What Does Self-Care Have To Do With Differentiation?

I would say... absolutely everything!

If we return to the roots of what differentiation is about and its purpose in responding to what a child needs in terms of the entire spectrum of their social, emotional and academic support and learning, we can see that we have always been differentiating without naming it as such.

As parents, as teachers, as colleagues, as friends, as family members, we each innately know that how we respond to person a in situation b differs from the way we respond to person x  in situation y. We could say it is a human trait to do so, however, there are many examples in the animal kingdom where other creatures also display this skill. Perhaps, differential responses in addressing other’s needs is an innate capacity that all living creatures have.

In education, this capacity has been more specifically defined in recent years in terms of how teachers differentiate content delivery, the associated student activities and also the assessment of student learning. Today this is almost always based on numerical data and grades ~ something most teachers are completely at ease with and have been doing since the profession of teaching commenced.

Is differentiation really all about shifting the bell curve?

What has changed is the emphasis on ‘shifting the normal curve.’ That is to say, moving a D student to a C grade, a C student to a B grade etc. Unfortunately, this attributes sole accountability exclusively to each teacher for what are essentially systemic requirements and not at all about each teacher’s capacity to respond to each child in front of them. Instantly, this can be a drain both on a teacher’s professional self-esteem and value when, at times, the apparent failure to skew the bell curve towards its top end becomes entwined with a narrative that states that the teacher is not doing their level best for each child.

Enter stage left a need for profound levels of self-care: physical self-care and nurturing and equally, mental self-care and nurturing, and the wisdom of maintaining this as centre stage in one’s professional and personal life.

Care and Nurturing = Thriving and Flourishing

These movements of self-care and self-nurturing bring the capacity to hold true to oneself in these situations where most teachers genuinely do want to connect with what is needed for each child in their care. Moreover, most teachers usually ask what is exactly and precisely required for them to thrive and to flourish? To do this, a teacher, first of all, must be thriving and flourishing themselves.

All too often when placed in a stressful situation of having to force children who, perhaps, may not be in the learning readiness to move from a C to a B or B to an A, our personal and professional capacity to respond to each child's needs can fly straight out the window. It becomes a stressful situation where the data (each child’s results) have to fit the data demand, rather than the teacher responding to what each child is actually calling for.

In these situations, we tend to override the101 aspects of foundational, physical self-care and nurturing. However, from personal experience, I have found that the very simple things in life like maintaining a healthy diet, regular gentle exercise, going early to bed and being early to rise and then expediting any extra work earlier in the day, rather than later that day, are the most significant foundations that render us able to sustain this capacity.   Burning the midnight oil only means that we take the work to our bed, and this then impacts the quality of our sleep, whereas it is much more grandly supportive for us to allow the space to simply relax in the evenings and to spend time with loved ones. This supports us so we can in turn support those in our care during our professional day.

These are all basic foundational aspects of self-care, which we must never drop if we are to sustain the capacity to feel steady, cared for, nurtured and completely at home in our skin.

Silence the mental chaos through collegial support

Mentally, we need not permit a racing, relentless mind to get the better of us, nor to take on what, at times, seems to be the voice of an invisible tyrant, but instead we can honour what we innately know to be true. This is, after all, a capacity that we share with other living creatures ~ the capacity to respond specifically and uniquely to whatever child or person is in front of us.

Developing true support and collegiality at work supports us greatly in this, as does being vulnerable and open enough to actually voice that I'm feeling a bit stressed; crazy thoughts are going through my head that somehow, I'm not good enough as a professional. Just as my students aren't cutting the grades that the data demands, I'm not cutting the mustard in delivering the grades and therefore, I am not a true professional.

I have found that overtly voicing the dialogue of momentary madness with a trusted confidante often exposes how common to us all this internal monologue is and hence clearly, it does not belong to any one of us!

Appreciation

These thoughts are usually the meanderings or the toxic mental substrate that informs us when we have not been in the full and absolute appreciation of all that we bring as a professional.  Having other professionals there to support us, and we to support them, allows everybody within the profession to be engaging only with appreciation and professional worth and value, speaking confirming statements of the depth of our true professionalism.

Teachers are amazing – it is an amazing profession, mainly staffed by wonderful people, who love working with children and supporting them to learn and grow.

Statements like this have us responding and differentiating for each other, as well as holding on to the fact that, as professionals, and indeed as human beings, we actually do know what each child needs in each situation.  If it happens to be something that we do not have within our own area of expertise, that is absolutely OK, but we do know how to resource and access others in order to address each specific child's needs.

So there is a huge direct correlation between self-care and nurturing and our capacity to differentiate. We can only respond to our children and to our colleagues when we are complete within ourselves. If we allow external factors to come in and influence this capacity, we will never be truly differentiating for anybody in our life. 

We were all born to respond warmly and with a depth of responsive care towards others, perhaps especially towards children. However, this can only happen when we have responded first to our own self-care and self-nurturing.

An empty well replenishes no one.

A replete well sustains all.