Building resilience is essential for navigating the challenges and stressors that come with working in an educational environment. Whether you are a seasoned school professional or new to the field, these strategies will help you thrive in your role and make a positive impact on the lives of those you work with.
Resilience among school professionals is the ability to adapt well to significant sources of stress that educational environments can bring. Positions like school nurses, school psychologists, paraprofessionals, special education teachers, speech-language pathologists, and other supportive staff are all professions that require a high level of resilience to function effectively.
School professionals may encounter safety challenges, behavioral and mental health issues, limited resources, and other issues that impact the school experience for both professionals and students. In this blog, we will discuss the top strategies for school professionals to enhance their resilience and better support their students.
Whether you are a seasoned pro or new to the field, these strategies will help you thrive in your role and make a positive impact on the lives of those you work with.
What Does It Mean to Be Resilient?
Professional resilience in an educational setting is an individual’s ability to cope with and thrive in demanding school settings. That resilience is made up of choices and attitudes in response to the realities and difficulties of the job.
These are the basic elements of resilience that help school professionals navigate challenging situations:
- Adaptability: Being an adaptable professional or educator has a direct impact on student success and personal well-being. This involves a willingness to embrace new methods or technology, maintaining a growth mindset, having empathy with an array of student needs and situations, and being flexible when circumstances shift.
- Coping Strategies: There are comprehensive coping strategies that are specific to teachers, educators, paraprofessionals, and other school support staff. These involve setting boundaries, maintaining personal health, prioritizing social support and interactions, and practicing mindfulness.
- Emotional Intelligence: Educators and other school professionals need effective emotional intelligence (EQ) to manage both their own emotions and the way they respond to the feelings of others.
5 Ways to Build Resilience as a School Professional
School professionals can actively work to build resilience, which will increase personal and professional well-being. Here are five specific strategies that can help school professionals develop stronger resilience.
1. Prioritize Self-Care Practices
Healthy habits in physical, emotional, and mental efforts can make a significant difference over time in developing baseline resiliency. Things like nutritious food, regular exercise, prioritizing sleep, having hobbies, or seeking professional help when needed will establish higher levels of resilience. Some simple habits, like walking 30 minutes each day, are proven to boost overall mental and physical health.
2. Intentionally Work on Mindfulness and Managing Stress
The negative impacts of stress on the body are significant. Intentionally managing that stress and making time for mindfulness can help boost overall health. Things like meditating, deep breathing, yoga, and staying present are shown to have a positive relationship with increased resiliency.
3. Seek Out Social Support
Social connection helps maintain both psychological and physical health. Prioritizing relationships helps people bounce back from difficulty, and they’re better able to manage stress when they have a network of support. Some ways to increase that network include volunteering, joining community groups, asking for help, and taking up new hobbies. Colleagues are also a source of connection that can offer support for any school professional.
4. Pursue Professional Development
Professional development can contribute to career resilience and personal well-being. When professionals are focused on developing their careers, they can gain increased confidence and improved emotional regulation. Continuous learning is a natural contributor to resilience.
5. Set and Stick to Boundaries
Boundaries are imperative to retaining resilience. Managing a workload effectively depends on making and maintaining boundaries, especially in a high-stress environment like education. Boundaries are shown to create better relationships, improve mental health, and increase overall levels of resilience.
The Many Benefits of Building Resilience
Psychological: Resilience is proven to help lower the prevalence of mental health conditions, specifically instances of depression, anxiety, trauma, and PTSD. Resilience is also reported to predict greater recovery in traumatic situations.
Physical: Resilience is also shown to have significant physical health benefits. When the effects of stress are managed, overall health improves. Higher resilience and lower stress are associated with lower levels of chronic disease, increased immune function, and fewer cardiovascular conditions.
Social and Professional: Relationships benefit greatly from resilient behavior. Social and professional connections are shown to be stronger when they are resilient. An overall sense of community increases when social relationships are built with resilient behavior. When school professionals have a reliable network and an opportunity to ask for help when needed, they can develop increased job satisfaction and better mental health.
Personal and Environmental Resilience Factors
Many factors contribute to natural levels of resilience, some of which are outside of an individual’s control. But some personal and environmental aspects can be improved or focused on to help with building individual resilience, just like any other skill.
Here are a few of those personal and environmental factors that impact resiliency levels:
Personal Factors of Resilience
Internal resilience qualities can empower school professionals to navigate challenges. These inner qualities include perseverance, emotional regulation, cognitive flexibility, and growth mindset.
While some of these are natural personality traits, they are also skills that can be developed and refined. Some of the ways to build these qualities include:
- Collaboration
- Routines
- Goal setting
- Support systems
- Implementing feedback
- Avoiding negativity
Environmental Factors of Resilience
There are environmental factors that impact resilience levels in addition to personal traits and habits. These can include school culture, social support systems, and access to resources. Community connection can also drive resilient behavior, especially in school work settings.
Resilience in the School Environment: How to Implement and Support Workplace Initiatives
School-wide initiatives and administrative efforts can increase resilience in staff and overall workplace culture. This directly impacts job satisfaction among school professionals and, in turn, student achievement. Some of those workplace initiatives include:
Supportive Leadership
Teachers and professionals who have supportive leadership report that this has a positive impact on occupational well-being. School leadership can create an environment where school nurses, speech-language pathologists, and other educational support staff all feel valued and heard. This requires open communication, responsiveness, peer support programs, mentorship opportunities, open feedback and communication, mental health resources, and counseling services.
Supportive Colleagues
Connecting with colleagues offers a sense of community that can boost resilience and overall workplace satisfaction. When peer professionals are available for practical, professional, and emotional support, burdens are easier to carry. School professionals are better able to bounce back from challenges and achieve greater resilience schoolwide. Collaboration is also a key element in establishing supportive relationships among colleagues.
Resource Availability
Teachers and support staff need tools to help intentionally develop resilience as staff in a school setting. When school nurses, special education teachers, paraprofessionals, school counselors, and other support staff receive resources or training that inform and increase resilience, those skills impact schoolwide culture. They also boost overall student performance — 84 percent of studies of student-teacher relationships showed a positive correlation between teacher well-being and student learning and achievement.
How SHC Supports Schools
SHC supports school professionals as they intentionally work to develop resilience in educational settings. School districts and leadership must prioritize resilience development in both policies and culture, and SHC is invested in supporting those efforts. Reach out to the SHC recruiting team today to take the next step toward a supported school nurse, special education teacher, speech-language pathologist, or school psychologist position for the new school year!
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