Meditation…at a staff meeting?
I recently got to meditate twice, each time for about 5 minutes.
By the way, I don’t usually meditate at all. So, for those focused on data and measurement, this was officially an eleventy-gagillion increase in my five-minute meditation practice.
It felt great.
(YES I SHOULD MEDITATE. I HEAR YOU. I GOT IT.)
(The all caps sounds aggressive. I should meditate more.)
Both times, I closed my eyes. On purpose. And not out of frustration as a professional or as a parent. This was from a place of proactive self-care.
I observed my own breathing. I planted my feet under my hips. I relaxed my jaw. I listened to a calming voice and relaxing music. Then I slowly opened my eyes, looked around the room, observed 5 colors and 4 sounds, rubbed my hands together and pressed my warm palms against my own face.
If you can believe it, the opportunity to mediate arose at our monthly staff meeting. And no, it wasn’t because the meeting should have been an email. Our staff meetings are short and productive. We schedule them during a portion of each teacher lunch shift. They usually include announcements, an organizational update, and, often, a short training exercise, educational topic, or information about a trauma-informed concept.
This time, the staff meeting was about self-care. The work of early childhood education is physically challenging, intellectually engaging, and sometimes emotionally wrenching. In our community, 75% of our families are experiencing obstacles to stable income. About 30% live below the federal poverty guidelines. About 20% of our kids have been through the foster system. Teachers come to Mainspring for many professional reasons – they love working with young children; they love working with families; they love expanding language skills and encouraging critical brain development. They love the feeling of accomplishment when our entire class of Shining Stars tests as kindergarten ready – and then are sent off to start Big Kid School.
And – our teachers work here for their own personal reasons. For instance, they may want Mainspring kids to have a better experience in their early years than they had as children. They may want to teach in creative, connective, playful ways when they weren’t taught that way. They may need a trauma-informed approach for themselves.
Our teachers are emotionally-intelligent, empathetic, community-minded, mission-oriented folks. This is their superpower and their vulnerability. They feel the challenges faced by our kiddos, and by our community’s caregivers, very deeply. Most of us here have developed our own survival strategies -we compartmentalize. We power through. We overcompensate. We take on too much. So it’s important for us as an organization to acknowledge, recognize, and support teachers who experience secondary trauma, compassion fatigue, and burnout.
For this set of staff meetings, we invited a therapist to talk about self-care. This therapist provides both group and individual sessions as part of our Employee Assistance Program.
(MORE ORGANIZATIONS SHOULD OFFER MENTAL HEALTH RESOURCES.)
(That’s not aggressive. That’s just a fact.)
The therapist moved us through a brief opportunity for quiet reflection, then got us moving in our chairs or from standing. It was accessible even for those of us with physical challenges. She helped us listen to our bodies, even for just a moment. We listened to, made observations about, and tried not to judge ourselves. It was an amazing respite.
As parents, as caregivers, as teachers, and even as managers, the first thing we are told to do when someone is dysregulated is to regulate ourselves. This is more challenging than it seems like it should be. Regulate myself?! I AM A FULL-ON GROWN ADULT OF COURSE I CAN REGULATE MYSSSEEeeeeee -
Oh wait, no I can’t. Not always.
As trauma, attachment, and adoption expert Robyn Gobbel writes:
“….being in close relationship with someone in chronic protection mode, our own nervous systems can become stuck in fight-flight, collapse, or other protective states. This prolonged state of protection mode overwhelms our nervous systems, which are designed to handle short bursts of danger. As a result, we feel depleted and lack the co-regulation and support we need to care for ourselves and our vulnerable loved ones.”
Secondary trauma, or caregiver fatigue, can show up as a range of symptoms, including this list from Virtual Lab School:
Anger, sadness, overwhelm
Headaches, stomach aches, fatigue
Self-destructive behavior
Low job performance or lack of motivation
Difficulty concentrating or excessive worry
Irritability or withdrawal from family and friends
What we can do as workplaces to support our staff is provide clear, supportive communication about needs and schedule, reasonable time-off policies, regular staff trainings about stress and burnout, and tools like an Employee Assistance Program.
For an early education program like Mainspring, this is not only an investment in teacher retention, but an investment in basic services to kids and families. We are continually working on ways to learn about ourselves, stay connected to each other, work together as a team, and meet our own basic human needs so that we can meet the needs of children and families.
After the meditation, the therapist asked our staff about their experiences or thoughts. One teacher raised her hand. “There’s a kiddo in my class who can’t keep still. He just wiggles and moves around all the time. And I felt like that too in these last few minutes. So I think I actually GET him now in a whole new way.”
Look for more information on Mainspring’s therapist and EAP in our October newsletter, coming out soon.
Resources for information about the effects of secondary stress on educators can be found here, among many other fantastic places:
