Love Your Job Longer: An Educator's Guide to Everyday Resilience
Love Your Job Longer: An Educator's Guide to Everyday Resilience
Seize Your Joy!
As educators, we have learned that hope alone is not an effective strategy for getting through our days. This is especially true when you may not have the support, encouragement, and energy to meet the expectations you—and others—have for yourself. This book contains stories of raw failures and brilliant successes from others who have walked in your shoes.
We want everyone—new and veteran, in the classroom and out—to have the capacity to cultivate joy and nourish young minds. We have found that the only way to do this consistently is to find inner balance and strengthen resilience. How one grows their own resilience can look very different from another’s. However, it is vital to do so in order to thrive in our chosen profession for as long as we want rather than only for as long as we can.
This book offers many tools and strategies to encourage and grow your own resiliency, as well as to create peaceful environments. We provide a glimpse into the science behind the strategies, tools, and techniques we share, including resources that will allow you to dig deeper. We also offer you intentional opportunities to pause and reflect, so you can celebrate the new understandings, ponder the experiences, and carve your own path.
We hope that this book will inspire you to embrace your resilience and forge an authentic and fulfilling life for yourself and those around you.
Paperback, 221 pages. $19.99.
For nearly three decades, author Beth Buchanan has served communities and students through her passion for growing youth in varying capacities. Beginning in 1992, Beth spent most of her career as a classroom teacher and coach on the banks of Alaska’s Yukon River. In the last five years, Beth has turned her attention to supporting teachers and parents in creating trauma-resilient environments and developing professional and personal resilience. Beth’s personal journey of parenting adopted and fostered children with extreme behaviors – outcomes from developmental trauma – led to her quest to understand the neurobiology of behavior. This journey has guided her deep into the research of neuroscience leaders to improve mental health and performance in schools, not only for students but also educators, who often struggle with their own stressors, trauma, and juggling of roles and responsibilities. Beth has a bachelor’s degree in secondary education, a master’s degree in curriculum and instruction, and a master’s in leadership education. She also has expert knowledge in trauma-informed education, social-emotional learning, youth and adult resilience, and recent neuroscience developments concerning the healing capacity of the brain. You can expect a highly engaging learning experience that models what we know about best practices in teaching.
Educators are essential, and they need to have the capacity and support to thrive in both work life and personal life. Throughout this book, my collaborators and I invite you to consider your needs and wants, health, passions, future, gifts, and struggles as you meet us here at whatever point in the journey you are on. We celebrate your commitment to children. We celebrate the wisdom you have gained. We celebrate your potential. - Beth Buchanan, lead author.