Unlock Your Teaching Potential

Reclaiming Joy in Teaching: Rejecting Toxic Positivity and Embracing Emotional Literacy

• Jen Rafferty • Season 4 • Episode 9

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Finding sustainable joy in teaching begins by rejecting toxic positivity and embracing emotional literacy. Teaching with emotional honesty fosters deeper connections and authentic classroom experiences without sacrificing professionalism.

  • Toxic positivity denies real emotional experiences and keeps educators stuck in stress cycles.
  • Emotional literacy is about recognizing, feeling, and honoring emotions in real time without judgment.
  • Processing emotions is a powerful way to relieve stress and lighten the load on your nervous system.
  • Many educators wear an "emotional uniform" — forced smiles and controlled voices — that hinder real connection.
  • Taking off this emotional uniform doesn’t mean oversharing; it’s about being honest with yourself first.
  • True happiness is a practice, not a mask; it's a muscle that strengthens over time.
  • Classroom breakthroughs happen when teachers show their authentic selves, allowing students to connect with their humanity.
  • Joy comes from embracing all emotions, not from pushing away the difficult ones.

Ready to move from surviving to THRIVING? Say YES to YOU in our signature program, THRIVE. See you there!

Stay empowered,
Jen


Let’s keep the conversation going! Find me at:

empowerededucator.com/resources

Instagram: @jenrafferty_

Facebook: Empowered Educator Faculty Room

Speaker 1:

Are you feeling exhausted by the constant demands of teaching? Do you find yourself wondering if there's a way to balance both your career and your well-being without burning out? Welcome to Unlock your Teaching Potential. Your permission slip to hit the brakes, recharge and reignite your joy for teaching and living. I'm Dr Jen Rafferty, former music teacher, author, tedx speaker and founder of Empowered Educator, and I've been where you are exhausted, overwhelmed and just trying to get through the day, making it all work. So each week, I'll bring you short, powerful episodes with actionable tools to help you reclaim your energy, set boundaries and step into your full potential, both in and out of your role as an educator. So take a breath and let's dive in. It's time to unlock your teaching potential, because the world needs you at your best.

Speaker 1:

Today, we're diving into something that every teacher I know wrestles with at one point or another, and that's how to find and sustain real joy in this work, without glossing over all of the hard stuff. Because, let's be honest, happiness that demands that you deny your struggles isn't real happiness. It's performative, and we're not here to perform. We are here to reclaim our joy, and that starts from the inside out. So let's talk about the difference between true happiness and toxic positivity, and how to unlock a deeper sense of fulfillment without emotionally bypassing what's real. So we're going to start with a reason why just think positive doesn't work, because we've all heard this before, you know. Just be positive, think happy thoughts, because it could always be worse, and at least you have a job. Remember, we're doing this for the kids, and while all of these comments might come from a well-meaning place, they can be deeply invalidating. Toxic positivity is the denial, the minimization or invalidation of authentic emotional experiences. It tells us to just smile through it instead of feeling through it. And when we suppress these difficult emotions, we are actually activating the stress cycle even further instead of completing it, which is what we need to do. And we keep our amygdala on high alert. And if you've been hanging out with me for a while, you know you cannot teach or lead or love or connect from that place of high alert.

Speaker 1:

For very long, suppressed emotions are unprocessed stress, and stress recovery is brain recovery. So we need to do something else instead of pretending that everything is okay all of the time, and that means that we get to practice emotional literacy, which will, of course, increase our emotional intelligence, and emotional literacy is about naming your emotions, feeling them in real time and honoring them without any judgment. This is the foundation of self-awareness and sustainable well-being. And, of course, this is what we cover deeply in the Empowered Educator Signature Course, thrive, which the link is in the comments, if you want to check it out. But think of it like this Every emotion that you acknowledge and that you process through is one less that your nervous system has to keep on carrying in the background. It's not that you're weak for feeling sad or angry or frustrated. Your brain is wired for these emotions. It is a beautiful part of being human and it's essential for being an empowered educator. So if you're feeling like you're in the middle of a tough season at school, I invite you to say this, either out loud or silently, to yourself. I can feel this feeling and I am still whole. My joy is not gone. It's just waiting for me on the other side of my emotional honesty.

Speaker 1:

Emotional literacy is more than just naming your feelings. It's the practice of noticing and naming and navigating your inner emotional world with both self-compassion and skill. And this is important here because it is a skill that needs to be learned and needs to be continually fostered, fostered. We can't just learn it once and then we're done. We don't need more information about this, we need more reminders, and the best sort of reminders that we can get is within community. And this is a foundational part of resilience, and it directly impacts how your brain and your body is going to process your stress. When you practice emotional literacy, you move from reacting to responding. You get to calm your amygdala, engage your prefrontal cortex and create the conditions that you need for clarity, for focus and for real connection, not just bypassing it and saying everything is okay. But the truth is, most of us were never taught how to do this, and instead of learning how to feel our emotions, we've learned how to perform them. Which brings me to something we've started calling here in Empowered Educator our emotional uniform.

Speaker 1:

And the emotional uniform is that invisible armor that you put on every day. It's that forced smile, it's the steady voice, the I've got it together. Look, even when everything inside feels frayed and frenetic, it's the mask that we wear that says I'm fine, even when you're not. And we wear these masks to protect ourselves. We protect ourselves from judgment, from vulnerability and from the fear that, if we let our real feelings out. We might not be able to keep going, and what would everyone else think of me? But here's the truth. The emotional uniform might feel like it's keeping you safe, but it's also keeping you stuck, because when you're always armored, you're not truly able to connect. You're not able to connect to yourself or to your students or to your loved ones at home. You're just surviving, and emotional literacy invites you to take off the uniform, to be with what's real, to trust that acknowledging your emotions doesn't make you weak. It reminds you of your wholeness.

Speaker 1:

So imagine this you're walking into your classroom not armored but grounded, not shut down but self-aware. That's the difference between surviving the day and actually being present for it. And, to be clear, this doesn't mean that you're crying at the whiteboard or oversharing or complaining all of the time. It means that you're internally honest with yourself, that you're tending to your inner world with the same care that you give to your students. You're asking yourself consistently what am I feeling right now? What do I need right now? And then aligning yourself with getting those needs met. Then you start to reclaim your happiness, not as a mask but as a muscle. Your happiness isn't about ignoring what's hard. It's about choosing what gives you life, even in the presence of the things that drain you. And this, this right here, is what truly unlocks your teaching potential. When you stop hiding your emotions and start honoring them, you become a clearer, kinder and more grounded version of yourself.

Speaker 1:

You know, there was a year I was teaching chorus and general music, holding space for 150 middle schoolers a day, while navigating my marriage that was falling apart, and day after day I would pull it all together, put a smile on my face, try to keep on going. And one day, as I was passing out music to my chorus class, one of my students took the sheet music from my hand and she looked me in the eye and she said Are you okay? And it was the strangest thing. It brings me to tears even just thinking about it, because in that moment I felt seen. I thought I was pretending enough that I could not only fool my students, but I could fool my colleagues and, of course, fool myself, because it was easier to wear a mask and to perform than to deal with what I was going through. But it doesn't work that way. You can only fool everyone and yourself for so long. And in that moment I just stopped pretending. I was so taken aback that she noticed that. I genuinely and honestly responded to her by saying by saying no, I'm not okay, but I will be. And in that moment I even gave myself hope, because I recognized where I was in this moment and it was okay. And so that class that day I ended up sharing.

Speaker 1:

I was having a rough day you know we all have rough days but I'm really glad that I get to be here with you in class today. Even with the rough day that I'm having, and you know what happened, the class that I had softened. They leaned in and met me with humanity and we sang. We sang in that chorus class and that period felt more joyful, not because everything was perfect, but because it was real. And I'm going to invite you to sit with this question what if your path to happiness isn't paved with positivity but with presence? What if your joy isn't found in pushing away your pain but in letting yourself be whole, because you already belong the way you are? You won't get there by pretending everything is okay and sprinkling it with all of this toxic positivity.

Speaker 1:

This is teaching with the brain in mind. That's your power and, as I said before, that's how you unlock your teaching potential, and as we close out the podcast for today, I have some news that I want to share. Things are always shifting and changing, and we are changing right along with it at Empowered Educator, and that is why we are moving this podcast to a live format, which I am so excited about. Starting this summer, I will be hosting a live webinar Wednesday. This world right now is interacting with you.

Speaker 1:

I am a teacher at heart, and being in the classroom is the thing that gets me going, so, while my classroom looks a lot different than it did when I was teaching music in the public school, I want to spend my time being in the room with the people I serve, and that means getting out behind this microphone and getting into rooms with you. So this new format will replace this podcast temporarily, and, while I might return to this format in the future, this is another example of how I continue to walk the walk. I practice everything that I share with you, and when something doesn't feel aligned with me anymore, when there's something tugging at my heart that's different than what I'm doing right now, I get to choose to follow it, and sometimes that means saying goodbye to something. Sometimes it means changing your mind from something you thought you wanted not so long ago. But I am so excited about this webinar series and you are the first to hear about it, so make sure you sign up for our mailing list at empowerededucatorcom so you get to know when those sessions will be. I can't wait to see you there.

Speaker 1:

Thanks for listening and I'll see you soon. Thanks for listening and I'll see you soon. Remember, the most generous thing that you can do for your students is take care of yourself. So if you found today's episode helpful, be sure to subscribe so you never miss a moment of inspiration. And if you're loving the show, I'd love for you to leave a review. This helps more educators like you find the space to unlock their teaching potential too. Until next time, please remember that you are a gift to this world, so act accordingly. See you soon.