Session 1: Renew, Refresh, Reimagine: Spring Forward in Special Education

Hello everyone, I'm Blakely Nielsen, Parallel's Director of Marketing. Thank you so much for being with us today and spending the next hour with us. At Parallel, we take pride in nurturing our professional community as well as the broader community by offering innovative, high-quality programming for clinicians and educators alike. So before we get to the fun part, I'd like to start with a few housekeeping items. First and foremost, I want to seriously thank each and every one of you for the incredible work that you do as providers in special education. You are on the forefront in making a meaningful difference in the lives of students each and every day, and we are so grateful for you. So this course is offered for 0.1 ASHA CEUs and 1 NASP-approved CPD credit. If you wish to have us report CEUs to ASHA and NAACPDS or receive a certificate of completion, please be sure to do the following: attend the entire live webinar. Attendance will be tracked through Zoom reports. Be sure to join with the email address that you, that you registered with. No partial credit will be awarded. Complete the self-assessment evaluation after we send it. Within 3 business days. For ASHA CEUs, please be sure to indicate that you want to receive the ASHA CEUs and provide your ASHA ID in the post-webinar survey that you will receive on Monday. Also, you will see— so that's everything kind of as it relates to housekeeping for CEUs and CPDs. And we also want you to know that while we do not have a live chat, we do have a Q&A. So you will see on Zoom a an icon that says Q&A. Please feel free to ask questions throughout the webinar, and we will have a live Q&A at the end. We encourage you to participate actively. Also, we will have the option— you'll have the option to stay on for a few extra minutes to hear a little bit more about Parallel and how we're supporting districts across the US and learn about some open provider positions that we have available. So with that, I would like to introduce Karene. Hello, Corinne.

Hello.

If we want to go to the next slide, we have, um, Corinne Kukeyan is our speech-language pathologist and the owner of SpeechFit, an ASLP Corp. She is the current ASHA CE administrator at Parallel Learning, and she has almost— she has over 25 years of experience in telehealth schools, outpatient, home health, and private practice. She's done it all. She has worked in telepractice since 2010 in both schools and healthcare. Corinne has presented at numerous state and national conferences, and she creates and delivers content for articles, podcasts, and webinars covering a wide range of topics. Corinne is a staunch advocate for SLP and telehealth services, and we are so So lucky to have Corinne with us here today. So with that, I'm going to turn this presentation over to Corinne, and we will go from there. Thank you again for joining.

Thank you. Thank you for that very warm welcome, Lakely. And also, I'd like to briefly go over my disclosure statements, which we've covered most of, just to let you know. I am the owner of SpeechFit and the current administrator at Parallel. And then non-financials, I am Associate Coordinator of ASHA SIG 18 and also have served on the topic committee for ASHA. All right, so today we are excited to cover the following learning objectives. By the end of this presentation, attendees will be able to Identify the underlying sources of burnout in special education, define the difference between stressed out and burnout, and then finally we'll be able to apply at least 3 everyday strategies to practice self-care. I am very excited and also just honored to be able to talk about this very, very important topic. We hear about it a lot, and there's different strategies that people will talk about. And I feel like, you know, this will do good justice to kind of covering different aspects of burnout. And actually, I will be giving you more than 3 strategies. So hopefully you'll be able to, to be able to apply some of those even as early as next week or tomorrow. All right, so I'd like to start with A basic definition of what is burnout. There is definitely a difference between being stressed out and burnout. Burnout refers to a state of physical, emotional, and mental exhaustion caused by prolonged and excessive stress, and it often results from the demands of the profession. And in education, and in particularly special education, We have certain factors that are not in our control that kind of set us up for this situation. There was also some literature that talked about it's not just the situation, but our responses to the situation that lead to burnout. By the way, at the end of this presentation, there will be a couple of different QR codes. There will be a QR code for the white paper that was authored by Our Chief Clinical Officer, Dr. Jordan, and it will have some great references as well as more details about this topic regarding self-care in particular. All right, so speaking of references, Atkinson in 2000 wrote some interesting facts about causes of workplace stress. stress. So, um, Atkinson does refer to a person's reaction to a situation is often where this stress comes from, and that is more so the, the cause of the stress rather than the actual situation itself. Um, in particularly lacking control over decisions that affect them— does that sound familiar, uh, for those of us working in education and special education? So lacking control over certain decisions that directly affect The employee, and then also working under unclear expectations. Those are 2 big factors according to the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health that impact employee stress in the workplace. And this is just general across all industries. Let's go over some myths versus reality checks regarding the topic of self-care and burnout. So the first one is, if you engage in self-care, you will succeed and not burn out. Is that true? If we just spent more time taking walks, if we just made sure to get enough sleep or practice mindfulness, we would not burn out. In reality, actually, there's so much that's out of our control, especially in the systems of education. There's more and more responsibility being pushed onto educators and providers. So it's really quite impossible to just say that self-care in itself will prevent burnout. So let's keep exploring what else could be a potential myth about self-care and burnout. Next one says people who experience burnout hate their jobs. And this could be nothing further from the truth because in actuality, In order to burn out, you have to have a burning passion. In fact, the research shows that the more you care, the more compassionate you are, the more you're putting into your work, you actually have more vulnerability to setting yourself up for burnout. Not to say that eventually you might not be in a situation that causes resentment or you yourself start to resent your job, Or hate your job, but the truth is there's a lot of people out there that absolutely love what they do, but they are at the risk of burnout. Next one, it says once you are burned out, you stay burned out. Like there's no no recovery. That could be also nothing further than the truth, and we're going to talk about how you can turn things around. In fact, by recognizing the signs of burnout again, the acceptance and recognition of what is contributing, the fact that it's. Even there, you can empower yourself to reverse these effects and build resilience within yourself. And in fact, a lot of times people don't even realize that they are starting to burn out until it's too late. It's actively happening and they don't know. So let's talk a little bit more about some of these underlying sources of burnout, particularly in special education. So root causes. Again, this is— I don't think any of these will surprise you guys, but root causes come from the funding deficits that inevitably will sometimes result in short-sighted policy development. And then that leads to, of course, staff shortages and low salaries because there's not enough of a budget. to pay folks what they deserve to be paid. And then that will then lead to these key indicators and symptoms that, of course, we all experience day to day— heavy workloads, large caseloads. And this is across different providers, not just SLP. I happen to be a speech-language pathologist, but this is the case regarding educators, And potentially even across not just education, but even other industries as well. But the key indicators are the heavy workloads, large caseloads. We've got time constraints and tight deadlines with our IEP meetings, excessive paperwork, a lot of different documentation that is inevitable with school-based work, special education. There's also the confounding safety issues. We don't know if we work in a physical building what kind of safety issue there might be at school. There's a lot of different things happening at schools these days. The emotional demands that come from working with challenging students, working with challenging families, parents, and caregivers, parents and caregivers that might not be satisfied with services. And of course, we're having to deal with the brunt of that. And then inevitably the limited support and then lack of collaboration. So as you can see, this is setting us up for a lot of stress and eventual burnout. And again, the outcome, educator and provider burnout. So let's talk— actually, this is a perfect time for our first poll. So Blakely, if you could launch the first poll. In your opinion, What is the major contributor to burnout in education? So you would answer the question, I believe that the following factors contribute to burnout in education. Would it be heavy workloads, large caseloads, tight deadlines, excessive paperwork, emotional demands of the challenging students and families, parents and caregivers? Or the limited support, lack of collaboration. So I'll give you guys a few minutes to go ahead and submit your polls. And Blakely, if you see that the numbers start to slow down, please feel free to go ahead and share the results. All right, it looks like about half of you believe that the heavy workloads and large caseloads are one of the biggest contributors to burnout in education. And about a quarter of you believe that it's the emotional demands of working with the students as well as parents. And of course, the tight deadlines and limited support don't help. So thank you for, thank you for sharing that information, for your opinion. All right. Next. So, just want to make sure we got The signs of burnout, um, that we'll talk about here. So again, we mentioned earlier that, uh, burnout— you're stressed out and you're starting to burn out and you don't even realize it. So what are some signs that you could look for that you might be potentially starting to burn out? Well, there's the physical, there's the psychological, and of course the behavioral. With the physical signs, you might be feeling tired. You might start experiencing frequent illnesses. Also, there might be frequent headaches and physical muscle pain, just body aches. You might be having some heart palpitations and insomnia. You're having trouble sleeping at night. Psychologically, this might lead to panic attacks. A sense of failure. You're starting to doubt yourself and doubt your ability to do a good job. You're starting to become detached, and you're not really engaged with either coworkers or even friends or family. You're starting to find yourself feeling helpless, and there's a loss of motivation. Your attitude's starting to change. You're having a little bit of a cynical and negative attitude. And there's a decreased sense of satisfaction and a loss of joy. And of course, the behaviors that you might start to see yourself doing— you're starting to withdraw from your regular community and friends and family. You're isolating yourself. Maybe you're using coping tools that are not so healthy, such as food, drugs, alcohol to cope. You're starting to take your frustration out on others. Some people start to snap and get a little bit short with others. Perhaps you're also starting to skip work or call in sick, arrive late, or leave early, and you find yourself no longer engaging in your leisure activities. Maybe you had some hobbies or things that you love doing, and you're, you're not doing that anymore. So next, let's talk a little bit about the difference between just being stressed versus burnout, and there is definitely a difference here. So stress tends to be an over-engagement. But burnout, you're starting to check out. It's a disengagement. So when you're starting to just have stress— and of course, prolonged stress leads to burnout, so there is a connection there— your emotions are overreactive. If you're stressed, you're producing urgency and hyperactivity. You have a loss of energy. And again, this can lead to anxiety disorders. And worst case, this is not great news. It may kill you prematurely because it manifests in a lot of physical illnesses and things that over time, it, it's not healthy for you. With the burnout, and again, this being disengaged, disconnected, emotions tend to be blunted. You're kind of numb in this numb state. There's a helplessness or a hopelessness. Loss of motivation, ideals, and this can lead to detachment and depression. And again, worst-case scenario, makes it feel like life is not worth living. And I promise you, we're going to talk about the positives in just a second. And this is from Dr. Shari Robertson's presentation at ASHA in 2022. She has studied and written extensively about burnout. So the stages of burnout that Dr. Robertson has referenced, I have the reference down here. This comes from Boucheron, I believe is how it's pronounced. Move, Think, Smile: Burnout to Badass. This is an amazing book. I actually purchased this book and have been reading it. Very, very practical information on the stages of burnout and how to really turn things around. So there are different, actually, frameworks that talk about the stages of burnout. This one, I think, makes at least to me, the most sense. So this one talks about 5 stages. And so we start with flickering. And in the flickering stage, this is definitely the early signs of burnout where it comes and goes. You have perfectionistic tendencies. Again, another attribute to being vulnerable to burnout is being a perfectionist. And the flickering stage can last anywhere between 1 to 5 years. So it's, it's not like just a few months. It could be a while that you're in this flickering stage. Um, after flickering, when it kind of develops and becomes a little bit stronger, this sense of burnout, you go into your smoldering. Smoldering is where you start to have physical symptoms appear. Things like teeth grinding, the pain we referenced earlier, fatigue. Your lifestyle is starting to diminish as the busyness takes over, and the smoldering stage can last 1 to 10 years. So it's quite a long time you could be stuck in this smoldering. Spontaneous combustion is definitely the more— like, we've entered this more serious stage now where it can go from sometimes good to really bad suddenly, and it's like kind of Overnight it could turn into this spontaneous combustion. A lot of references to fire here. So there's no energy, no joy. You are just done. So when you spontaneously combust, it's kind of like hitting rock bottom. Now from there, that's where things turn around. So from there you become the phoenix, begin to rise from those pile of ashes. And that's when you really start to— you really have to take time to recognize, reverse these long-term effects of burnout, and hopefully build resilience, which is going to be something we talk about a lot here. The resilience that's going to help prevent future burnout. And this is where you would want to make a commitment to change. You're kind of awakened to the reality of what led you here, and you want to make a permanent change. And then of course, from the phoenix rising, um, over time with changing these habits and reversing these bad, um, uh, habits, then you become recharged. And when you're recharged, you're humming with energy again, excited about life, um, and your personal and professional life. There's optimism that returns, your health returns and there's hope. These things turn around. And so you're committed to building resilience in mind, body, and spirit. And now we're going to go ahead and launch our second poll. Based on the information I shared, what stage of burnout do you think you are currently in? And it is sort of a continuum here. Um, So, because, you know, we are not immune from stress, from stress. So, um, if you would just kind of let us know, are you in the initial flickering, the smoldering? Have you hit rock bottom? Hopefully not. The spontaneous combustion, or are you one of the phoenix rising from the ashes? And are you currently recharged? And so as the, the numbers start to slow down, we might want to start sharing results. I will say, I will share that I personally have realized that I think I'm in the smoldering phase at this point in my life. So I'll share a little bit more about that, um, once we see what everybody else says. All right, so we've got about, um, 40% that are in the flickering and about 32% in the smoldering. I do find that a lot of people are in the first 2, but there's quite a few people that are recharged. So, um, I'm excited to see that. And then we've got, um, a few of us, um, in the audience that are— that have kind of hit rock bottom and Are ready to make some changes. So hope is out there. I wanted to share briefly that this, you know, the 2025 year started off with me basically getting the flu, and I woke up on New Year's Day with the flu. And I do live in Southern California. So the first, I would say, like 7 days of the year I was sick. And then after that, we of course had those horrendous Buyers. So honestly, like, at this point in time, I'm like really close to feeling super burned out between everything going on, and then of course work. But I do know there's hope out there, and we're gonna talk about the strategies in just a second. And we're gonna hopefully encourage each other to start doing these strategies tomorrow, if not even earlier. So the literature talks about what makes some people tougher than others. There's a lot of people that are in the same workplace or in the same circumstances, but there is a difference between their responses. And so this word resilience, we're going to explore that. So resilience is the difference. Some people are more resilient by nature. Some people have had to work on it and increase Their resilience by changing their behaviors, changing their attitudes. And so I know these are just some stock photos here that talk about resilience. But again, resilience, when you think of that word, you think of this inner strength. There's an ability to overcome, bounce back, and more. So let's talk a little bit more about that. Atkinson, again from 2000, the article talked a little bit about what resilient people have in common. So the traits that were studied about what makes resilient people different— resilient people will experience something that's upsetting and immediately go into problem-solving mode. So they are already trying to figure out how they can minimize the impact of whatever is going on. They're thinking, what is in my control? What can I change? What can I do? To make this better rather than the folks that are less resilient, which we'll talk in just a second. The second thing that resilient people have in common is this revitalization strategy. So they will, again, by nature, start spending time with family and friends, which is actually one of the strategies that I'm going to be sharing in just a few minutes. And also, there's this sense of having a higher purpose. Either related to going, uh, you know, religious groups or a sense of community. They are not isolating themselves. They're putting themselves out there, spending time with family and friends. They have a purpose. So both these 2 things, this problem-solving mode and revitalization strategy, tend to, um, basically, uh, have resilient people stand out. Now, the less resilient folks The ones that are kind of putting themselves at risk for burnout, by nature, their first reaction when something happens is to get upset. So there's an emotional reaction, and the second reaction is then to find ways to calm down. So perhaps that might not be a healthy way. That might be alcohol or so, or maybe like, you know, staying up late, doing other things that might not be Healthy. So those are the two big differences there. And so what I want to encourage you at this time is when we are in, in our situations at work, what is in your control? There's a lot that isn't in our control, but kind of thinking outside the box, turning things upside down, what is in your control? And try to change that on a day-to-day basis. And so what are some changes we can make today? I actually was thinking about this a lot too this weekend, and I didn't realize about scheduling. Like, I can't control how— which students I see, because if I'm going to be working with a particular school, for the most part, you can't, you know, say we're not a good match. Please give this student to somebody else. We have to see these students. And so The, the thing that occurred to me was I can at least control, for the most part, again, what group this student is in. And so perhaps the other kids that are in the, the student's group can actually bring out more better traits in this student rather than seeing the student with a different set of groups. So there are definitely things that we can think of to try to make our days better again. We can definitely choose not to have a working lunch. We can definitely choose to take that break in the middle of the day. Yes, you know, you might get another report done or half a report done, but you do need that break in the middle of your day. So next I'm gonna talk about some traditional self-care recommendations that we've all heard about. Things like, again, The importance of being out in nature, getting fresh air, taking a walk in nature, practicing deep breathing exercises, taking up a hobby. Again, doing something maybe that's not related to work, practicing those creativity talents or whatnot that you have to kind of revitalize yourself. Prioritizing a good night's sleep. So simple, and yet I know that I struggle with this all the time because I'm more of a night owl. But honestly, prioritizing a good night's sleep, exercising daily, acknowledging moments of gratitude and joy, reflecting on your feelings, allowing yourself to cry if you're really, really sad, and then finding things to laugh about, finding the humor in things. And so these are more what we consider the traditional self-care recommendations that we have heard. Some more research to let you guys know, Richards in 2012 cited that the top 5 ways educators report that they cope with their stressful jobs are indeed having a positive attitude, believing they can succeed at solving the problem of stress, engaging in moments of solitude and peace, taking that time to have some time to yourself. Again, the sense of humor, having a sense of humor. And the 5th one, which is kind of a recurring theme here, having supportive friends and family. And this honestly has been cited as being the top coping mechanism, having a community. So let's talk about now about some of the sustainable self-care, some things that we can do. And so research has informed us that we should practice a combination of things that we can do on a daily basis, as well as broader everyday strategies, which are, again, more general things, general changes we do need to make. And so these are again just a few of the, the options. And as I mentioned, we do have that white paper that I'll give you a chance to download at the end where it will talk a little bit more detail and give you even more options of, of things that you can try. So for concrete daily actions, you should try to definitely leverage resources that you can access. For example, technology, automating things, making sure that, you know, if you're gonna do a schedule and send out reminders for a schedule, somehow find a system where you can automate all of these things. I mean, even the G Suite, as simple as that, there are automatic notifications that you can create so you're not having to do everything manually. I know that there's, again, a lot of talk about certain things that we are uncomfortable with, when it comes to AI, but there's also a lot of things that we can automate that are ethical within our practice that will make our lives easier. So be open to those options. Eat the Frog is another very popular of late methodology. I don't know if those out there have heard of this or not, but Eat the Frog just basically is doing your hardest task of the day first thing in the morning. There's a tendency to want to procrastinate, and this is basically helping you reverse the procrastination tendency. You know, instead of leaving the hardest task at the end of the day or at the bottom of your to-do list, you're gonna wake up early in the morning and knock it out first thing. And then again, as I mentioned earlier, taking a break midday and reflecting on what is going well. Take those lunch breaks and step away from the computer. Get out of your, you know, stand up, remove yourself from your work area and your desk if you work from home, and really kind of be thoughtful about what is going well today rather than, oh, you know, this happened, that happened, that's so frustrating. I'm having trouble with this one student, or I had a bad interaction with a teacher. Talk about or think about what went well so far, and then celebrating small wins. And for those of us working remotely, we have to be a little bit creative about that. But definitely celebrating those small wins, not just waiting for, for those big goals to be achieved. Excuse me, I'm gonna grab a little bit of water. All right. Now, regarding the broader everyday strategies, we need to be realistic here. This is where we really need to be truthful and honest and realistic about what we can and cannot do. Practicing radical self-compassion is another, another broader everyday strategy that we can employ. So let's see, recognizing that you are doing the best you possibly can under the circumstances. And so this is kind of a reality check, recognizing that there's so much that you cannot change about the situation. All right, so reasserting your values, and this one's a really important one. Really taking time to think about your why. Why did you choose this profession to begin with? Um, what was your purpose? Kind of like realigning. Why did I decide to become a speech-language pathologist? Why did I decide to become a special education teacher? All right, and so another thing that really helps, I think, empower us, and I find this to be true as I started to get more involved with ASHA and as well as the state organization, CASHA, Advocating whenever you can, and you don't have to join the big state organizations to be an advocate, but even advocating at your company or at the school that you're at, joining a professional organization, but really getting involved. You know, we pay those dues and we don't know what goes on with those dues. But honestly, when you start to volunteer, it completely changes things and you start to see What you can do to be part of the change. Um, almost every state organization has a legislative advocacy day. I know CACHA does in California here. Amazing opportunity to go and talk with lawmakers. They discuss things like caseload size. Change doesn't happen overnight, but to be part of that is really, I think, helpful because you kind of start to feel a weight lift like you are being part of the change. And then, of course, finding and being a part of a community. You can become very creative here because of social media. There are so many Facebook groups out there now. Yes, there's negativity that comes from that, or like, you know, things that can go awry. But for the most part, I think that those Facebook groups, as you join them, they are really pretty good about giving you an idea or support, or here is something you can try with a student, or here's what you can do for your situation. So feeling like you're part of a community, I think, really makes a difference. And honestly, over time, the people I've met through social media, I ended up meeting in person later on through the conferences that I've been to. So you just never know. You know, you end up meeting people and connecting with people eventually in person as well. You have to be very intentional about these things, of course. And then finally, just acknowledging that every effort you make, again, it's not gonna be possible to make the changes, and it may not be enough at the end of the day. So you really need to be realistic. Again, this kind of goes back to that reality check. Be realistic. You're working in this system that Has problems, and you're not going to be able to meditate your way out of some of these problems, or, you know, sleep your way. You're going to feel a lot better if you get a good night's rest. You're going to feel better if you do deep breathing. But, but some of these things, as we know, they're not going to change overnight. So we have to be realistic about it.

All right.

And now we're gonna do our 3rd and final poll. Who is excited to try out some of these new strategies for self-care? Hopefully new to you, maybe. So this is, of course, I'm amazing. Of course, I'm amazing and I will do it. I'll say yes, but the truth is no. And then I'm too tired to try something new. And ha, what? So this one was just for fun. So hopefully we can think about some of these strategies and see what we can do. I'll grab some more water while we're waiting for the responses. All right. Would you like to share the responses, Blakely? All right. Looks like we're gonna be trying some new strategies out. And some folks have said they're honestly not gonna do, do this. I'd be curious to know maybe in the Q&A if there's questions or resistance, we can spend some time discussing what we can do. And I would like to open it up now to questions. I'd love for you guys to keep in touch with me. You can reach me at speechfitslp@gmail.com and follow me on social media. If you want specifics regarding the references, in just a bit I'm going to share the other QR code for the white paper, but I can also share some of the other resources that might be new, like Dr. Shari Robertson's information as well. So feel free to email me and I can send you those resources. All right, so do we have any questions, um, Blakely?

Yes, we have some questions. Um, so the first question would be, how can reconnecting with my why for entering special education help reignite my passion for the field?

Great question. Um, so I think With the why, and I know, you know, we've got Simon Sinek, that is his big topic area that he talks about quite a bit, defining your purpose. Finding purpose honestly is just a very important way of kind of resetting your values, kind of going back to why did I want to do this? At some point, I was very passionate about it. I had a lot of energy. This made me very happy, the thought of doing— helping students, making a difference in the world. So I think reconnecting with that why will give you a sense of kind of going back to your values. What are my values? And there might be times when, you know, over time, over the span of a career— and I know unfortunately we do lose a lot of folks due to burnout. I think it's almost 5 years. Sometimes if you, if you're gonna leave the field, it's gonna be around that 5-year mark. It is really important, I think, to really know, is this meant for you or not? And I— there are Facebook groups that are talking about this daily where folks will come on and say, I'm really thinking of leaving the profession, and this wasn't what I thought it was gonna be. And I think reconnecting with your why is something that has to be an honest conversation, because sometimes it might be, okay, this might not be for us. But at the same time, it could basically kind of reconnect you to why you're doing this in the first place. The resilience bit is also very important because I think without resilience, it's probably going to be really hard to sustain a career in special education. All right, I think I see a few more questions coming through.

Great question. Everyone, just as a reminder, we do have the Q&A icon on the Zoom screen that you can ask your questions. I do see some hands raised as well. So Megan, I did message you, you can put it in the chat, the questions. That's the best place to ask your question. So for the next question, what are some practical strategies to manage burnout while working in special education?

Yeah, so we did talk about several things that you could do on a daily basis. There's, of course, those traditional ones. The traditional ones, I think, have to do with just taking care of your body and making sure that you're being healthy. Again, I do feel like going to bed on time, if I could manage this 7 days out of the week, I would be probably in a much better place. And not getting sick. So you sleep well, take your lunch, eat, doing all those things. And then I guess when you are taking care of yourself on a daily basis, then you can think about all of the things that we talked about that could be part of like the long-term changes, maybe being part of, again, the organization. Trying to figure out how you can be a part of the bigger picture, the change, advocating, being part of the advocacy that goes on either at your company or at your school where you're working or employment, wherever it is. And then again, going back to the daily activities because we did talk about a lot of different ones. Again, feeling— having that feeling of accomplishing something first thing in the morning with that eat the frog. I mean, I know I've had days where you're, you're done with your day and you're thinking, what did I accomplish today? Because there's so many things that are out of our control. There might be times when you don't feel like you actually put a bow on anything. Nothing got done. But really trying to do that eat the frog, if not every day, like a couple of days a week. And really making sure you check off that really difficult task, whatever it is. It could be something that's overwhelming or maybe something that takes a lot of time. So hopefully that answers the question.

Another question from the audience is, Corinne, what is personally your favorite strategy?

My favorite strategy. OK. I wish I could say that I was actively doing all of these strategies, but I— I'm encouraged. Like I said, I want to kind of do this with everybody. I'm trying to think my favorite strategy would be when I do— like, I'm going back to the sleep thing. Honestly, like, going to sleep and then waking up early to do that difficult task, that when I've done that, I've felt so much better about myself. But my nature or tendency is to want to stay up late to finish something so I can say, I finished it, and then I went to bed. So I would say the sleep and Eat the Frog.

Love that. Those are my— my, my strategy for 2025 is to go to bed earlier and always go to bed reading a book before and getting—

Oh, that's nice.

That's awesome. So another question is, are there any burnout prevention support groups online specifically for people in You know, I don't know of any, but I think that there probably are.

And I, I do wonder if this, um, the burnout, um, the 5 stages of burnout, the reference that I have there, I believe that group has— if you can email me, um, that group has some kind of, uh, website where they do have, um, resources for burnout. I think coaching for burnout and things like that. So I'm happy to send that to you. Um, and also, I believe, again, the, the reference to the book is Foucher on, but I can send that to you too if you guys want to email me. Amazing.

How do you get your teams excited about burnout without being too pushy? How do you motivate teams?

So I was— yeah, this is a hard one. I think because, you know, teams have to do also with your leadership. So sometimes having these conversations with your leadership might be difficult. I think bringing up this topic, if you have like a set Like a lunch and learn, for example, or if your workplace does some kind of opportunity where you guys take turns and share information and knowledge, I think that that would be a great forum. And if you don't, maybe just initiating, hey, I wanna bring up this topic and I wanna start talking about this as, as a team, as a group. What can we do to to have some better habits and deal with our workday stress or workplace stress. And hopefully, like, you'll get some kind of support with that if you're the one kind of sharing out some of this information. You can definitely take these strategies and share them out into your workplace and, and see what your colleagues think. Yeah, I mean, I hate to add more work, but it is kind of maybe an informal thing too. You could start off doing it in the lunchroom. If you're in person or setting up something to do with teammates remotely too is totally, I think, a good way to share it out and hopefully get some buy-in and spread the knowledge.

Love that. We also had 2 guests in the audience give some suggestions, which I really loved. One said that she listens to Kelly McCormick's anxiety podcast and that she has great Strategies about working through problems. It's more than just anxiety. It's called Transforming Anxiety, so by Kelly McCormick. It's a podcast. And then also, um, someone recommended journaling and Pinterest as many release stress relievers. Um, Corinne, I believe we have time for one more question. And the question is, what are, um, the early signs of emotional exhaustion and how can I address them before they escalate?

Yeah, definitely. So, we did talk a little bit about some of those early signs where, again, you're kind of more agitated, you're feeling more kind of cynical. Maybe you're not quite cynical yet, but you're starting to kind of be more negative. The early signs, I think those, the stage 1 and stage 2, Had to do with you're starting to feel like those physical symptoms, whether it's you know muscle aches, some pains, frequent illnesses. So those early signs I think are very important to listen to so that you don't go into again some serious health concerns. If it's just like viruses or colds, that's one thing. But if it's starting to kind of take its toll on your body where you're starting to develop More serious illnesses, then you know it's kind of you waited too long. So yeah, so there we have it. Let me know if you'd like me to share. I think the QR code I'd like to share for the white paper too, and make sure that folks download that again. This white paper on self-care is authored by our Chief Clinical Officer, Dr. Jordan, and it has resources in there as well as most of the strategies that I talked about today.

Yes, so everyone take your phone out, scan that QR code, and fill out your information so you can just download it directly from this screen. With that being said, huge thank you to Corinne. That was a phenomenal presentation. I know it has me re-energized and just was fantastic. As always, it's a treat to hear from you. So this concludes the educational portion of our webinar. Available for ASHA CEUs and NAAS CPDs. As a reminder, you'll be receiving a survey next week via email, so please be sure to answer all those questions and complete the survey by the deadline so we can get you those certificates. And before we end, I would like to make a few more announcements. So again, just a special thank you and appreciation for all of our parallel providers. Thank you for all that you do to support students. And thank you for everyone else that took the time to join us today. At Parallel, we are a community. We really uplift each other and really support each other to grow professionally. So we are so grateful for our Parallel team and anyone else that's joining us on the call today. If you're not part of our Parallel team already, we are hiring and we would love for you to learn more about Parallel and apply for positions here. Also, we have a referral program if you are a current provider, or even if you're not but may know someone who may be interested in positions for next year. And so I just want to tell everyone a little bit about Parallel. Parallel, it's our mission to help you become the best in your field by giving you the tools and resources you need to succeed. You chose education, a challenging profession, one that is often overlooked, and we want to change that. Our ultimate goal is to assemble the best team of providers, offering you an opportunity to learn from the very best and be a part of a community with an even bigger mission. We learn from each other, so we have an open-door policy that ensures that you can easily reach our experienced clinical leaders for guidance and support to collaborate. We're here to support your growth and development, providing the guidance and encouragement that you require. So we really hope that you'll consider coming to grow, with us and join our amazing team. You may be happy and settled in your current role, and that's great. Perhaps you're at a district who's feeling overwhelmed and understaffed. Next time I'm going to have a poll for that because I would like to know how many of you are currently at districts that are really struggling, because we'd love for you to tell them about Parallel. You know, we come in and fully integrate with, with your on-the-ground team to become your left and right arm. So we offer a range of services. It ranges from speech-language pathology to psychoeducational assessments, behavioral mental health counseling, and specialized instructions. We have top-tier clinicians backed by our robust, our robust clinical leadership team. So if your school could benefit from having an extension to your in-person team, I will send a link in the follow-up email. Be sure to fill out that form, and our district's Partnerships team would be happy to talk to your special education director or special education coordinator. If you're interested in becoming a part of Parallel's community of providers, please submit your resume online. If you go to parallellearning.com, there's a call to action on the site saying become a provider. Go ahead, fill out that form, submit your resume, and we will get you to the right people. Also, this is— we're just getting started with our spring provider learning series. Sessions 2 and 3 are coming up. The next session 2 will be on Thursday, February 27th. Session 3 on Thursday, April 10th. So we are excited for another, our remaining sessions. Also, please be sure to follow us on socials. We post a lot. We need to get better on Instagram, but we do post there. We on YouTube will put all the recordings there. You can see all of our other webinars that we've done. And then on LinkedIn, we always keep you up to date with the latest and the greatest. So, um, with that, I think that we— that is a wrap. And, um, you know, again, tune in for sessions 2 and 3 of Renew, Refresh, Reimagine: Spring Forward in Special Education. We're going to focus on preventing burnout and have a little bit more, um, all about your mental health. Burnout, well-being, goal setting, and resilience. So that's all to come in the next sessions. Again, Corinne, we are so grateful for you. You're the absolute best. And thank you all for being here with us today.

Thank you. Thank you for having me.

Bye-bye.