Making Our Way to Wellness

Who feels like they are limping into 2022?  Remember when we thought the pandemic would be over in a few weeks? Saying "Happy New Year" feels almost counterintuitive for fear the response will be to blow it out your ear.  Educators are not only compassion-fatigued, but they are also covid-fatigued.  Many came into this school year with high hopes that we were turning a corner to more normalcy, but we turned the corner only to find more obstacle courses.  No amount of self-care counters the logistical hurdles educators are facing day in and day out.

It's okay to say it's hard.  Really hard.  Just since December, I (Dardi) have provided professional learning support from Ohio to Georgia to Texas to Ohio and back again, but it's not just about self-care.  I actually don't like that term because it's associated with a superficial, quick fix.  We don't need temporary; we need something for the long haul.  We need to tend to our overall wellness.

Folks, life is a marathon, so we need to be intentional with our training plan.  There are eight dimensions to our wellness, so treating ourselves in just one dimension is not going to fly.  Pulling ourselves up by what's left of our bootstraps and drawing from a place of depletion isn't going to work, either.

So where do we even begin?  I wish I could produce an army of substitute teachers and a plethora of other fixes to the burdens in education right now, but I cannot.  What I can suggest is that we focus our energy on taking steps toward finding our balance so we can continue moving forward through the obstacle courses. We have become accustomed to living in survival mode (understandably so!), but we need more than merely surviving.  I am passionate about helping people build self-awareness in order to begin operating proactively rather than reactively.  In doing so, we can begin the journey toward wellness in mind, body, and soul!  I will be working with schools and presenting at conferences in the coming months, but you can also find individual support in OUR BOOK.  For a practical start, let me introduce you to Kade:

Friends, know this:

You are seen.

You matter.

Your power of influence matters.

May we all find HOPE & wellness in 2022,

Dr. Joe & Dardi

Dr. Joe continues to equip schools with doable strategies based on our H.O.P.E. Curriculum for meeting the social-emotional needs of wounded students (book references:  7 Ways to Transform the Lives of Wounded Students (2016) and Reaching the Wounded Student (2008).  As mentioned, Dardi (certified health & wellness coach and co-author of Supporting the Wounded Educator, February, 2020) has been working with schools to support the overall wellness of educators to round out a comprehensive approach to trauma-informed SEL and building HOPE-centered communities.  We would welcome the opportunity to work with you!  We still have some availability yet this Spring and Summer and are booking into the 2022-2023 school year (please plan early for August and September requests).