FRAMEWORK FOR EDUCATOR WELLNESS

Beam Pedagogy’s purpose is to support educator wellness; but, wellness can be difficult to talk about because we all have our own idea about what it means.

When we at Beam think of wellness, we’re thinking holistically. We are thinking about what it takes to be well as an individual, within a community of educators, and within the education system. We recognize that wellness is a multifaceted idea. It involves our relationships, our physical bodies, our emotions, and our freedom to be creative. Each level of wellness within our work (self, community, and system) impacts the other levels.

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We know that individual educators and educator communities will struggle to be well as long as our systems don’t change. And yet, our systems need well individuals and communities in order to transform.

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The spark we all bring to this profession – the drive to bring our most creative selves and the passion to transform systems–plays a major role in our ability to be well. When we remove the barriers that prevent us from connecting to that spark, and offer support to keep it burning, we can go a long way toward wellness.

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We recognize that working toward wellness must be done at all levels – self, community, and systems. Yet, when we do it deeply at any of those levels, there’s an immediate and necessary change that happens at the other levels.