The Educator Wellness Revolution Podcast by EmpowerEd

For this final episode of our second season, we wanted to discuss a truly revolutionary, and at-times controversial concept, to create more wellness in our school systems: abolition.  Although this term is typically applied to the criminal legal system, abolition is also a wider lens for viewing the world and is rooted in antiracism. We can use abolition to create wellness, liberati...

Despite so much attention being given to DEI efforts over the past years, many of the outcomes are the same for Black and brown children in our country.  Despite our growing social awareness of equity issues, why is there still so little tangible change?  In this episode, we wanted to go deep into examining the root structures in education that hold back true equitable outcomes...

This podcast discusses educator wellness for early childhood educators. Early childhood education is especially important here in Washington, DC. We've had universal PreK 3 and 4 since 2008 (something I am so grateful for as a parent), and a huge network of daycare centers and nannies serving families across all eight wards. Universal Prekindergarten has not only alleviated a great cost to DC...

Over our years of working on educator wellness programming in schools, we've found ourselves interacting with a lot of assistant principals. Assistant principals spend much of their time supporting teachers during the school day, and often are the ones making larger decisions relating to staff culture. To us, they seem uniquely situated to both understand the needs of their teacher, and have...

On this podcast, we talk a lot about the importance of mental health. Especially since the beginning of the pandemic, educators have been recognizing that if they want to keep serving students, they need to find the right kind of therapeutic support for themselves. But despite this awareness, so many barriers stand in the way of teachers getting the therapy they need. Mismatched schedules, out of...

Culture is important and it's complicated. Our identities and lived experiences shape who we are, but these differences can also create divides when they go unexamined. And for educators, there often isn't the time, space, or communication skills necessary to meaningfully address cultural divides when they arise during the school day.    For this, we spoke with Markus Townsend, the Direc...

Vicarious trauma is a term therapists have long used to describe how they empathetically pick up the effects of trauma during their sessions with clients. But lately, we have been hearing this term used more with educators.    School staff members are recognizing how they have absorbed trauma from their students - which has only increased through the pandemic - during their daily interac...

We are so excited to share our first ever LIVE audience recording with you - an educator-led panel from our EmpowerEd Educator Wellness Symposium on December 1st, an event we organize twice a year to share educator wellness learning in Washington, DC. A little background on this panel: Lately in Washington, DC we've been experiencing a very tragic and unsettling time of community violence, wh...

As we all know, educators are on the front line of so much stress and almost nobody needs the skills of mindfulness - conscious breathing, mind relaxation, detaching from negative thoughts, etc - more than them.    But putting mindfulness to work in schools has been a challenge for us! At our partner schools, we've struggled to find time in overloaded PD schedules, had yoga classes...

*For DC Locals: Please sign up to testify for educator student loan relief and other teacher retention measures on November 21st (virtual)!!* At EmpowerEd, we see advocacy as a central component for educator wellness in Washington, DC and beyond. To create an enduring system for both students and teachers, we need to change our system so that educators can more easily achieve real work/life harmon...

*For DC Locals: Please sign up to testify for educator student loan relief and other teacher retention measures on November 21st (virtual)!!* At EmpowerEd, we deeply believe in the connection between educator wellness and our ongoing advocacy efforts in Washington, DC and beyond. To us it seems pointless to ask educators to better manage their stress when we could instead be trying to create a les...

Our third podcast episode this season is on longevity in the teaching profession. In our work, we watch way too many teachers leave after a couple of years. In fact, we originally started EmpowerEd because we saw how destabilizing it was for students when their teachers kept leaving. We are very aware of the significant barriers keeping people from staying in the classroom. When other careers offe...

Belonging is such a rich topic. Researcher and author Brené Brown connects the feelings of belonging and love in our psyches and writes about the deep importance of these feelings to the human condition:    'A deep sense of love and belonging is an irreducible need of all women, men, and children. We are biologically, cognitively, physically, and spiritually wired to love,...

As an organization, EmpowerEd has always made important connections between the educator wellness initiatives needed at our partner schools and the policy advocacy we are doing in our greater Washington, DC community. After all, is it fair to ask teachers to better manage stress when we can instead work to change the system to produce less stress while achieving greater outcomes for students? One...

Hello, and welcome back to Season Two of the Educator Wellness Revolution! We hope you had a great summer! As we gear up for our next season of the show, Scott and Gracy check in about practicing wellness this summer, the stress and beauty of the back-to-school transition, and what we are excited about for our educator wellness work at EmpowerEd this year. We also discuss a few of our upcoming epi...

We are so excited to share the last episode of our first season with you on a topic that couldn't be more important to educator wellness: the harmful discourse on anti-Critical Race Theory in education and increasing incidents of book bans on topics of diversity and inclusion in schools in the United States. Sadly, we find ourselves in a moment of incredible political divisiveness where...

Modern workplaces are becoming more flexible, but many educators are being left out of this new way to balance work and life. Especially as more and more teachers are burning out, it's becoming clear that it's not IF flexible scheduling for educators will happen but HOW.   In this podcast episode, we dive into the "how." With the help of DC-based educators and EmpowerEd follows Rian Reed (Kra...

Sadly, we've seen an uptick in traumatic events with many of our school partners in Washington, DC. More and more, learning to heal from trauma as a school is becoming a requisite for educator wellness.    For this, we were grateful to speak with Dr. Danielle Palmer and Monique Leopold, co-founders of Bridges Mental Health, a mental health consulting agency that supports DC schools. Thei...

With an abundance of wellness challenges and a lack of qualified clinicians, what are schools supposed to do? How can we ensure both student and staff wellness needs are getting met within a learning community? In this episode, we speak with wellnesses coordinators Johanna Ulseth of Briya PCS and Jacqueline Baron of Digital Pioneers Academy PCS, both in Washington, DC, on the r...

From working with our partner schools, we know how much challenging student behavior is influencing teacher wellness these days. The ongoing effects of COVID has affected the way many students are interacting within their school communities and the impact of challenging behavior is real.   For this, in our sixth episode we speak with child behavior specialist Alexandra Vann of Building Capaci...

We all know school principals are responsible for a lot but how does this workload influence their self-care and the wellness of their staff? How can a spirit of true inclusion–both for students and teachers–create a school culture that promotes wellness rather than furthering burnout? These are some of the questions we explored with educator Toni Barton, a former DC principal, charter network exe...

As a teacher, are you wavering between drowning and burning out with all the demands on your time and energy? Do you think more self-care might help you but don't know how to start approaching it?   In this conversation, award-winning DCPS World Language teacher Chiara Monticelli shares about a period of overwhelm in her life and how this difficult time helped her begin recognizing and acting...

In this episode, we speak with Instructional Coach Claire Shanahan and ELL Resource Teacher Catherine Heisy from Ida B. Wells MS in Washington, DC on creating a staff-led PD schedule that encourages shared teacher expertise and strengthens relationships between educators.    Specifically we discuss:  - How "Thinking Thursdays" (and soon "Wellness Wednesdays") came to be at Ida B. We...

In this episode, we speak with Yazid Jackson from Restorative DC / School Talk DC about what it means to create a restorative adult culture in schools.  Specifically, we discuss:  - why adults need to model restorative practices for it to work with students.  - the difference between venting our difficulties and actual restorative practice.  - how to address the lack of time in...

During our first episode of the Educator Wellness Revolution podcast, Scott and Gracy share their educator wellness vision and interview their colleague and collaborator, Gabrielle Dubose. Gabrielle also supports EmpowerEd's educator wellness work and is a full-time DCPS teacher who has worked for over 29 years. She has a passion for arts education and a deep enthusiasm for supporting teachers. We...