start making improvements. Below are the 48 words from the article and my personal rating for each. I scored myself as excellent, okay, and needs to improve.
Don’t smoke (2). Excellent
Get vaccinated (4). Excellent
Avoid trans fats (7). Needs to improve: I’ll be honest, I don’t really pay attention to labels as much as I should.
Replace saturated fats with unsaturated if you can (15). Needs to improve: Same as trans fats.
Cook from whole ingredients — and minimize restaurant meals (23). Okay: I do try to use whole foods as often as possible, but could improve in this area.
Minimize ultraprocessed foods (26). Okay: I do like to eat ice cream but otherwise not too bad.
Cultivate relationships (28). Need to improve: There are many times I put other areas of my life above taking the time to cultivate relationships. It’s a definite weakness of mine.
Nurture sleep (30). Needs to improve: I’ve always been a night owl. Typically I go to bed around midnight and wake up at 6 a.m. This is definitely an area where I need to improve.
Drink alcohol at most moderately (35). Excellent
Exercise as often as you can enjoy (42). Okay: I love running but haven’t been great about getting out as often as I’d like.
Drink only the calories you love (48). Okay. I recently quit drinking Coke. Trying to only drink water and tea right now.
Identifying areas where improvement is needed is the first part. Now comes the real work.