It’s natural for any teacher to assume that the primary source of their stress comes from their students and their classroom. However, under that guise, it can be very easy to overlook external factors that be contributing to those stress levels as well. Even something as simple as their diet can play a direct role on their mood and energy levels throughout the day. Failure to fuel the body with healthy foods can lead to decreased energy levels and worsened moods. This is also true of hydration, with many teachers defaulting to highly caffeinated beverages as opposed to water. Creating opportunities for their motivation to crash isn’t healthy for themselves, nor their students. This is why it’s important for teachers to identify the external factors that might be impacting their day-to-day lives as opposed to pointing the finger at their students. While it’s clear that a healthy work-life balance can be hard to achieve as a teacher, perhaps it truly begins with finding ways to better the time outside of the classroom before a teacher can better their time inside the classroom. To learn more about the ways in which teachers can improve their self-care efforts, please see the resource coupled alongside this post.