How to Host a Self-Care Fair for Teachers
For our February Inservice, school counselors in my district were charged with hosting a social-emotional wellness session for teachers in our school buildings. My co-counselor and I decided to do something experiential. We wanted teachers to experience various self-care activities; not just talk about them. We decided to call this event a “Self-Care Fair” since teachers would have the option of trying different activities during the event.
Overview of the Self-Care Fair
For our Self-Care Fair, we had a two-hour block of time where we hosted six, twenty-minute sessions. We had multiple activities to choose from for each time-slot. Teachers were able to select which activities they wanted to attend. Our goal was for teachers to have a choice about what they participated in for the day. We chose activities that would be within teachers’ comfort zones. We wanted it to bel an enjoyable, self-care opportunity, not something stressful!
Self-Care Activities
We hosted the following sessions during our Self-Care Fair:
- Therapy Dogs
- Yoga
- Spin
- Walking
- Pickleball or Ping-Pong
- Basketball
- Walking
- Reading
- Music Therapy
In order to offer a variety of activities, we recruited teachers to host some of the sessions, we had some self-directed sessions, and we reached out to a local organization to bring therapy dogs.
Make it As Small or Big as You Want!
The cool thing about hosting a Self-Care Fair, is that you could really make an event like this as small or as big as you want. My advice is to think about what resources you currently have available to you in your school or district. You could then reach out to local businesses and organizations in your school community.
For example, if you wanted someone to teach yoga, you could reach out to members of your faculty first. If no one is able to do it, you could then reach out to community resources, such as the YMCA. Alternatively, if you cannot find someone to do activities live, you could look for videos on YouTube,
I am super thankful that our physical education teachers were willing to host movement activities.
I’m in the process of trying to figure out how we could host a similar event for students. Once I do this I will also share details about that!
If you need some resources or examples for hosting your own Self-Care Fair, you’re in luck. Check out the templates and examples below.
Self-Care Fair Templates
To have Teachers Sign-Up for the Self-Care Fair, I created a Google Form for them to make their selections. You can click on either of the images below to make an editable copy of the form.
To edit the header of the Self-Care Fair Sign Up Form, click here or the image blow.
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Dr. Danielle Schultz is the founder and author of School Counselor Blog. Learn more about Danielle here and connect with her on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn.
