Being a teacher is hard. And being a teacher is hard on you, physically and emotionally.

Teachers do a good job of taking care of their students but are not so good at taking care of themselves. By nature, we have to care for others and show compassion consistently.

The problem is how do we take care of ourselves, especially in-the-moment as teaching and learning is unfolding? This is a problem for all teachers. So how can we help teachers recognize and possibly mitigate the effects of this stress as it is happening?

These feelings, whether we like to admit it or not, can be contagious - impacting our colleagues, and even worse, our students.

Mindfulness, and other associated complementary wellness practices, should become part of any (willing) teacher's wellness toolkit.