iPads, MakerEd and More in Education

Educators’ health and well-being should be prioritized in school culture; school leaders can help create the conditions for that. 

Today I found out the heartbreaking news that a co-worker passed away after a long battle with depression.

About an hour later, I heard about a principal in our community who had a heart attack the night before. He is someone who is known to sleep very little and work all hours of day and night to make sure his school was a special place for all kids.

After I had moved away from the Denver area a few years back, I heard about my teammate and quasi-mentor ( we both taught third-grade and were the only male teachers) who began struggling with a stress-induced sickness so severe that he was required to take a year-long absence from teaching by his doctor.

This is reality.

“In talking to my students and their families, we’re finding that just about everybody’s been touched in some way by COVID-19, my family included,” Romano Arrabito said during a recent EdSurge webinar on social-emotional learning. As such, she’s “really trying to put the emotional well-being of these kids first,” she added.

What that looks like for Romano Arrabito, at a time when schools across the country are shuttered indefinitely, is being available, flexible and frequently online. She sends a “morning message” to her students via video every day, so that they can see her and hear her voice, and answers calls from parents at 10 o’clock in the evenings, in special circumstances where she knows the family members are considered “essential workers” and are working odd hours.