Cy Wright

Avoiding Burnout

Educators face a vastly different reality in today’s classrooms and communities than most were prepared for while earning their credentials.  The tensions from the COVID-19 pandemic and community unrest all over the country, combined with the reality of school this fall, is quickly causing burnout among teachers!  The hope that they are making a difference has always been a key motivator and contributor to job satisfaction for educators.  However, this fall the overwhelming challenges they are facing are causing a growing sense of compassion fatigue and hopelessness for many of our teachers.  The need to incorporate effective self-care while acknowledging one’s own experiences with trauma is a necessity during these unprecedented times.   

Finding Hope and Thriving

What can teachers do to find hope in seemingly hopeless situations?  How can focusing on resilience be critical for the social emotional needs of students and teachers? 

Join us for a panel discussion with practitioners and experts as we address these challenges and how we can find hope for our teachers, students and families as we continue forward in this new school year.  

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Christian Moore

Christian Moore is a licensed clinical social worker and an internationally-renowned speaker, and passionate advocate for youth. He is the author of “The Resilience Breakthrough” and founder of the WhyTry Program, one of the top social emotional learning programs, used in over 30,000 schools across the United States.

Jason Johnson

Jason is a licensed school psychologist and has published research on resilience and student performance.  Jason is a passionate advocate for disadvantaged students and currently consults and trains educators across the nation as the director of research and development for the WhyTry organization. 

Webinar Transcript

Jason Johnson:
Welcome to our Avoiding Burnout and Finding Hope Amidst Crisis webinar. We are thrilled to have our special guests today and have a discussion about what I think is something that’s very timely and is quickly going to help a lot of people. So, we’re going to follow the same format we’ve followed in the past on these. We’ll run for about an hour. We’ll target finishing up right on the hour, an hour from now.

Jason Johnson:
Occasionally, the discussion is real rich. We’ll go over a couple of minutes, but we’ll do our best to keep it there. My name is Jason Johnson. I’m going to be the moderator for this. I represent WhyTry Organization. I’m a school psychologist, I oversee training, research, and development for the organization and I’m thrilled for any time I get to be part of these. Today, we’re going to be having a discussion with … We’ve got five special guests here and they represent a pretty broad perspective across the world of education and mental health and I’m really excited to see how all their ideas come together around something that I think is impacting a lot of people.

Jason Johnson:
And so, let me introduce our guests here. We’ll go down the line. First of all, we’ve got Ms. Courtney Agurs. Welcome, Courtney. Courtney’s a seventh and eighth grade science teacher at Callaway Middle School in LaGrange, Georgia. She was named as the 2020 teacher of the year for her school, was one of the three finalists for Troup County Teacher of the Year. Nice job, Courtney, we are thrilled to have you. Thank you for joining us.

Courtney Agurs:
Thank you, I’m glad to be here.

Jason Johnson:
Next, we have Ms. Amanda Ball. Amanda teaches … Let’s see, you are currently teaching seventh grade English, correct?

Amanda Ball:
No, I am currently teaching seventh and eighth grade reading support. I got a new position this year. We are all virtual until January and I’m doing reading support this year for seventh and eighth grade.

Jason Johnson:
Perfect, thank you. Interesting background, background in nursing, switched over to education, also a mother. You’ve got some really great experience that you bring to the table. We’re excited to have you. Thank you for joining us.

Amanda Ball:
Thank you for having me.

Jason Johnson:
Next, we’ve got Joe Hendershott. Welcome, Joe. Joe’s been with us before, a long time friend of the organization, a sought after speaker about the effects of trauma on learning and behaviors working with wounded students and working with wounded educators. He’s the founder of Hope 4 The Wounded, provides consulting, staff training, online courses, author of multiple books. He and his wife Dardi run an incredible organization that we’re thrilled to be friends with and to be able to be collaborators with. Welcome, Joe, we’re thrilled to have you.

Joe Hendershott:
Thanks for having me, always a pleasure.

Jason Johnson:
Next, we’ve got Mark Wilson. He’s an award winning educator. Since 2012, he’s been teaching in consulting principles in teachers. Prior to that, he worked as a teacher and principal. He works with leaders throughout the United States, leads multiple innovation leadership efforts, currently located in Georgia, correct?

Mark Wilson:
Right, uh-huh (affirmative).

Jason Johnson:
Again, his current work supporting and developing leaders as the principle in Morgan County High School in Madison, Georgia. While there, he was named the Principal of the Year by the NASSP. Welcome, Mark, we are thrilled to have you.

Mark Wilson:
Well, Jason, it’s great to be here with you, thank you.

Jason Johnson:
And last but certainly not least, Mr. Christian Moore, a licensed clinical social worker, founder of the WhyTry Organization, internationally renowned speaker, a passionate advocate for youth and author of The Resilience Breakthrough and Christian’s been on many of these and brings an incredible amount of experience and expertise on the topic of resilience, education, and mental health. So, we’ve got a really nice, broad representation here that we are thrilled to have.

Jason Johnson:
So, if it’s all right with you, I’d like to jump right into it. We have some talking points that I think we want to get to and what I want to start off … Right now, we’re obviously in the midst of some pretty incredible crisis unlike anything I think educators and therapists have ever dealt with before. And so, right now there’s a lot of talk about supporting students, which is important, and I think we’ll talk a little bit about that as well, but I wanted to start off the discussion a little bit about what our educators and our counselors need right now.

Jason Johnson:
And so, as educators, I want to throw this question first to Amanda and Courtney and then after we hear from them, I’d love to hear from Joe, Mark, and Christian, but as educators, how big of a concern right now do you think burnout and compassion fatigue is and what do you see as the things that are really contributing to it? Let’s start with Courtney.

Courtney Agurs:
Right now, I think it’s a really big concern. In the times that we’re in right now, thinking about how do we adequately meet the needs of our students … Jason, I’m sorry, you and I were speaking earlier and we were talking about how I teach classes and currently right now I’m doing virtual and I’m doing traditional. So, it’s easy to get to the point where you are burned out because you’re trying to make sure you’re meeting the needs of both sets of students and each set of students, they require different things.

Courtney Agurs:
So, I know in my first few years of teaching because I was trying to play superwoman and do everything, there were times where I got burned out. So, I try my best to be just very mindful of not getting to the point of that burnout and having that compassion fatigue because we want to extend our thoughts and our empathy towards our students, but we don’t want to get to the point where we’re so burned out that we’re just pushing them to the side. So, I think it’s really important that we just have a wherewithal of where we’re at as educators in saying, okay, this is becoming too much, let me step back or let me look at a different way of approaching this or let me ask for help from administrators or collaborate with our co-workers to not reach that point.

Jason Johnson:
Thank you. Amanda.

Amanda Ball:
I agree, absolutely, with everything that Courtney just said. We’re all virtual, so the kind of burnout that I’m seeing is almost a helplessness. If the kids aren’t there, we kind of feel helpless. We can’t get in touch with parents or parents are at work, and so we’re missing that support and that presence, but I think it’s a time now that we’re able to focus on what’s actually important. We get to really prioritize what it is that the students actually need and we’re taking baby steps towards that process here in our district.

Amanda Ball:
It’s taken us some time to get to that point. It’s almost an entire nine weeks has gone by and we’re finally getting through our basic diagnostic test that we do at the beginning of the year, but I think it’s helping us to prioritize what the students need versus checking all these boxes have grades been done, has this been done, we’re actually getting to prioritize, even though at times we feel somewhat helpless being alone in the classroom without our kids.

Jason Johnson:
Thank you. I want to hear now maybe a little bit what Christian, Mark, and Joe are hearing in regards to this burnout and compassion fatigue. They have the ear of educators throughout the country. I think their perspective is a little bit unique on that. And, Joe, in particular I was wondering if maybe you could talk a little bit more on compassion fatigue. I know you’ve got some interesting information on that.

Joe Hendershott:
Well, thank you. First of all, I want to thank Courtney and Amanda for the work they’re doing as educators for our students. I know you’re doing double and triple the work and if you don’t hear it from anybody else, you’ve heard it from me. I appreciate you.

Courtney Agurs:
We thank you.

Joe Hendershott:
I appreciate it, and I appreciate your insight because I think it’s so valuable about not wanting to get the burnout and compassion fatigue … When I’m with a group or presenting to a group I ask if the group of educators is compassionate, they all raise their hand. Are they tired? They all raise their hand. They keep giving of themselves anyways, they all raise their hand. So, you’re compassionate, you’re tired, you keep giving of yourself anyways, that’s who we are as educators and why we all, everybody out there listening to this podcast or webinar today signed up to be an educator is we give of ourselves a service.

Joe Hendershott:
But, I think, Courtney, you’re so right. If we’re not careful, we’re going to get to that burnout stage when we start pushing back. And so, it’s okay to be compassionate, keep giving of yourselves, but you want to take that self-care, so compassion fatigue though is a part of the natural progression, we don’t want to get to the point where we’re totally burned out and we’re starting to see a lot more teachers today.

Joe Hendershott:
It costs our system billions of dollars a year in teacher burnout just as Courtney said. The teachers finally say, I can’t do it, and we have more and more teachers now with COVID not coming back. So, there’s other reasons to be burned out. Our book came out in February of 2020, pre-COVID, Supporting the Wounded Educator on this topic, and we don’t have the research on how much more it is for our teachers, but we know that more and more are retiring early, are finding other professions because of the demands put on them and they’re doing it in a very … And I have to say, I have two daughters in fourth grade, a daughter in seventh grade, a son who’s a freshman in high school, and a son in college and I have to say, at all levels the teachers and the administrators have been amazing through this.

Joe Hendershott:
The way they’ve adjusted has just been inspiring to me in a time in our history of our country and our world that we’ve never walked through. So, I give kudos, but I also give … I don’t want to say the warning, but the self-care, please take care of yourself, so you don’t get the burnout because we can’t afford to lose more educators like Courtney and Amanda. We need you, but thanks for your compassion and we appreciate you.

Jason Johnson:
Awesome, thanks, Joe. Mark, tell us a little bit about what you’re hearing and what your thoughts are on it and then we’ll have Christian wrap up this part.

Mark Wilson:
Absolutely, thank you, Jason, and like my friend Joe, I want to thank Courtney and Amanda for being on the webinar, but mostly for being teachers as well as all the people who have joined us today who are social workers, psychologists, counselors, and teachers. I’m old enough to remember back in July, Jason, when we were wondering how long we could keep school open. And, we’ve kept school open, but there’s been a price and I think Courtney and Amanda shared that price that has really been paid by our teachers quite honestly that we’ve been able to bring a normalization of sorts to our communities by having school, but let’s not confuse that with school as normal as usual because it’s not business as usual, is it, Amanda or Courtney?

Mark Wilson:
It’s very different. We start school very early in the southeast, and so Amanda and Courtney have been doing this since July and August and Amanda, her school system is completely virtual and the price that Amanda pays, as she mentioned, she has to get her energy from some other place because you don’t get to see the kids and it’s a great challenge. Courtney’s challenge is, as we have in many places, she really has two jobs now. She’s full-time face-to-face teacher and she’s a full-time virtual teacher and this is showing up in so many places, Jason.

Mark Wilson:
I’ll give you one example. I work with a high school that the principal called me a week or so ago and said, “I need your help. We’ve got to come up with some relief.” He works in a rural place and, Jason, they have a great number of excellent teachers at this place, more than normal distribution would allow, but those teachers are looking for jobs outside of education and they’re not mad at the principal, they’re not mad at anybody, but here’s what they’re facing, they have a seven period day in which they teach six face-to-face classes and as they began the school year they said, “Well you know, we’ll just pick up the kids who are on our roster and we’ll supervise them as they do Edgenuity or Odysseyware.”

Mark Wilson:
That was not thought through as we would like because that hasn’t played out as neatly as check in on because here’s what that’s turned into and this is not hyperbole or exaggeration, those teachers report that they get 150 emails a day. So, they’re teaching all day, Courtney’s like, yep, and then they’re getting emails and you can’t tell a teacher … It’s what Joe Hendershott said, this is who we are. We don’t know stop. It’s hard for us to withhold our expertise or our compassion for people. And so, those teachers, they’re trying to answer all those emails, Jason, and we are at a really tough spot right now because our teachers, they’re overwhelmed, they’re tired, they’re hanging on there and they’re keeping things going and we’re very grateful, but as Joe said, this isn’t sustainable and not something we can continue for a very long time.

Jason Johnson:
Thank you. Christian.

Christian Moore:
This morning I saw an article, it’s a 2019 article that said 72% of teachers are dealing with intense stress and that was before COVID and before 2020, so you can imagine now. The last couple of days I’ve been talking to a couple of different teachers and what they’ve been pointing out to me is a lot of people see what teachers do in the classroom, but I can tell you if I talk to Amanda and Courtney’s administrators and even people in the community there, they would say Courtney and Amanda do a lot more other things and answering those 150 emails from a community like what Mark was talking about, that sphere of influence is way bigger than people realize and I think sometimes people who don’t work in education think, well, this is their role, they’re teaching and that’s the primary thing.

Christian Moore:
But, they’re really community activists. They impact communities way more than people realize, so you think about they’re dealing with students, they’re dealing with their own family because their families are having stressors and they’re worried about their kids’ health and safety and then most teachers are very social people, they want to make a difference in the community, so they’re going to have lots of friends they’re going to be reaching out to, they’re going to care about their friends, they’re going to care about their neighbors, extended family members, a grandmother who they can’t see who’s maybe in a difficult situation.

Christian Moore:
That’s going to have a huge impact on those teachers, just an extended family member going through a crisis and I think their ability to volunteer, all these different things they’re doing, as a social worker, I’m looking at it from a system’s thing, a teacher is much more than just a teacher and that’s a message I’ve gotten from quite a few teachers and I hope what comes out of this, we realize that teachers are really impacting communities way more than you realize and I think we’re starting to see that, one of the things that’s shaking out of COVID, that insight on that.

Jason Johnson:
Awesome, thank you. Great insight. So, given all of that and I appreciate the foundation that that sets. One of the things I’m curious about, we talk in education, as educators, about creating safe spaces, safe offices, safe classrooms for our students. What kind of things can we do right now and what type of support do educators need right now to help create safe spaces for our educators, for our support staff? And I was wondering, maybe we could just go the same order we went through. Let’s hear from Amanda and Courtney and then let’s hear from Joe, Mark, and Christian.

Amanda Ball:
I have to say I think our district has done a really great job in allowing the teachers to feel safe. Not only do they give us every opportunity to work from home if we need to while we’re doing virtual education, they’re also allowing us to bring our children with us to school if they’re fever-free, we’re wearing masks, they’re encouraging this and I have felt at all points I’ve been very informed about the decisions that they make and that’s important, to feel like there’s transparency in the decisions that are affecting educators as well as the community.

Amanda Ball:
We had input at the beginning of the year, if your kids can come with us that would help and low and behold, our kids were allowed to come and I just felt like it was important that our voices were heard and we were taken care of that way here in our district.

Jason Johnson:
Nice, thank you. Courtney.

Courtney Agurs:
And, just to piggyback a little bit off of what Amanda was saying, just knowing we have that ability to speak some of our concerns with out district and knowing that our voices are being heard, that creates that safe place with us. I’m not going to say unfortunate because I’ve enjoyed being back and seeing my students, but because we are traditional and we are virtual, just creating the safe place for us to even be able to step away and just vent some of our frustrations in those different moments and times.

Courtney Agurs:
So, having just that mindset or idea of if there’s something you need to talk about or there’s an issue that you’re facing that we have the proper people in place that we can go to and share those frustrations. So, that’s what my experience has been here in our district with having our administrators and our district people creating those safe places for us.

Jason Johnson:
Awesome, thanks. Let’s go Joe, Mark, Christian again.

Joe Hendershott:
Thanks, Jason. Well, I would say first of all, I started hanging out with counselors and school psychologists to learn some of this stuff and, Jason and Christian, you could probably agree with me or disagree with me if you want, but the thing I like about safe place is counselors have taught me that healing takes place in safe place. Is that correct?

Christian Moore:
Absolutely.

Jason Johnson:
Yep.

Joe Hendershott:
So, healing takes place in a safe place. So, we want to create safe space for our students and our teachers and our administrative teams and our support staff because that’s what … Even though when we’re not healing, we can create safe place, which is where that takes place and we have to first of all, we talk about listening to our teachers, which is so critical, listening to each other, which is critical, but then you got to get to the level of understanding and that’s the next level and people say, “Well, I listen and I understand.”

Joe Hendershott:
That’s still good and we want to do that, but there’s a next step, there’s a next layer that you have to then appreciate where that person is coming from, so whether that’s your teacher, your school principal, your school superintendent, your support staff, your bus driver, whatever, you have to listen, understand, and then that last step of appreciating where they’re coming from, to appreciate that these teachers are putting in two or three shifts.

Joe Hendershott:
The bus drivers are putting themselves at risk when they don’t have to, so again, it’s listening, understanding, and appreciating, and then understanding that also that we’re all either in emotional, survival, or critical thinking and when we’re talking about coming into what we feel is sometimes as an unsafe place because we’re unsure of what COVID brings to the table or whatever else is going on in our country, we’re talking about getting people from emotional, to survival, to critically thinking.

Joe Hendershott:
And, this is good news that I’ve heard lately, is that a lot of the principals, a lot of the teachers I’ve heard have talked about how pleased they’ve been with the students coming in and following the mask rules and the space, and so they’re getting kids from emotional, to the survival, to the critical thinking spot on how important it is to follow the steps for safety. And again, if we follow these steps to get to the critical thinking to stay safe, then we’re going to get to the healing part … I guess in essence, we want to create safe space for healing for everybody and I think that’s such a critical, critical piece. So, that was lot packed into there about safe space.

Jason Johnson:
That’s helpful, thank you. Mark?

Mark Wilson:
One of the things I’ve been working with administrators on, Jason, that are strategies for them to support teachers. A couple of things, one, back into the notion of safe space. Sometimes that space is in the form of the chart paper ministry where you put a question of the week and give people sticky notes and give them a chance to share. In Amanda’s environment now, that would probably have to be done on a Google Form instead because they’re all virtual, but also giving … And, I think you can do this in a Zoom or in another format.

Mark Wilson:
I had a principal I worked with last year who wanted to reach out to this teachers, so he created Popcorn with the Principal every Tuesday and Thursday and it was not mandated, there was no agenda. People just came in and talked and creating that place for people to be able to talk to each other as humans and be able to share those thoughts with the administration, that has been very helpful in the past, but it’s also helpful now into giving teachers a place to share.

Mark Wilson:
My advice to administrators has been to listen, number one, and a second is to give the gift of time and I’ve encouraged administrators, this may be blasphemous in some school systems, and I regret that that could be true, but instead of spending 45 minutes doing an observation and a write-up, I’d rather that principal go in and say, “I’m going to give you a positive writing, Courtney. I have 40 minutes left, what can I do for you?” I think those are the two pieces that I believe teachers, they want someone to listen and they want the gift of time.

Jason Johnson:
Thank you. Christian.

Christian Moore:
Man, the last 22 years at WhyTry we’ve really gone to over 30,000 schools emphasizing the mental health needs and the social and emotional needs of students to the extreme. As a social worker, 20 years ago I said, “Okay, I’m going to really focus on making sure kids have these tools to bounce back, to thrive.” And, just a couple of days ago, I was speaking to a couple hundred students in a school district on resilience, so I’m teaching these skills to the kids and the teachers.

Christian Moore:
Afterwards, I got response from a whole bunch of teachers saying, “Look, Christian, we need these skills just as much. Our mental health and our resilience needs to really be looked at.” And, I can tell you at WhyTry we personally … Jason could probably speak to this, he spends more time with teachers than me, but we know at WhyTry going forward we got repentant a little bit. Over the next 20 years we’re going to really be speaking out about the mental health needs of administrators, teachers, and really putting an emphasis there and I’d love maybe Courtney or Amanda can tell me if we’re crazy or not, but sometimes with mental health with adults we think we should not intervene.

Christian Moore:
An adult has their own decision to make about mental health, we shouldn’t intervene too much. As a social worker, as a child advocate it’s easy for me to focus on that, but we’re realizing again at WhyTry and for me, and I’m going to be really vulnerable or honest, the fact that teachers are now knocking down my door and saying, “Christian, come on, we need these mental health skills just as much.” So, I know that’s a bit of a repentance process there. Here at WhyTry we’re going to make some changes there, but I don’t know if, Jason, you want to speak to that. You probably have a little more insight on that than me, but we know that’s a need at WhyTry. What are your feelings on that, Jason?

Jason Johnson:
I agree, I appreciate the question. I think in the back of our mind we’ve always thought, we’ll go in and we’ll teach, we’ll instruct teachers on how to administer this intervention or this curriculum to the kids and in the back of my mind I think we’ve always thought they would capture some of these ideas through osmosis that would creep in and impact their own lives as well and I think where we really have to be I think more intentional right now is really focusing with some intentionality on taking care of our staff on us as the grown-ups.

Jason Johnson:
Not at the expense of the kids because I think Joe articulated it really well, everybody that gets into education has this natural desire to put the kids in front of themselves. That’s just a thing that we do and right now I think we’re seeing what happens when our emotional resources start to become depleted, we have to be able to keep those replenished, and so we got to take care. So, I agree, Christian. It actually takes me to one of the next questions that I wanted to bring up.

Jason Johnson:
We’ll come back to students in a minute, but I’m thinking about this concept of taking care of our educators and it’s fascinating to me, even hearing what’s important when Courtney and Amanda are talking about the importance of being heard as an educator and thinking of the concept we believe in of voice and choice for the kids. Well, voice and choice for our educators is probably just as important, and another thing that maybe has dual meaning, we are trying to help kids thrive as students and I think that concept probably is just as applicable to our teaching and educator staff as well.

Jason Johnson:
So, I was curious if you could maybe talk a little bit about, kind of a two part question. One, what do you think it means? If I say, what does it mean to thrive as an educator, what does that mean to you? And then, right now given all of the challenges we’re dealing with, what do you think educators need right now or what are some strategies that can help educators attempt to thrive amidst all the adversity we’re facing right now? And, I like the order we’re going in, let’s stick with it for a minute. Maybe we can go Courtney and then Amanda and then we’ll go Joe, Mark, and Christian again.

Courtney Agurs:
So, when I think about educators being able to thrive, some of the first things that come to my mind are being able to develop those meaningful relationships with our students because at the end of the day, that’s who we are here for. We’re here for our students. So, developing those meaningful relationships and then just having a desire to be successful. I can speak personally, my desire for being successful as an educator helps me to be able to thrive as an educator.

Courtney Agurs:
I think about my heart, posture, this is my passion. Me seeing students get to where they need to be and having those various aha moments, that is my why, that is my breathing, that’s what I thrive off of. And then, seeking and asking for help, educators are able to thrive when they have the ability to be able to seek out and ask for help. Mark said something a little bit earlier about just knowing that we are being heard and that leads into what do we need from administrators when we’re thinking about having that support, and just being in a position where you’re not just being heard, but you’re actually being listened to.

Courtney Agurs:
So, any plight that you may have that your administrators are listening to those different things and then there’s a follow up or a follow through with whatever grievance that you have and then I also think that it’s important for our administrators to have developed emotional skills because if we are presenting an issue to an administrator, if their emotional skills aren’t developed, then in turn they can’t really help us to be able to process some of the things that we’re dealing with as educators, so that we can take that back and then work through those things, then to be able to be there and do what we need to do for our students.

Jason Johnson:
Thank you. Amanda.

Amanda Ball:
I absolutely love your first statement, Courtney, about relationships being the sign of an educator thriving and I think that’s absolutely true. I believe an educator thrives when they affect change, be it in their students and with themselves in their own personal lives as well. And, I think that change comes when you’re able to dedicate the amount of time that is necessary for that change to occur.

Amanda Ball:
I know that I’m thriving as an educator when I’m not drowning all weekend and at the end of every week in grading papers and parent contacts, when I’m able to manage my time, again, wisely and able to make time for myself, to make time to maintain physical and emotional health. By myself, I practice yoga daily and when I can balance all of those areas in my life, I feel like that’s what helps me to drive and just time management is a sign of thriving.

Jason Johnson:
Awesome, thank you. Let’s mix up the order on this one just a little bit. Let’s hear from Christian, Mark, and then Joe.

Christian Moore:
All right, I love, Courtney, what you said about knowing that why. When you know that why, it helps you thrive and especially when you see your students progressing, that has a huge, huge impact. I don’t have too much to say here because you guys summed it up. I do want to emphasize … I know there’s a lot of school social workers, counselors, and mental health people out there listening too, but one thing I wanted to maybe shout-out to mental health or even paraprofessionals and stuff is that a lot of teachers I’m talking too, what makes it difficult for them to thrive is when they see students with tremendous high needs and those students take up a ton of their time and focus and that’s important to help those students.

Christian Moore:
But, I’m hoping that school social workers, school psychologists, we can reach out, do some intervention with some of these kids, especially right now with what’s going on, and so the teachers are … What teachers are incredible at is being able to teach and reach a wide variety of students in their classroom with different needs, but I also think a call out to my profession of mental health, we need to provide more support to you guys, so that you do what you do really well. And, I think sometimes the communication between mental health and the educators could be improved in reaching some of those kids.

Christian Moore:
I know in so many places they’re like, “Oh, I didn’t realize I could get the school social worker to do that or the mental health people to do that.” So anyways, I just want to plant that seed and I think all those things help each other thrive, but we got to get the support to these teachers.

Jason Johnson:
Thanks. Mark?

Mark Wilson:
Jason, we heard from Jeanette [Foness 00:34:11] and from Karen Hames in the chat and they talked about doing a Google Form or an app to check on people every day. I think that’s critical thing is to acknowledge the stress that our teachers are under. That’s a step in the right direction. As we were talking earlier, the whole idea of listening, the whole idea of giving time, look, I’m a big fan of the woo-woo wagon. I like the idea of driving it around the school and giving out treats and principals are talking with me frequently about what are some ideas to do that.

Mark Wilson:
Don’t frownie, have a brownie, all kinds of different things of that sort and I always think those things matter for morale, but I certainly think now it’s a little deeper than normal where we need, as Courtney as talking about, teachers don’t need you to pretend you’re listening. They really need for you to listen even if you can’t solve their problems, they need that, but they do need a little problem-solving as well, some adaptations.

Mark Wilson:
And, I was hearing from a couple of people on the chat, Jaylen Philips about if you’re a counselor, how do you nudge administration to take this seriously? I threw out the idea of get a survey and find out what percentage of your people are stressed on a scale of one to five because if people can’t hear with their heart, maybe they can hear with their head and they can see that data. I think those help us. Honestly, there’s some administrative decisions that need to be made as we move forward through this that can really relieve a little bit of the stress and help our teachers be better teachers.

Jason Johnson:
Awesome, thank you.

Christian Moore:
And, Jason, before we move on, could I just throw out one more thing on this?

Jason Johnson:
Yeah.

Christian Moore:
It relates helping teachers thrive. Again, I’m a social activist, so I’ve got to emphasize something. Today, I read a couple of articles that were showing that a lot of school districts now are starting to give a COVID bonus to teachers. I think teachers need a little bit of economic boost to help them thrive right now with what’s going on and the teachers, the feedback that these school districts are doing that have given these bonuses that have been one, 2% COVID bonuses for the next month has made a huge difference, they’re saying, to the teachers’ morale and communication, everything.

Christian Moore:
And so, I think sometimes we should not overlook the economics of helping teachers thrive. I’m sorry, I probably shouldn’t be on my soapbox here, but I was so excited to see today that districts are starting to do that and I’m [crosstalk 00:36:54]-

Jason Johnson:
I’m confident there’s not one person that’s tuned in right now that will disagree with you. I think it’s a really important discussion though that hopefully districts are willing to have. Joe, let’s hear from you.

Joe Hendershott:
Well first of all, I’ll piggyback off what Mark said, if you’re looking for a survey, I have a 21 question survey on this topic of wounded students and compassion fatigue and burnout on a one to seven Likert scale. If you go to Hope 4 The Wounded, it’s on our homepage. Put in your email, free of charge, you can use it, you can download it, send it out to your staff, pie graph it, go back and get the information you need totally free of charge. So, if you’re looking for something to help measurer where your staff’s currently at on the topic of compassion fatigue and burnout and woundedness with students and your teachers, feel free to go to our website hope4thewounded.org.

Jason Johnson:
And, that’s 4, the number four, right? Hope 4 …

Joe Hendershott:
Hope4thewounded.org.

Jason Johnson:
I’ll type that into the chat too.

Joe Hendershott:
It’s the very firsts thing you’ll see is free survey. It’s my doctoral dissertation survey and I give that out free of charge, so school districts can use that as measured. So, Mark, thanks for making that up because we want to put tools in people’s hands here today. Wow, I don’t how it is to follow all this stuff. All I can say is it goes back again to that listening, that understanding, but I can’t emphasize enough, you can listen and you can understand, but if you don’t appreciate where educators are coming from and it’s just difficult to make that connection where they’re currently at.

Joe Hendershott:
I have nine children, my four oldest children are teachers. So, I’m on top of this every day. They teach special education, they teach fourth grade, they teach middle school, so I’m getting … And then of course, I got all my kids in all the different grade levels, so I’m tuned into this every day and hearing the work that everybody’s putting in to all this, but I think really what it boils down to is just understanding what John Steinbeck once said, “To have three teachers in a lifetime that make the difference is the best of luck.”

Joe Hendershott:
And, I’ve had the best of luck. I’ve had three wonderful teachers like Amanda and Courtney that stepped into my life that made the difference in the best of times. And, think of how many of our kids … The research since 2006 I’ve been speaking on wounded students and since 2006 people have been coming up to me after speaking about wounded students and saying, “What about the wounded educator?” And, it took me a long time to process it and I started thinking about my own career, my kids’ career and all that, and I started thinking, yeah, we’re dealing with our own stuff.

Joe Hendershott:
And so, we went ahead and published the book this year, Supporting the Wounded Educator, again, that was pre-COVID, but the research says 47.9% of kids pre-COVID were dealing with wounds, then it was up. Around there was changed to around 60%, now how many more kids are coming back to school wounded or at home wounded and how much more pressure does that put on our teachers to deal with more kids dealing with trauma and have more stress to deal with, behaviors, plus dealing with their own stress on top of it.

Joe Hendershott:
So, I think what we can do as professional administrators, parents, community members, whoever, to reach out to our educators and look at it in an empathic way, put ourself in their shoes and to feel what they’re feeling and I have to say I close with this one, I’ve seen some amazing things, I’ve said it already, I head a teacher just call my son who’s a freshman this year and said, “We’re doing 100% virtual.” And he said, “Hey, is your son at home?” And I said, “Sure.”

Joe Hendershott:
And, I thought he was going to talk about his assignment he’s missing or something and he says, “Hey, [Katayo 00:41:36],” my son’s name is Katayo. He says, “Katayo, this is your teacher. I just want to let you know that I miss you, I care for you, and I love you. You just need to know that. I just miss you.” And, my son just stood there, just tears started welling up in his eyes. That’s the power that we have even virtually with our students. So, I just think it’s such an important thing to keep our perspective consciousness going to really be empathetic with our educators out there that the amazing impact they’re having even under the most difficult circumstances.

Jason Johnson:
Awesome, thank you, and I put your website in the chat too. I hope everybody caught that. I really appreciate that, generous of you to give that out to people. It’s basically an emotional check-in for educators, right, Joe, that they can get if they go to that website?

Joe Hendershott:
Yeah, they can do it individually. They have my co-permission to Google Doc it, send it out to their entire district, get it back, pie graph it, chart it, do whatever, and give them the information. There’s absolutely no charge, just give us your email address, get it, and it’ll shoot right to you.

Jason Johnson:
Awesome, thank you. So, I want to get to … We got a little bit of time left, and I want to spend a little bit of time on this next one. Another of a two-part question. I want to get into some practical strategies. People are always really hungry for those, so I was curious if any of you could share some practical strategies right now that you are using or that you’ve seen that can help educators in some cases maybe just survive, but hopefully ultimately thrive and then also feel free because I think they are connected, feel free to talk a little bit about what you think our students need right now, what we can do to not just help ourselves thrive, but also support our student in what they need. And, let’s go with that same order. Let’s go Courtney, Amanda and then we’ll throw it over to the gentlemen.

Courtney Agurs:
Just speaking from personal experience, what has helped me this year, some practical strategies is just collaborate, collaborate, collaborate. So, just having that partner, that go-to person that you guys can sit down and brainstorm because like in my case, having to do full-time virtual, full-time traditional, that can be a lot of work and having the people or other educators in place that you can collaborate with and brainstorm with and share ideas with, I think that has been a very key point for me this year.

Courtney Agurs:
We’ve already talked about some of the pointers that I already jotted down about the practical things that we don’t think about. We think about this big, oh, I need to do this, but something as simple as … And, I think Amanda said it earlier, was just practicing self-care. When we think strategies, we automatically think, what can I do within my classroom? What can I do within the school? But, practicing that self-care will trickle over into the classroom and into the school because then you’re presenting your best self.

Courtney Agurs:
And then, one of the things that just kept coming to me with the practical strategies is just allowing yourself to have grace, giving yourself grace and then requiring that same grace from other people and just understanding as an educator although we want to save the world, we want to save our children, we have to just remind ourselves daily that we are human and if we make a mistake, we just have to dust ourselves off and wipe our slate clean and know that the next day is a new start and that we just start fresh the next day and go in it with that mindset.

Courtney Agurs:
And then, as far as the students, just thinking about some of the biggest challenges for students that I’ve seen is just a lot of my students just have that sense of apathy. They don’t see, in the long run of things, they need something tangible. They need the now. This is what I need right now. So, because they don’t have that instant gratification, a lot of the times they blow off or they’re not as engaged or they’re not as committed to the value of their education because they need that instant gratification and unfortunately, that’s just the society that we live in today with all of the technology and the different things that are presented to be used now versus when I was younger and just the way that I have just tried to combat that with my students is just encouraging them to, okay, let’s work towards just accomplishing smaller goals that will then lead up to your bigger goals, so that that sense of apathy doesn’t set in and then it’s hard to dig our students out of that.

Jason Johnson:
Awesome, thank you. Amanda.

Amanda Ball:
I agree with the grace, Courtney, so much. That happens to be my practical advice this year is that I think we really have to let go of how it used to be, how we used to do things and how perfect it had to be that this … If 2020 has taught us anything it’s that uncertainty is all around us and it’s just time to embrace it and know that it begets resiliency and strength and that when we overcome these challenges we’re better off for it and we can take a step back and focus on our priorities at this point when we don’t get quite so caught up in how it used to be, what it needs to be in our perception of what it means to be a perfect teacher or a parent or a student to have perfect grades.

Amanda Ball:
That’s not the priority anymore where as we step back and say, okay, this is a year that everything has changed. It’s time to prioritize what’s really important this year and understand that growing through these changes is going to make us more resilient as teachers as students.

Jason Johnson:
Thank you. Let’s go Mark, Christian, then Joe.

Mark Wilson:
Thanks, Jason. Two things real quickly, Amy [DiBrienzia 00:48:19] and Julie Moser in the chat both talked about how hybrid is really challenging. Amy talked about how watching her teachers struggle she can listen, but she doesn’t always know it all from besides the ear and the heart. I think to a great degree, Amy, that’s part of what we can offer this year. That’s the strategy, to offer our ear, to offer our heart to our colleagues.

Mark Wilson:
One thing I would offer to you is if we can create a format for that. I’ve been working with an elementary school for the last three years and we’ve developed a home base. The kids in the day at the same place they begin the day. In a classroom of 24 we divide it into six groups of four. Those four become the family group. It’s not brand new, we use it in churches all the time, but that family group of students, they’re able to support each other and they end every day at this school with the question, what did I learn? What is my big question today, and what do I need to do tomorrow to be my best?

Mark Wilson:
Those three things. Those four kids in that group have been talking about that every day for the last three years. As hard times come and, Amy, I look at what you say and it touches my heart because I think your experiences that you described is what we have so broadly spread across the country right now. Sometimes when you’re going through hell, you have to keep going and I think that’s a lot of Christian’s work is that power of resiliency, but I think we can gain that power in partnerships as Courtney said, through collaboration.

Mark Wilson:
I just encourage us, what if we can organize that in such a way where it allows everyone, not just those who happen to be fortunate enough to be next to Amy and Julie in their school, but what if we organize our teachers in the same family groups that can support each other? Together we divide the troubles and multiply the joy. I wonder if four-person family groups might be a really big part of how we can support each other through this year.

Jason Johnson:
Awesome. Christian.

Christian Moore:
These are all incredible. I feel like I’m in a resilience workshop. Man, I want to hire everybody there to come help me get this message of resilience out to the world. That’s awesome. My son came home the other day and just blew me out of the water. He told me a story, he comes from the school and he jumps in the car and he tells me this story that his teacher that they got them working on an assignment, he was going through a difficult time, let the students know he was having a difficult time, he had a migraine headache and then he went under his desk and went to sleep, under his desk.

Christian Moore:
And then, he woke back up. I don’t know if he was sound asleep. He was probably just trying to close his eyes for a minute, but he was authentic with the students. He was vulnerable and the students are feeling the same vulnerability and I can tell you, my son loves that teacher. When that teacher teaches the rest of this year, his words, everything he does, when he’s doing the academics is going to be 10 times more powerful because he was real with those students and just be involved.

Christian Moore:
At WhyTry we teach something called surrendering the one up relationship. You want to create an environment where people don’t feel one down the relationship. If a child knows they have value and worth whether they succeed or whether they fail, they’re much more likely to engage and stuff. So, this incredible teacher was vulnerable and I was talking to my son about, is this normal? It’s as normal as breathing to have negative emotions, to feel sad, hurt, angry, fearful. That’s part of the human condition. It’s actually what makes us human.

Christian Moore:
We’d be a robot, we’d be a machine, we’d be artificial intelligence if we didn’t have these positive and negative emotions and one of my favorite quotes is, “There’s no law in the universe that says you cannot take a negative emotion and create a productive outcome with it.” And, that’s what this teacher did by being vulnerable, my son’s teacher, and I love what you both were saying, Amanda and Courtney, about that grace that self-grace.

Christian Moore:
The last chapter in my book, The Resilience Breakthrough, is on self-grace and the kryptonite of being able to bounce back, if we don’t forgive ourselves when we’re not perfect, when we make a mistake, we have no desire to be resilient, we have no desire to bounce back, so we have to forgive ourselves or our resilience goes down really, really, really quick. I think that’s so important.

Christian Moore:
The other thing I want to emphasize is that this is temporary. I was talking to my buddy, I was telling him all my problems. I said, “Man, I’m dealing with this, this, this, this.” And, I just let loose on him a little bit and he said, “You do realize, Christian, 100 years from now it’ll be all new people. Relax, man. Keep this in perspective.” And, I was like, whoa, it hit me over the head really hard with it and it was the greatest two second intervention I’ve ever had because it’s all new people.

Christian Moore:
So, all this stuff is temporary. So, to realize that whether that’s six months from now or years from now … Now, let me be very clear, I hope you learn some things and we don’t go back to how things were per se. The debate is over whether relationships are the biggest X factor. We’re seeing what’s happening with the elderly and children when they do not have social connection. So, I’ve spent the last 22 years screaming about the importance of relationships and I’d get arguments and debate. That debate is done.

Christian Moore:
I cannot wait to get back out there in a world that understands that the greatest X factor is something called relational resilience where you go through the motions, you don’t give up because another person needs you and you need them. My goal is that every educator in this country has access to where internal motivation comes from and I end a lot of my speeches on advocating for students is that’s a social justice issue.

Christian Moore:
Some people have access to evidence-based resilience and many people don’t and at WhyTry we teach those four sources of resilience and that’s that relational resilience I just spoke about. If I never got invited to speak again, I would literally go do whatever I need. I’d go get three other jobs to support my kids because that’s that inner dependence. Human beings we know are motivated by other human beings and there’s something called street resilience, where you take disrespect or past mistakes and use it as fuel to propel you forward.

Christian Moore:
Human beings, there’s always going to be someone disrespecting you and the ability to use that disrespect is a fuel source. It gives you a powerful, powerful advantage, and then there’s resource resilience, just maximizing our talents, our abilities, the resources around us and teachers do an incredible job doing that.

Christian Moore:
Then, there’s rock bottom resilience and one of the most important things … Everybody has their own personal rock bottom and you’re rock bottom, if you have the ability to say to yourself, how do I use this suffering, how do I use this pain as my best friend? That’s the gateway, that’s the door to being resilient and bouncing back and I don’t know how much time you’ll go into depth on these, but that’s our goal is we really want to make sure teachers have access to this.

Christian Moore:
I just yesterday did a podcast with Roberto Rivera and he’s an incredible national advocate. If you go to our website whytry.org, you can access … We have a resilience podcast that talks about a lot of these things. The current one is … Erin Gruwell is on the podcast, that I interviewed a bit … From Freedom Writers, so please any teachers out there, if you want to keep everything we’re talking about today, if you want to keep that going, we have all of our webinars on the website, we have the podcast, the Resilience Breakthrough Podcast, and then we have a parenting guide that teach resilience to families that you can get off the website, so please check that out at whytry.org.

Christian Moore:
And, I just want to thank this panel. This is an incredible panel. Mark, as I learned about his work helping teachers impacting the education system. I understand why he was the principal of the year. It’s been amazing to hear from both of you guys, Amanda and Courtney, and Joe’s been my hero for years and there’s Jason, who puts all this where the rubber hits the road. I’m the hot air, Jason’s the real deal. He makes sure that teachers and families get access to this information. So anyways, you guys are all my heroes and we’ve got to give ourselves grace. We’ve got to keep giving ourselves grace and that grace is the X factor right now. And don’t worry, things are not going to stay the same. I think we’re going to see a lot change here in the next few months.

Jason Johnson:
Thank you. Just for everybody that’s asking, we’ll put up a slide here at the end with contact information for everybody, email addresses websites. Joe, give us some thoughts. I’d love to hear from you about that last question we talked about, practical strategies, any ideas you have.

Joe Hendershott:
Well, I’m going to piggyback off what everybody else and Courtney started with is grace and in Webster’s online dictionary, I’ve said it before, in all our schools Webster’s online dictionary is grace and I’m going to add the term mercy and it’s called a temporary exemption and a compassionate treatment and we’ve got to give all ourselves a temporary exemption and compassionate treatment and how many of us in our life have needed that? I know I’ve needed that several times and probably need it again before I’m through. So, Courtney, thank you for bringing that up because I think that’s so huge for all of us.

Joe Hendershott:
And, I think this all boils down to hope. Hope is at the centerpiece of all of this and the definition of hope is at least possible. Something good is possible and something good is possible through all this, whether it’s going to make us a more empathic society, I think that’s possible. Mother Teresa once said, and I paraphrase Mother Teresa, the ills of society is based on the fact that we’ve become indifferent to the needs of our brothers and sisters.

Joe Hendershott:
We can no longer be indifferent to the needs of our brothers and sisters because we’re all under the same struggle with COVID and things we’re dealing with. We can no longer be indifferent. We have to be a more empathic culture, a more empathic society. Empathy is the ability to step in someone else’s shoes and feel what they’re feeling and if we listen to our kids today, and one day I did doctoral research on empathy, my dissertation. They had all these definitions and I really went and thought about all the hundreds of not thousands of kids I talked with in their jail cells in my career and they would always close by saying this to me when they would tell me their story, they would say, “Do you feel me?”

Joe Hendershott:
And, I thought, the definition of empathy is to feel how someone else feels. So, what the kids are saying today is, “Can I have your empathy?” Think of what our kids are dealing with today if they really need our empathy even more because they’re socially isolated from their friends, they’re dealing with some uncertainties that they’re having a hard time processing, and so when they say, do you feel me, we have to know that they’re asking for our empathy.

Joe Hendershott:
And, you asked for some strategies, some of the things our teachers can do, our book has several in there. I’ll just give a couple real quick. Journal, unplug, I’m really paying attention to unplugging my phone during the day, journaling, I’m just picking up a couple of quick things that I do. When this is over, my wife’s upstairs doing a podcast as I said right now in San Antonio, we are talking a walk, we are talking a long walk. We just have it scheduled.

Joe Hendershott:
So, it’s learning when to say yes and when to say no, all those types of things, and learn to laugh. And, I think choosing our words wisely is important because I think as I go around the country, so many people say to me, “Well, Joe, I can do some work, but I’m just a teacher.” And I say, “That is the biggest influence in a child’s life next to a parent.” That is a huge responsibility that we have and in the absence of some parents, that makes us number one. 

Joe Hendershott:
So, I appreciate, I honor all our educators, our superintendents, our principals, our support staff, our educators, the extra time that they’re pouring into my children’s lives. I really appreciate their empathy, their grace, their mercy they’ve given towards my kids and again, the hope that they’re instilling into my children every day that something good is just about to happen and those are my closing comments today.

Jason Johnson:
Awesome, thank you. So, what I want to do, let’s close out on this. This is my favorite question to ask somebody right now. It’s totally selfish because I need to hear the answer, but I think it’s helpful for everybody to hear. I just want to know in two minutes or less, what has given you hope right now? What is it that’s given you hope right now? And, let’s just go right down. Let’s go Courtney, Amanda, Joe, Mark, Christian. Courtney, go, what’s given you hope right now?

Courtney Agurs:
What’s given me hope right now is watching my students and my colleagues and even myself come in and do it every day. So, coming in and giving it our all every single day. That’s given me hope because I know the end result is we’re making it through another day, through another week, through another month, we’ll make it through this year, we’re going to come out on the other side even better than what we went into this thinking about COVID and everything else that’s going on around the world. So, just seeing everyone give it their all every single day and laying it all out on the table. That has given me hope.

Jason Johnson:
Thank you. Amanda.

Amanda Ball:
My reading students have given me hope. I have the privilege of watching of their recorded videos as they practice their fluency task and I get to hear that no matter what’s going on in their house, there’s music, there’s siblings, and I’ve got students that are making away for themselves in their closet and reading grade level passages despite the fact that they are three and four grade levels behind on diagnostic testing, they just give me such hope and they teach me every day.

Jason Johnson:
I love it, thank you. Joe.

Joe Hendershott:
I already spoke on hope a little bit. Something good’s about to happen. Something good is happening every day of my kid’s lives when their teachers are speaking words of truth not false beliefs into their life. I think it’s so true today that our kids are living with these false beliefs and when I see teachers pour the truth into my children’s life, that they cannot just accomplish things in school, but outside of school and they’re supporting them socially, emotionally, and academically. They’re hitting all the markers in a very difficult time in our history. They’re hitting the social, the emotional, and the academics and that’s given me hope that we’re not just focused on one thing, that we’re looking at the whole child.

Joe Hendershott:
And, I can see all the teachers that are working with my children do that every day and I am so grateful and as well, like I said, the support of the administrators and the support staff. So, that’s what’s given me hope is the teachers who get up every day and I see them working with my kids. I love them.

Jason Johnson:
Awesome, thank you. Mark, what’s given you hope and while you’re talking, if our attendee … Blow up the chat tool. Feel free to type in the chat box what’s given you hope right now as well because I’d love to hear that, but while typing, Mark, tell us what’s given you hope right now.

Mark Wilson:
Humans are interesting, Jason. When things are at their worst, that’s actually when we’re at our best. When people feel helpless, they’re more likely to help and when people have been apart, they can see how important it is to be a part. That gives me hope.

Jason Johnson:
Thank you. Christian.

Christian Moore:
Sacrifice the teachers are making and that education’s making just to keep education going, it’s not slowing down, gives me tremendous hope. Education is the backbone of our society. It’s literally the backbone of human progress. So, if we want to do something to lower hate in this country it’s going to be through education. If we’re going to do something about racism, it’s going to be through education. If we’re going to do something about crime, if we’re going to do something about lowering poverty, education is the backbone of these social ills that we’re seeing.

Christian Moore:
And, to understand how we should treat other human beings, why we should treat human beings with dignity and respect is all through education. So, most human progress is going to come through education. This is why this is the most important work on the planet and the teachers are the backbone in making that happen and they are not shutting down, they’re stepping it up and that’s what’s going to change this world and change does not come without exposure to incredible ideas, to principles and things that literally help us see how humans can progress. It’s all through education, thank you.

Jason Johnson:
Thank you so much. Thank you, everybody. I’m going to try not to cry reading the comments hearing you talk about hearing students laugh from behind their masks, having a student wave out you from a distance is what’s giving you hope, it’s doing the same thing for me. And honestly, my opportunity to affiliate with all of you with this incredible family of educators, and therapists and counselors throughout the country that I’m so grateful to feel a part of gives me hope.

Jason Johnson:
You all are the greatest people in the world. Thanks for doing what you’re doing and I hope that you felt what we’ve discussed today. Huge thank you, huge virtual round of applause to our panelists for bringing these great ideas. Thank you so much and thank you to all our attendees. We love you, all the best in what you’re doing as you continue to bravely teach, educate, and counsel in this incredibly difficult year. Keep up the good work.

Jason Johnson:
I’m going to put up a slide with our contact information and feel free to reach out to us. We’ve got some great resources available here for you as well as we just love to hear from you. So, let me put that up, and that’s all we’ve got.