A Collective Boost for Educators’ Mental Wellness
School Administrator, June 2022

One thing that surprised me most about positivity psychology research is that I rarely get to research places that start out happy. In fact, most of my research has occurred in high crisis or challenging situations.

I started with depressed Harvard University students, then worked with banks around the world during the financial crisis. I have done work in the wake of school shootings, during the Boston Marathon bombings, with schools in Flint, Mich., in the midst of a water crisis and now in the middle of a pandemic.

What I’ve learned over and over, even in the most severe situations, is that in times of crisis, positivity and well-being matter more than ever. This is true for teachers and nonteachers, parents and students.

With concerns about stress, burnout and work-life balance at the forefront of our teaching ranks, prioritizing mental health in a school district is essential.

Group Well-Being

Two effective ways leaders can make it easier for people to incorporate well-being habits into their lives are helping individuals connect and helping individuals learn together.

Group support, research suggests, is the single most important intervention for psychological trauma, and that is what we’re going through right now. People need to understand that what they are experiencing is a normal response to an abnormal situation. As for those already connected to others, it’s important to maintain those connections.

Our social structures have been altered during the past two years. Many social structures have disappeared. These structures normally create supportive connections — in meetings, in the teacher’s lounge, in class and at coffee shops. In their absence, we must make available structured well-being activities.

That’s the approach taken by Cardinal Community School District in Eldon, Iowa. The district’s Project Spark attends to the mental well-being of teachers and staff, according to superintendent Joel Pedersen. The program focuses on four areas of health: emotional, physical, financial and spiritual, supported by tactics in my books The Happiness Advantage and The Orange Frog.

To support staff in all four of these areas, people joined growth groups that matched their interests and beliefs. The groups take part in yoga and meditation, joint family events and financial management classes.

“Our growth group through Project Spark opened the opportunity for completely new conversations within our staff and provided a community for members to ask for support and prayer,” says Taylor Torres, a 3rd-grade Cardinal teacher and spiritual health coach. “The deeper relationships we formed allowed us to come alongside each other to work through personal struggles and future goals with a spiritual lens.”

Learning Together

People don’t typically make positive changes alone or in isolation. Within an organization, an ecosystem approach can support the well-being of all stakeholders. While choices are individual, learning together in a variety of formats can be most effective.

Aimee Sivak, at-risk coordinator and director of Cardinal’s before- and after-school daycare program, found a similar sense of community by partaking of Cardinal’s yoga classes. “The community of staff who bought into the idea of yoga at work supported me to keep going,” Sivak says. “Poor posture from screen time, long commute time and demands of the job left me needing an outlet. I appreciated learning yoga at work because it left me feeling physically and mentally refreshed.”

Such a positive mindset comes from collective exercise because the behaviors and attitudes are reinforced when a group acts together. This allows for collective ownership over the new mindsets, routines and ways of acting and working, which supports interconnected success and well-being.

—  SHAWN ACHOR