Teacher Wellness

The session mapped out the context shaping today’s classrooms. Victoria described Kenya’s layered, collective stress from historical harms and shifting family structures to COVID aftershocks, economic strain, online overload, and recent civic unrest and showed how these pressures land on the school doorstep. In real terms, they show up as loss of trust and connection, anxiety about safety, and a frayed sense of identity. Students absorb the same headwinds, so teachers meet not just cognitive needs but emotional ones too.

Inside the classroom, that stress has a recognizable face: anger as a secondary emotion (masking shame, fear, or uncertainty), rising aggression and bullying, absenteeism, and dips in concentration and output. Victoria’s core message was clear that the “difficult” learner is often a hurting learner. She invited teachers to preserve dignity, avoid shaming language.

At the core of the session was a toolkit teachers can use immediately. Victoria encouraged brief “micro-resets” between lessons two or three deep breaths, a quick stretch, or a slow walk to the door to settle before the next class. With students, she modelled age-neutral techniques such as the 5-4-3-2-1 grounding exercise, counting backwards, and a 60-second check-in on paper to move feelings out of heads and onto the page. She also urged clear boundaries: set realistic windows for marking, meetings, and messages; take five quiet minutes before leaving; and adopt a personal shutdown ritual so you arrive home as a parent or partner, not a teacher on autopilot.

The lively Q&A grounded big ideas in everyday dilemmas. On work–life balance,Victoria urged teachers to start with what they can control: build micro-rests into the day, create a deliberate transition from school to home (a brief walk, shower, or prayer), and, when possible, raise needs constructively with leadership through practical proposals. On handling anger in class, she advised looking for the root cause, teaching replacement responses (for example, “hands in jail” instead of hitting), using short movement and breathing resets, and following up one-to-one away from an audience. Asked whether family patterns really repeat, she noted they often can unless we talk about them openly and surround learners with supportive adults and accurate information. Throughout, she reminded participants that therapy works when it’s qualified and collaborative, and that teachers are vulnerable to burnout, compassion fatigue, and secondary trauma so self-care isn’t indulgence; it’s part of the job.