Onward: Cultivating Emotional Resilience in Educators

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Onward: Cultivating Emotional Resilience in Educators

Onward tackles the problem of educator stress, and provides a practical framework for taking the burnout out of teaching. Stress is part of the job, but when 70 percent of teachers quit within their first five years because the stress is making them physically and mentally ill, things have gone too far. Unsurprisingly, these effects are highest in difficult-to-fill positions such as math, science, and foreign languages, and in urban areas and secondary classrooms―places where we need our teachers to be especially motivated and engaged. This book offers a path to resiliency to help teachers weather the storms and bounce back―and work toward banishing the rain for good.

From the Back Cover

Become a Resilient Teacher and Transform Your Classroom, Your School, and the Greater Society

Resilience in teachers is key for creating quality classrooms and schools. The opportunity for becoming resilient originates in how an educator makes sense of irritants, interruptions, and unexpected events, because interpretation dictates actions. By cultivating resilience, teachers can fulfill the intentions that brought them into the teaching profession. Onward is a practical resource for cultivating resilience in educators that is based on the author's research in emotional resilience, psychology, systems thinking, and change management and on ten years of testing in schools and offices.

Onward outlines a conceptual framework with four parts: who we are, where we are, what we do, and how we are. The book identifies 12 habits and dispositions that can be cultivated in order to build resilience. Become a resilient teacher and help transform your classroom and the world!

"With courage, humility, and boundless hope for what schools might become, Elena Aguilar charts a path for nurturing the resilience of educators at every level. Both loving and resolute, she guides readers to embrace their whole and complex selves―to cultivate trust and empathy, to play and rest, and to build community with others in the service of creating more just and compassionate schools."
―PARKER J. PALMER, author of The Courage to Teach, Let Your Life Speak, and On the Brink of Everything

"With this framework, Elena Aguilar gives us a curriculum of hope that we can teach each other in our learning communities, detailing a path forward through the temptations of quitting and the dangers of burnout. This serves as a guide for everyone working in or with schools, to keep our best teachers strong for the children who need us."
―SHANNA PEEPLES, 2015 National Teacher of the Year