In an age of online learning, teachers like you are faced with new working environments where self-care is a priority. When teaching online, you are often isolated from peers and students, work long hours, and lack balance between your work and professional life.

Have you made self-care and wellness a priority in your teaching life? Caring for yourself simply means that you possess more energy to contribute to your students’ lives. Here are some tips to help you improve your self-care and wellness routines.

Regulate Your Emotions 

Teachers are faced with a lot! From learning new technologies to ensuring student engagement, teachers are under constant pressure to perform better in online learning. Teachers should adopt positive practices and habits to manage any anxiety that may arise from such pressure.

Use a tool like the emotion wheel to label your emotions and take informed decisions to act on them. Note that joy, sadness, acceptance, fear, surprise, disgust, and other such emotions can be labelled to avoid reactive behavior. 

Talk about these emotions and learn to change them using other emotions. 

Take Short Breaks & Get Your Students to Take Them Too

Mindfulness and self-regulation are important for both teaching and learning. Short breaks are a great way to include these practices in classrooms. Create moments of check-ins both for your students and for yourself. For instance, you can take your students on a short check-in where the class can breathe in and breathe out together.

Take these breaks for yourself in solitude as well. Try to take five minutes at lunch to simply check in with your body, complete a breathing exercise, and inculcate mindfulness.

Your Routine Matters in Online Learning

With the transition to working from home, teachers often lack strong routines to guide their day. Routines can help cultivate positive habits from emotional check-ins to short breaks, and extending to meal times and time blocked for exercise. 

A good routine can also help teachers block time for work so that they can clearly differentiate between work time, family time, and self-care time. Don’t forget to set reminders on your phone to really get your routine rolling. 

Your Wellness in Online Learning is in Your Hands

You now know some tips to ensure self-care in online learning. To learn more about how you can care for your mental health and those of your students, visit the blog written by Dr Purohit, Vice Principal of Delhi Public School Warangal.

Pay attention to these tips and take care!