Teach from Your Best Self A Teacher’s Guide to Thriving in the Classroom

Teachers, this book is a guide for taking care of education’s most valuable resource: you. Author Jay Schroder, founder of the popular Teach from Your Best Self Institute, demonstrates why the version of ourselves that we bring to teaching matters and describes how we can rejuvenate ourselves while maximizing student learning. PartI explains why the self that a teacher brings to the classroom is important. PartII explores skills that will help us sustain a best-self state in all manner of situations. PartIII delves into those moments when we’re provoked beyond our limits and our"hurtspots" come sharply into view. It offers ways to avert a reactive state or recover from it. Lastly, PartIV provides simple approaches for building a more durable, best self for the long term—a best self with deepened capacity to respond rather than react in the pressurized conditions of teaching. With fresh ideas presented throughout, you’ll learn how to prioritize your own well-being so you can continue to make a difference for your students.

Introduction Part 1: The Challenge of Teaching 1. Attempting to Do an Impossible Job 2. Learning to Teach from My Best Self 3. Mapping the Brain: Teaching and the Stress Response System 4. The Role of ACEs and the Hurtspots They Leave Us With 5. Stress, Pressure, and Hurtspots in Students 6. Reckoning with the Impact of Culture Part 2: Skills and Principles that Matter 7. Return on Investment 8. The Best Self Model for Teaching and Learning 9. An Antidote to Decision Fatigue: Reaching Clarity through Reflective Writing 10. Spheres of Control and Influence 11. Applying Radical Acceptance to Teaching 12. Choose Yes 13. Saying "No" from Yes 14. Classroom Management: Know Your Prime Directive 15. Developing Field-Based Attention as an Antidote to Mental Fatigue 16. The Curiously Nourishing Power of Attention 17. The Vital Role of Positive Messages 18. The Importance of Positive Messages for Teachers Part 3: Tools for Emotionally Challenging Moments 19. Intervening in the Steps from Dr. Jekyll to Mr. Hyde 20. The Cool Pause 21. The Importance of Giving Triggered Students Space 22.Speaking the Language of the Limbic System 23. Using Counter-Stories to Recover from Hurtspot Reactions Part 4: Creating a Resilient Best Self 24. Having a Hand in the Stories that Make Us 25. Using Expressive Writing to Revise Hurtspot Stories 26. The Liberating Power of Radical Acceptance Conclusion: A New Direction Forward Acknowledgments References

Jay Schroder has taught high school English and social studies for the past twenty-four years in both mainstream and alternative education settings. In 2021, he founded the Teach from Your Best Self Institute, an organization with a mission to support and inspire educators while advancing a new model for revitalizing education.