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F. Facilitator Guide

Before facilitating School Compassion Resilience groups, please reference these tips for facilitating small groups and the engaging participants with questions resource.

Tips for Facilitating Small Groups

Engaging Participants with Questions Resource

E. Stress Throughout the Career Cycle

The first stage of compassion fatigue is the Zealot Stage which often describes early career educators. The beginning years of an education career provide the opportunity to learn specific compassion resilience strategies that can support well-being, effectiveness in the classroom, and longevity in the field.

Support for Teachers in Early Years of Career

New Teachers Face Three Common Challenges

Responding to New Teachers’ Concerns

Fun and helpful blog on the kind of people you want to reach out to and keep some distance from in the early years of your career

D. Compassionate Response to Colleague’s Pain

We are often the first to see early signs of compassion fatigue and other emotional challenges our colleagues’ experience. The information linked below provides guidance on how to respond in ways that are helpful and linked to resources your colleague may need.

Compassionate Response to Colleagues

C. Foundational Beliefs About Behavior

One driver of compassion fatigue for anyone who seeks to offer support to others is their beliefs about behavior and what supports desired behaviors. If educators approach children, parents, or colleagues with the wrong belief about what problematic behavior means and requires, it is like beating their head against a wall and coming up empty-handed and exhausted. If your school has not spent time recently reviewing foundational beliefs about children’s behavior, consider presenting this slideshow and leading a brief discussion at your next staff meeting.

Foundational Beliefs About Behaviors

B. Making and Supporting Change

Whether we are growing our compassion resilience to prevent compassion fatigue or to address existing compassion fatigue, this intentional shift often includes changing attitudes and behaviors that no longer serve us well. The Stages of Change offers a model for people to understand the complex path towards successful change and how to support our own change efforts as well as the change efforts of colleagues and those we supervise. This model identifies effective action and responses at each stage to avoid the unintended negative consequences of mismatched efforts. James Prochaska, John Norcross and Carlo DiClemente are the researchers and architects of the Stages of Change model. It is also known as the Transtheoretical Model. The model assesses an individual’s readiness to act on a new healthier behavior, and provides strategies, or processes of change to guide the individual through the stages of change to Action and Maintenance.

As we engage in culture change, it can also be helpful to take inventory on where the culture currently stands. This section offers a resource, The Relational Culture Check Up as a self-reflection and conversation designed for leaders and staff to learn about the relational culture of their organization.

The Stages of Change Powerpoint provides an overview of the Stages of Change model. View the slides in the mode that allows you to read the notes for each slide.

Leadership Activity

What’s the Stage? What’s My Response? This brief activity lists statements to practice identifying the stage they represent. It will build leaders’ ability to identify what stage someone is at so they can choose effective supports for that person’s desired behavior change. Pages two and three provide a chart that takes the statements from the What Stage activity and suggests helpful responses to support that person in their current stage of change.

Relational Culture Checkup The Relational Culture Checkup—focused specifically on youth-adult relationships—is a five-minute online check-up for leaders and staff, designed to help you identify what your organization is doing well and uncover areas for improvement. This checkup will lead you through the two components of the relational culture, assess each of these, and report the results to help you reflect on the core mindsets, skills, practices, and supporting structures needed to cultivate and sustain a relationship-rich culture.

Staff Activity

Navigating Your Way Through the Stages of Change handout that describes each stage and gives self-help hints for those looking at their own change behaviors and hints for how to help others as they navigate change.

Individual Reflection Worksheet The individual names a target change and goal behavior, identifies the stage of their current change, and completes questions based on their stage of change.

A. An Introduction for Leaders

Engagement in and modeling of concepts outlined in the compassion resilience toolkit by building and district leaders is essential to building and maintaining a compassionate workplace culture. Below are some resources to support leadership with the implementation of the toolkit.

An Introduction to the Compassion Resilience Toolkit
This resources outlines the rational for compassion resilience and the core concepts included in the toolkit.

Leadership Toolkit Implementation Considerations
Guidance is provided for leaders on things to consider to best support with the implementation and integration of each section of the toolkit.

There are sections of the toolkit that benefit from additional leadership guidance. Below are documents to direct that guidance.

12. Building Compassion-Based Relationships with Caregivers

Throughout this section, caregiver is used to represent parents, legal guardians, grandparents, and whomever is the primary caregiver for a student.

The opportunities educators have for relationships with students’ caregivers can leave them vulnerable to compassion fatigue too. The drivers of compassion fatigue around caregivers can be very similar to those that drive compassion fatigue around students. When we come to understand the trauma families face, try to meet unrealistic expectations of those relationships, and/or feel ineffective in building positive relationships with caregivers, it can lead to behaviors that are signs of compassion fatigue. We do not have to look far to hear educators blaming caregivers, using the home life as an excuse for lowered expectation of students, and not wanting to get to know the family context of their students. Of course, the same is true in reverse. It is not uncommon to hear caregivers blaming educators for the challenges their children face and spending time building fences rather than bridges.

Distribute this document to all participants to explore prior to the following application activities

Key Activity

Compassionate Connection to Caregivers Activity – activity for a staff meeting

Wellness Practice

Bringing It All Together Through My Hands — An activity to summarize compassion and self-compassion found in the document to distribute in the information section of the toolkit

11. Wellness and Resilience Strategies: Heart

In the compass model, the four sectors, Mind, Spirit, Strength and Heart, not only contribute to your overall wellness, but also provide guidance on strategies to help build your compassion resilience. Heart is one of the sectors. This section will take a deeper look at our emotions, and our relationships, both with ourselves and with others. We will be invited to focus on our self-compassion as we seek to be compassionate in our relationships with students, families and colleagues.

Distribute this document to all participants to explore prior to the following application activities

Key Activity

A Self-Compassion Exercise (10min)

Self-Compassion Self-Scoring Scale (Dr. Neff)
If Self-Compassion Scale was completed in Section 2, use DPI’s emotional regulation plans listed in the Supplementary Activities/Handouts section as your key activity asking staff to complete one for themselves.

Wellness Practice

Mindful Self-Compassion Break

Circle Agenda

Staff Circle Agenda, Section Eleven

Core Content Visual

Colleague Conversations – Use this Visual and Display in Staff Break Areas
Posting this visual in common staff areas will serve as a reminder of content covered to staff and perhaps serve as a future conversation started for deeper reflection among staff members.

Supplementary Activities/Handouts

Department of Public Instruction’s Emotional Regulation Plan
Use DPI’s emotional regulation plans asking staff to complete one for themselves.

For Easy Printing

You can find all documents in this section included in this pdf for easy printing.
The documents included are numbered individually, not as one document.

Links Specifically for Leadership

Fostering Relationship Building among Staff

Additional Resources

This article explains the importance of communication: 7 things to avoid, 11 things to keep in mind.

This article offers a brief introduction and tips for developing better communication skills through structured dialog and communicating your trust distinctions.

For more excellent resources on self-compassion go to Dr. Kristin Neff’s website

10. Wellness and Resilience Strategies: Strength

In the compass model, the four sectors, Mind, Spirit, Strength and Heart, not only contribute to your overall wellness, but also provide guidance on strategies to help build your compassion resilience. Strength is one of the sectors. Strength encompasses stress resilience and care for the body. Stress resilience allows us to maintain a level of calm as we encounter the inevitable stressors of our job. Developing our ability to care for our bodies and listen to the signs that our bodies give us, support our whole health and minimize any unhealthy responses to stress. Becoming stress resilient and caring for our bodies often require assistance from others. Help seeking is a key skill for both of the areas in the strength section of the Wellness Compass.

Distribute this document to all participants to explore prior to the following application activities

Key Activity

Listening and Responding to Stress in Your Body (10-15 min)

Wellness Practice

Care for Body – Develop Your Plan (10-15 min)

Circle Agenda

Staff Circle Agenda, Section Ten

Core Content Visual

Choose Nourishing vs. Depleting! – Use this Visual and Display in Staff Break Areas
Posting this visual in common staff areas will serve as a reminder of content covered to staff and perhaps serve as a future conversation started for deeper reflection among staff members.

Supplementary Activities/Handouts

Writing and Sharing Staff Resilience Stories (30-60 min)
One of our pilot schools for this toolkit experimented with an activity that went so well, they want to share it with other schools. Staff were asked to write a short story about an obstacle they faced and overcame. The stories were submitted anonymously and shared with students by random staff in various classes. The next day the homeroom teachers led a community building circle to talk about what the students had heard and what it meant to them.

Why it is so hard for teachers to take care of themselves

Dr. Kelly McGonigal’s TED Talk on How to Make Stress Your Friend explores a perspective shift on stress when the healthy pressure of growth in your work place feels overwhelming.

For Easy Printing

You can find all documents in this section included in this pdf for easy printing.
The documents included are numbered individually, not as one document.

Additional Resources

This article discusses the stages of change applied to emotional resilience. The website offers many brief articles on topics included in this toolkit.

9. Wellness and Resilience Strategies: Spirit

Spirit is one of the four sectors of the compass model for self-care. Each area contributes to and helps build our compassion resilience. Spirit encompasses connecting to our sense of purpose with intentionality, exposing ourselves to resilience in those we serve, and recreating ourselves through rest and play.

Distribute this document to all participants to explore prior to the following application activities

Key Activity

Sharing Stories of Resilience (5-10 min)
Institute the regular practice of sharing stories about current and past students’ resilience.

Wellness Practice

Developing Your Professional Mission Statement (15-30 min)

Circle Agenda

Staff Circle Agenda, Section Nine

Core Content Visual to Display in Common Staff Areas

Rest and Play Reflection – Use this Visual and Display in Staff Break Areas
Posting this visual in common staff areas will serve as a reminder of content covered to staff and perhaps serve as a future conversation started for deeper reflection among staff members.