Transcribed by Kanako Suwa

[ Introduction music plays ]

Welcome to the SENIA Happy Hour podcast with your host, Lori Boll. We know you’re busy, so we bring you one hour’s worth of content in under 30 minutes, leaving you time for a true happy hour. 

Lori: Hello, hello, everyone. This is a new season of our podcast starting the year of 2024 -2025 school year. And I just want to say good luck to you all. Hope you have a fantastic year ahead. Today, I had the pleasure of speaking with Sybil Hall, and she spoke about this important topic of teacher burnout. Sybil recently published “Burn Bright, Not Out”, which is 35 lessons that cultivate teacher wellbeing. Today, we discussed why this is such an important topic now, especially in 2024 and some ways to support our own well -being. So as we’re starting this new school year, you really won’t want to miss this podcast. with some great ideas for you and just want you to be happy and so do I. So now on to the show. 

Well, hello, Sybil, welcome to the podcast. 

Sybil: Hello. Thank you. 

Lori: I’m so excited to chat today. 

Sybil: Me too. 

Lori: First off, congratulations on the publication of your book, which is called Burn Bright, Not Out, 35 lessons that cultivate teacher wellbeing as well. 

Sybil: Thank you so much. It’s so exciting. 

Lori: It is exciting. When did you publish your book? 

Sybil: I published it in, oh my gosh, September of 2023. 

Lori: Great. Yeah. So it’s been out in the world for a while and it’s making waves. It’s such an important topic and I’m really glad we’re speaking about it now because many of our listeners are just heading back to school. And, you know, we have social emotional learning for kids, but you say this book is social emotional learning for adults. So tell us more about that. 

Sybil: Yeah, absolutely. I know so many of us are so focused on our students’ wellbeing, right? And making sure that we’re integrating in that social emotional learning for them. But if you’re like me, 23 years of teaching, I did not do the same myself. I just did not ever learn to focus on myself. I never learned to take care of myself. And frankly, I have to own that, right? I just never like slow down or, or realize the benefits of getting to know myself. And so I really framed this book around that idea of we’re teaching kids how to be self -aware. We’re teaching kids how to manage themselves. We need to teach ourselves the exact same things. And when we do that, we show up as a better person and more able to serve our clients, our students, our teachers, whoever we’re working with in our school, that much better in the end. And it took me a long time to learn that and figure that out. And now I’m just so passionate about sharing that message because it’s so, so important and life -changing, honestly. 

Lori: Yeah, it is. You know, I remember reading some of your blog posts and things in the past and you mentioned a Japanese word that kind of you use to support your life. So can you share what that is? 

Sybil: Yeah, it’s the concept of Ikigai. I -K -I -G -A -I. And it’s why we wake up in the morning. It’s our purpose in life. And there’s really four areas of Ikigai. What you’re good at, what you love, what the world needs, which is often, as teachers, we’re in it because the world needs it. But sometimes we kind of forget that that’s why we’re in it. And then what we can be paid for. And kind of the intersection of those four big concepts and ideas is where we find happiness. And in Japan and all the research around Ikegai is where we live a longer, happier, healthier life.  Right? And so as teachers, we really can use this concept to our benefit because we have to do so many things within every single day.  And some of them we love, some of them we’re good at, some of them, you know, is changing the world in our opinion, but some of them aren’t. And sometimes we get caught focused on those ones that aren’t, right? And then there’s the whole thing, well, it’s out of your control, just let it go. But what I would argue is the Ikegai concept helps us see that we can actually be more well and more happy when we focus on those things that we do love, that we do are good at. Right? And when we do that and we pour our passions into those areas. Those other parts are just kind of part of our day and I can do it for 20 minutes. I can do my recess duty. I can do my things in a much healthier way because my brain and focus is on this positive aspect that I do love and that I am good at. And so that’s like within the classroom, but also our own personal lives, right? And so a lot of what I talk about in the book and around this concept of Ikigai is scheduling in and making time to get your know yourself and those passions outside of school and within school, what you’re good at outside of school and within your school day and focusing on those and building those up. 

And it’s just unbelievable how your mind is almost free to be in more of a state of happiness and well -being by just really focusing on those two areas in particular, both in your personal and professional life. So my big aha when I was writing this book was just that we need to do this as educators simultaneously. So we are very good at learning the next, you know, professional development. We’re very good at exploring what our students need and how are we going to meet every student’s needs even though in their different places. We love to learn like methodologies and pedagogies. and such. 

But what I argue in this book is we need to do the exact same thing for ourselves as well. What systems at home work well for you too? So I started a morning routine when I was writing this book because I was like teaching full time. How am I going to write a book? I had a dream. I decided to move forward on it. 

I wanted it to transform me and I didn’t know how I was going to do it. And so basically what I did is I did a 30 day challenge and I woke up an hour earlier every single morning before work and I just wrote and I wrote and wrote and wrote. So I said a number of words. I wanted to write 35 ,000 words in one month. And I didn’t edit. I didn’t, you know, I just wrote, I just got ideas down. And oh my gosh, just that routine, every morning of spending time on me and being creative, totally transformed my day then when I went to spend it with my students. I had this like beautiful, it’s going to be an amazing day and I started doing yoga in the morning because I started adding coffee in with my husband and I realized, wow, I was really missing a lot just by rushing through the morning before work and showing up at work in like more of a stressed out state. And now I realize, oh my gosh, I could actually be creative and have some fun and spend some time with my husband and go to work in a very relaxed, different state, ready to conquer what was on that day. And so that concept is just so, so powerful in that way. 

Lori: Yeah, I love that. And one thing that came up as you were speaking is, I know, you know, we’re not out there just as teachers. We’re also parents or caregivers of our own parents or things like that. And so so often we think we can’t make that time for ourselves to do those passions and things that you’re excited about. But as you said, that hour getting up one hour earlier can really make such a big difference. You know, I bought some. Well, I started exercising and that was really helpful for me, like you said, to just change your whole brain chemistry as you’re off heading to work. So you know, I was doing running and things like that, which I loved. Once I had some injuries and things, I couldn’t do that.  So instead I bought one of those kind of like journals that helps you like guide you through it. And that was so helpful for me to reframe my, oh gosh, I lost this passion of exercising, but now I’m focusing on myself and journaling and things like that. And yeah, it was so helpful. And it’s just not something we think about, I guess, where I was going with that. 

Sybil: Yeah, for sure. And there’s a lot of research. And these are evidence -based practices, journaling, spending time, creating, exercising, right? And as educators, we know that, but we have a hard time justifying it, right? Or we have a hard time finding the time to do it. And shifting your paradigm on time, I also talk about that in the book quite in depth because we are actually in control of our time if we think about it that way. It’s our perspective on time, right? So how was I going to do this? How was I going to write a book and teach? And I have, high expectations of myself as a teacher too, right? This is my 23rd year. That was my 23rd year of teaching.  I had been an instructional coach for eight years and was going back into the classroom full -time. I had really high expectations on myself of like, okay, I’ve been talking the talk to teachers for a long time. I better pull it off, right? And I was gonna write a book. And you know what? Having that openness and that big audacious goal actually led me to finding that time. And now what I say is I created that time. And I think with self -care and with self -awareness, any of the aspects of social -emotional learning, time management is a big one that perspective that we control time, we can think a half an hour super long, or we can think half an hour super short, or we can think half an hour is just right. 

And so I’m going to plan it to be just right. I’m going to plan, I want to do X, Y, Z. And if it’s not enough time, I’m not going to have enough time. If I plan it that it’s too short, you know, or too long, I’m going to be like looking for stuff to do. But if I plan it for a half an hour, then I’m going to, I’m going to feel good about what I do in a half an hour.  

Lori: Right.

Sybil: And we teach these things to kids. We teach them how to use their Google calendar, but do we stop and like, how do we do that in our personal lives? Like that’s truly transformational when you do that. So finding that, that morning routine that works for you. And like you said too, Lori, like you couldn’t exercise anymore. Well, I’m kind of finding the summer is hard to keep up my routine. Right. I usually do 20 minutes of yoga each morning and I’ve kind of been scooting that off. And then my body doesn’t feel very good. And I’m like, come on, so you know how to do this. Like get back to that, that routine. So it really is about building routines and rituals, which I also talk about the difference between routines and rituals and, and which routines do you want to turn into rituals where they have this more warm traditions, um, real authentic happiness kind of aspects to them. Um, and you know, which routines do you intentionally want to make sure that they become rituals. So you don’t let them go when you’re on vacation. I also talk about that too, like as teachers, we like let all out when we get off work, right. 

And we go on this vacation and we forget everything we know about taking care ourselves and like routines. And then it’s like, it almost backfires. I talk about like severe back pain I would have like after a vacation. because I didn’t let myself keep up some of those routines that I had built that I my body and mine so needed. 

Lori: Yeah. There’s another one that you brought up. 

Yeah. Yeah. 

Lori: Well, thank you. This is great information and so important. And you know, teacher burnout is a real thing. And why do you believe it’s such an important topic to focus on now? 2024. Why are we focusing on teacher burnout? 

Sybil: Yeah, well, sadly, it’s because we hadn’t focused on it yet, right? And there’s a real problem right now. Not as many kids are going into education to be teachers. Right. The teachers that are are in the schools are feeling burnt out and either leaving the profession or sticking with it, but not in a healthy state for them or their students oftentimes just needing to get through it. I, you know, just have to keep going. There’s nothing else I can do. And just, I have had the privilege of working at five countries in the world. And so I’ve seen and encountered and met and interact with so many different educators of all walks of life, and it’s everywhere. 

It doesn’t matter if you’re in a US public school, or in the most prestigious you know international school out there or anything, any other kinds of varieties. We all burn out if we don’t know how to take care of ourselves and we don’t focus on our own well being. And, you know what quite honestly our own well -being is something that changes. It’s it’s I say in the book. It’s it’s Dynamic not static, right? What season of life are we in right now, right? So it’s gonna change your entire entire life But what I now try to help people see is that the sooner you can look inward The sooner you can start learning to give yourself self -compassion to give yourself grace Some of these things to fail forward right to learn to reframe Mistakes the sooner we can do those things the healthier and happier We’re going to feel as we go through those seasons of life and and be able to adjust Ourselves, and so I’m so passionate that educators we matter 

And a lot of times we don’t feel the self worth that we deserve. Society doesn’t look at us very fondly a lot of times. Pay is often not very good for educators. And so we have to come together. We have to come together in 2024 and we have to lift each other up together. And that’s a big part of my message is like, let’s just do this together. I’m not perfect at it either. I have to work at it all the time. It’s something that we are constantly gonna need to do. And we serve our students so much better when we come from a healthy wellbeing place. 

Lori: Yeah, I agree. And you mentioned failing forward and as teachers, we forget about that so much. We’re constantly telling our students, it’s okay to fail. It’s okay to make these mistakes. This is how we learn. But for ourselves, we’re so hard on ourselves. I think a lot of teachers or people who go into this field are kind of perfectionists. And it’s not okay to fail in our minds. 

Sybil: Yeah, I see the absolute same thing. You know, it was one of the most transformational things I did was when I was in Dubai as a tech and innovation coach, I had two colleagues in my office with me, and we made a failure chart, a fail forward chart. It was just a T chart, and we put the failure, and then we put the learning. And it was big chart paper up on our office wall, but we were modeling that adults and teachers need to fail forward. And…  I can’t believe how transformational doing that was for us because we began to reframe our mistakes quite quickly and learn from them if they, you know, had that kind of meaning to them. But also everyone who walked through our, our office saw that modeling these coaches are are naming their mistakes. They’re naming their failures and they’re learning from them and that, and that’s led them now to XYZ. So it’s kind of fun to like also be able to like track some of those. Like I wouldn’t probably have been able to do this or realize this if I had never made that mistake. You’re absolutely right. Again, it’s something we teach our students. But do we pay attention to it ourselves? Are we brave enough to be public with it? I’m really, really into saying things out loud because once I make them public, I hold myself more accountable. Right? I’m gonna do a morning routine. 

I’m gonna write my failures up there. 

I’m going to celebrate my small wins, right? That’s another one. I think we do as a generally with our students and colleagues, if we’re an instructional coach position or an admin position, we celebrate their wins. We get them to celebrate. But do we celebrate our own wins? Do we set goals for the week and celebrate that we met them or focused on why we didn’t? And did we change the target? So again, that’s another one too. 

Lori: Yeah. Okay, so. What do you think some teachers can do as they’re just coming into a new school year? What can they do to avoid that burnout or set themselves up for success? 

Sybil: Yeah, I love that question. So I think the beginning of the school year is the perfect time to really focus on this. And this is actually the time of the year when I started using a whiteboard in the mornings to write out some of the big things I wanted to do, accomplish that day. And again, both in my personal life and in my professional life. So trying to set up some systems for yourself that will make sure you can kind of maintain that balance and focus on our well -being, right? We know that it’s really predictable that the beginning of the year is really busy. We have back -to -school night. We have setting up the classroom. We have all of the things we do. Meetings, meetings, meetings. Yes, meetings, meetings, meetings. 

And we know then like we have conferences in October or November, right? We have some of these predictable super busy times and we say no time is ever a good time, okay? So if we tell ourselves that, then there’s not going to ever be a good time. Instead, what I would say is at the beginning of the school year, you know it’s going to be busy with nightly things and with meetings and less plan time, whatever extra duties, right? There’s just a lot of things. Um, and so I would try to set yourself up with that. Maybe you write down two or three things you want to just be sure to accomplish that day or feel good about accomplishing that day and at the end of the day checking in, how did it go? So for me, I go on a walk every single day after school and, um, I would write that down because otherwise I might easily pass it off because I’m not quite ready for back to school night, right? We build the time we have. I could put another hour into back to school night, or I could put an hour into myself and walk and you know what? I’m going to rock that back to school night. If I actually make that choice, because I got to recover from my day, right? You get into flow hopefully, and then we need to recover and then we go into flow again and then we need to recover. So, um, I would just say like, what, what kind of systems do you want to, what do you want to do for yourself? Do you want to journal 30 minutes a day? Do you want to walk every day? What are you going to do for yourself each day and write that down along with what you want to accomplish, you know, in that professional block? 

Lori: Well, writing it down is kind of like saying your plans out loud to the world, because once it’s written, you fulfill it, right? 

Sybil: Exactly. Your brain and your subconscious brain, like we’re trying to get into our subconscious brain to make these things just what we do, right? And by physically handwriting it down on a whiteboard, I, you know, as a teacher, I always had the schedule on a whiteboard every single day, and that’s the first thing I do in my classroom when I put it out, you know, and when I was a instructional coach, the first thing I do is look at my Google calendar and, right? So I did the exact same thing at home, but it’s my personal life and my professional life. Yeah. 

Lori: Perfect. Well… Besides writing this incredible book with all these great, like 35 lessons, you have another project that you’ve been working on. And can you share about that? 

Sybil: Yeah, I would love to. It’s called Teachers Need Teachers. And it was born from that very idea of us just really needing each other. Like I said earlier, we just really need to do this together. We really need to support each other. As you all know, like with our collaborations for our students, it really works, right? When we really sit together and figure out what’s best way to teach math and what we need to teach and all of those things, we find more success. And so.  teachers need teachers was born out of that idea and that mission of bringing teachers together to work towards our guy in both professional and personal lives. And so what I like to innovate. I like to do things differently. I like to kind of break the rules when it makes sense to break the rules. And I really like to be creative. And so I really just want to do something different. And so what we put out there and I was so honored to have your book, Laurie, in the first issue as well. But the prototype magazine of teachers need teachers and it was a flip magazine. And you can still get that magazine and look at it free of charge. But what the premise of the flip book magazine is, number one, I want it to be beautiful. I wanted teachers to be drawn into it. It’s for educators by educators. It’s a beautiful sharing of pedagogical approaches like using vocabulary in a PBL classroom. 

Oh gosh, I’m trying to think what else was in there. Collaboration, gardening, for example. Gardening is in there. But just transforming the way professional development happens online in particular. And what happened with this prototype magazine is it just brought together this amazing community of educators who wanted to get to know each other, who wanted to collaborate, who wanted to put their materials out there together and learn together and kind of connect. with people in education globally that have the same values and beliefs and you know working on the same things in this season of life together. And so what I’ve done now is I’ve created a school SKOOL around this teachers need teachers idea and the first issue because that was the prototype issue so we got some feedback and went through the design cycle with that issue. The so the official first issue will be coming out at back to school time right around the time of this podcast as well and the idea is just to make those connections between teachers share free resources and then also elevate teacher authors like yourself and I and really helping each other get our books and our messages out there and developed and into the hands of those who can use them with their students globally. But you know the online world really is beautiful when it brings us all together with people who are, you know, like minded and such and so that’s really the vision behind the teachers need teachers magazine and then just like elevating together. We’re all in this together let’s all live the happiest lives serve our students the best we can together, and just really enjoy life right like Jen said you’re always all about the happy life and I was like yeah I love it. 

Lori: Yeah, right. Well being is about happiness and enjoying life and feeling good. 

Sybil: Right. And so there’s also financial things in there also in the book. Financial well being, especially for educators is so so important because we’re just told. You know, I thought for a long, long time, my job was just to serve. I didn’t deserve money. I didn’t deserve wealth. That was for business people. I didn’t go into business. I, and I realized that’s not true at all, but I had to shift my mindset and I had to continue to work on my mindset and realize I can learn to be financially literate, I can build wealth and wealth is not a bad word. Well, it helps you live that happier life and, and we meet those dreams and, and, you know, live the way you want to live. We all need money, whether we’d like it or not. 

Lori: Right. Yeah. Yeah. And, but speaking of finance and, and wealth, this is free for teachers. 

Sybil: Yes. Thank you for mentioning that. So it’s a free digital magazine. I want to transform professional development in that way as well. I want to make it totally accessible and available for all teachers. So it’s a free community within school and the magazine itself is free to consume and pass on and that kind of thing too. Yeah, thanks for mentioning that. 

Lori: Of course, of course. Well, Sybil, I think that’s all we have time for today. Unfortunately, I’ve learned so much from you and I know our listeners have too. So do you have any big last message you wanna share with the group? 

Sybil: Yeah, I would just say, love yourself, find some time to do what you enjoy and remember that we’re all in this together and there’s so many amazing things that many things and people around you and just like trying to embrace that and pick up the book, read it, let me know what you think. Drawing teachers need teachers, school and magazine. And thank you so much, Lori. This was such a fun conversation. 

Lori: Well, yeah, you’re welcome. 

Sybil: And everyone just be happy. Yeah, good luck with the beginning of the year. 

Lori: Yes, you got this. 

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Thank you for joining us for today’s show. For more information, including how to subscribe and show notes, please head to our website. That’s seniainternational.org/podcasts . Until next time, cheers.