Addressing Stress with Self-Compassion: A Guide for Early Childhood Teachers

This interactive guide is designed to help preservice early childhood educators use self-compassion to mitigate the stress of teaching. Barry argues that learning healthy stress-management strategies while enrolled in teacher education programs will equip students with the resilience needed to manage stress when they enter their own classrooms. The goal is to beat the odds of attrition with higher levels of job satisfaction and fewer instances of burnout. This book includes research findings on the benefits of practicing self-compassion for preservice early childhood teachers, some of the common stressors and challenges teachers experience, and how they have addressed each challenge with self-compassion. Readers are encouraged to respond to writing prompts that address these common challenges and then rate their self-compassion score throughout the text. This is important reading for early care and education students, teacher educators, administrators, and other stakeholders who can make changes to mitigate stressors in their programs and schools.

Book Features:

• An interactive text that offers opportunities for readers to engage in specific self-compassionate exercises designed to increase their capacity to manage stress.
• Research findings from a study that explores interventions aimed at decreasing stress for students in preservice early childhood education programs.
• Inspiration in the form of actual self-compassionate letters written by research participants.
• Theoretical and practical applications for self-compassion practice to address the stressors preservice teachers often experience.
• Experiences and vignettes from the author’s student-teaching journal from his time working as a kindergarten teacher.

David P. Barry is an assistant professor in the Department of Early and Middle Grades Education at West Chester University of Pennsylvania.