Coming Back Home: Fierce Self-Care for Educators in the Post-Pandemic Era (Series Begins Jan. 5, 2024) (Registration Closed) – The Massachusetts Partnerships for Youth, Inc.

This course closed on July 16, 2024.

For this webinar series, participants will automatically be enrolled in all 5 sessions.

REGISTRATION CLOSED

Speaker

Matt Hersh, Ph.D., DCEP

Description

As if educator burnout wasn’t already a national crisis, the Covid-19 pandemic thrust educators, administrators, and school-based clinicians into an even more precarious situation. Fewer resources, more staff turnover, increased time spent on declining student mental health and problematic behavior, learning loss, and constant pressure to meet demands from multiple stakeholders are just some of the unrelenting issues that educators and school-based clinicians have been facing and are charged to currently address. As school systems continue to help re-ignite students’ engagement and bolster their well-being, educators and clinicians may be left behind despite the growing need for support and compassionate response to this professional crisis. Fortunately, there are reliable ways to support school personnel, beyond more cultural and institutional changes that are also desperately needed. This webinar series aims to help enhance educators’ and clinicians’ well-being through the development of self-caring attitudes, actions, and acknowledgement of a communitarian-based perspective that should neither stigmatize nor leave anyone behind. In this 5-part series, participants will learn: 1) the foundational principles and science of self-care; 2) about their own embodied experiences that set the tone for both burnout risk and cultivation of more sustainable well-being; 3) how to broaden and build their internal resources to boost resilience; 4) application of practical and effective techniques for enhancing mind-body-relational wellness; and 5) how to integrate self-caring attitudes and actions into a sustainable lifestyle.

To receive PDPs and CEUs, participants must attend all 5 sessions and successfully pass a quiz following Session 5. Following the live webinar, registrants will be emailed a link to view the recorded webinar. The recording will be made available for 7 days after each session.

In the first session, we explore some of the foundational principles of professional self-care and begin to clarify what qualifies as effective care for the self. In fact, the science and art of self-caring is incredibly more nuanced and diverse than we might think. We will explore how self-caring is a renewable resource that needs to be tended to like a garden for optimal health and growth. With new ideas and enthusiasm for what it means to give care to ourselves, educators and clinicians are more likely to adopt the everyday practices and habits that are designed to bring forth increased energy and peace while reducing stress and burnout risk.

Our contemporary culture is replete with references to taking good care of oneself. A quick google search for “educator self-care” returns over 73 million hits. It’s even more overwhelming for “self-care” in general, revealing a staggering 4.3 billion results. What is often thrust upon us is a prescriptive approach that tells us to simply do a certain type or number of activities guaranteed to result in greater well-being. This ignores, however, how each of us carries a unique set of historical experiences and way of being that likely responds better to some self-caring ideas and practices and worse to others. In this webinar, we will explore our unique habits, patterns, and needs that set the stage for more informed and compassionate decision-making for sustainable self-care and greater well-being.

As we build our case for more flexible, proactive, and person-centered self-care and burnout prevention, we now turn to a set of vital internal skills that can strongly support educators and practitioners. Quietly but fiercely buoyed with inner strengths such as mindful awareness, (self-)compassion, forgiveness, gratitude, and humor, educators and practitioners can be better equipped to manage the daily challenges of their work day while bolstering their stress hardiness in both their professional and personal lives. These soft strengths are inherently growable, thus inviting small doses of practice to foster these qualities over time and across multiple domains of life.

The previous session helped us to identify, cultivate, and employ our inner strengths to facilitate our well-being. Our fourth session builds on the idea of purposefully fostering self-caring habits through a varied set of decisions, skills, and behaviors. These proactive actions – like boundary-setting, breathwork, subtle energy practices, and restorative activities – grant us opportunities for protecting and soothing our precious energy, recharging our batteries, connecting with supportive others, and tapping into our creativity. It is through such conscious self-caring enactments that we begin to approach how to integrate self-care into our daily work and personal lives.

In the final session of this self-care cultivation and burnout prevention series, we will reflect on sustainability of our self-caring efforts. Essential ingredients of making self-care more sustainable include our motivation and willingness to adopt a growth mindset, our readiness to employ our self-caring skills, and our school and larger community’s acknowledgment of our collective needs. To this latter point, we also carefully consider how to locate the inherently individualized acts of self-care into a larger communitarian ethos that asks all of us to look out for one another’s well-being and wellness. When we conceive of each educator’s self-care plan as both individualized and as an essential part of a larger whole, we move ever closer to true sustainability of self-caring as a desired way of life rather than as a reaction to external forces around us.

About the Speaker

Matt Hersh, Ph.D., DCEP, is a licensed clinical psychologist in private practice in the Boston area. Matt incorporates mindfulness, self-compassion, and Energy Psychology into his anxiety treatment for teens and adults. He is a certified Koru Mindfulness teacher and is a diplomate of Comprehensive Energy Psychology. Matt is the founder of The Thriving Therapist, an online resource for mental health practitioners’ self-care support and burnout prevention. Matt can be found at TheThrivingTherapist.org, on Facebook @thrivingthrpst, and on Twitter @DrMattHersh.

Participants must attend all 5 sessions, either live or recorded, to receive PDPs and/or CEUs. If you are not eligible for PDPs and/or CEUs, you may apply for a Certificate of Attendance.

Membership Information

Most MPY webinars are available ONLY to current staff from member districts and organizations. Public school memberships include police and fire personnel. Former and retired employees and members of committees, including but not limited to, PTO/PTA, PAC, School Improvement Councils, Health Councils, Drug/Alcohol Councils, and school volunteers, are not considered MPY members.

PDPs and CEUs

MPY is an approved Professional Development Provider through the Massachusetts Department of Elementary & Secondary Education (Provider No. F20180079). Professional Development Points (PDPs) are offered for most MPY professional development webinars. PDPs are issued in 10 hour increments, per DESE requirements.

Continuing Education Units (CEUs) are available for clinical staff through the National Association of Social Workers (NASW) and the Massachusetts Mental Health Counselors Association, Inc. (MaMHCA). The NASW and the MaMHCA approve each event individually. CEUs may be given in hourly increments.

To receive PDPs and CEUs, participants must pass the quiz.

Event Cancellation Policy

If you are unable to attend a MPY webinar you must cancel, through Bonnie Mullen at bonnie@mpyinc.org, one business day before the webinar.

For MPY hybrid conferences, the date in-person registration closes will be posted on MPY’s website. Virtual conference registration will close one business day before the hybrid conference. You cannot cancel or switch your registration from in-person to virtual after in-person registration closes. Please email Bonnie Mullen at bonnie@mpyinc.org with any questions regarding registration.

Enrollment in this course closed on January 5, 2024.

If you are seeking to receive CEUs and/or PDPs, please click Register Now. Once you complete the webinar series, you will be able to take quizzes for CEUs and/or PDPs. Upon completion of each quiz, you will receive a certificate.

All sessions are 12:00 pm – 2:00 pm.