Is the cold weather making you or your students feel blue? During this time, many people experience sadness, have difficulty concentrating, and struggle to keep their energy up to complete daily tasks.
While you can’t change the weather or hurry along Daylight Saving Time, you can take action to improve your mood and help your students concentrate. Here are 5 of our favorite ways to beat the “winter blues.”
1. Enjoy the Outdoors
Getting outside daily, even for a few minutes, can greatly impact your mood. Sunlight plays a big role in balancing serotonin levels, increasing your vitamin D level, and lowering stress and anxiety. All of these help improve your emotional state. Sunlight, especially morning sunlight, also helps balance circadian rhythms—leading to better quality sleep.
If you can’t get outside, try to arrange your desk to be near a window or get a light lamp. Plan a lesson that can be held outdoors to let your students have fun in the fresh air. You could also try incorporating physical activity into your teaching. Short physical fitness breaks boost everyone’s spirits and keep things interesting for you and your students.
2. Let Food Improve Your Mood
Vitamin D can also be found in foods we eat. Try adding fatty fish, mushrooms, and vitamin D-fortified foods like milk, orange juice, and yogurt to your diet. If it’s hard to get these on a regular basis, consider a vitamin D supplement for the winter months.
Because vitamin D supports bone, heart, and GI health, it is a good vitamin to prioritize for overall health. And of course, it’s easier to be in a better mood and concentrate when we feel physically healthy.
3. Socialize and Celebrate
Socializing is good for our mental health. Organize a staff happy hour or turn one of the many holidays in February into a special lesson or mini-party! Finding things to celebrate, even if they are silly holidays, helps infuse the dreary winter months with excitement and fun and can give us something to look forward to.
Students may appreciate celebrating National Tootsie Roll Day (February 23rd) and you may enjoy belatedly celebrating National Quiet Day (Sunday, February 25th) in your classroom the following Monday morning.
Is there a way to incorporate Tell a Fairy Tale Day or Letter to an Elder Day (both February 26th) or National Science Day (February 28th) in your classroom?
Also, don’t forget that 2024 is a leap year!
4. Maintain a Regular Schedule
While routines are always important, they are extra important in the winter months because they create a sense of stability. Routines are particularly trendy right now, with social influencers posting their morning and evening “5-9s.”
Popular activities you could include in your morning routine: stretching, drinking a glass of water right away, ignoring your phone for the first 30 minutes after waking up, exercising, meditating, listening to music or a podcast, or journaling.
Popular activities you could include in your evening routine: skin care, bathing or showering, reading, putting away devices 1 hour before bed, lighting candles or dimming lights, making to-do lists or laying out clothes for the next day, or making a gratitude list.
Keeping a regular schedule in your classroom is equally important because it provides a predictable learning environment for your students. Do you always start your classes with a vocabulary word of the day? Are Wednesdays always group work days? Look for ways to incorporate more routines into your classroom.
5. Try Micro-Tasking
An important part of “beating the winter blues” is acknowledging the very real effect it can have on our bodies and minds. Forcing ourselves (and our students) to simply power through the February gloom with the same verve as in April can do more harm than good.
Consider breaking up tasks or assignments into more manageable parts. It may seem silly to do so but research shows that the act of completing a task (even a micro one) releases dopamine, which not only improves mood but also provides a surge of motivation. Micro-Tasking is an easy way to “trick” our brains into productivity when we’re feeling sluggish, unmotivated, or overwhelmed.
Incorporating prizes, even something as simple as offering praise to students for accomplishing one step of an assignment, is shown to reinforce the benefits of micro-tasking.
Thankfully, longer, warmer, and sunnier days are ahead for us all, but in the meantime, make sure you are taking steps to care for yourself, and consider implementing some of these ideas into your classroom to help your students, too!
