New Teacher Wellness Program Aims to Foster Self-Care and Community Support

A new initiative has been launched on the island to provide teachers with a much-needed opportunity for self-care. The Nantucket Lighthouse School, in partnership with MAST Nantucket, has introduced a unique program to support the mental and physical health of the island’s educators.

The ten-week series, called “Wellbeing Wednesdays,” is designed to provide sustainable wellness practices that help regulate the nervous system, providing teachers not only with resources for themselves but also ways to incorporate wellness into the classroom.

The program officially kicked off on October 2nd, and it has the capacity to benefit over 500 Nantucket educators with free weekly classes focused on movement, sound therapy, and breathwork.

The program’s roots began when Laura Cunningham, chair of Nantucket Lighthouse School's Board of Trustees, first experienced the MAST wellbeing center in June. Recognizing a need for more support for local teachers, she put the idea into action with Emily Miller, Lighthouse School’s head of school and a teacher with over 32 years of experience.

“Laura, now our board chair as of July, really took the time to ask me, as head of school, a lot of questions about, 'what are the ways that you offer yourself self-care? What are the ways that we do that for teachers'?” Miller explained. “And that turned into a conversation of, 'what can we also do to support our teachers, who are in a field where they're constantly giving care to young people and their families'?"

Together, they reached out to Susie Tapley, the owner of MAST Nantucket, and the group crafted the concept of a wellness program tailored specifically for teachers. With the support of the Lighthouse School and funding through a grant from the town's Human Services Department, Wellbeing Wednesdays was born.

“I think we've moved into a place in our world where, if we're not incorporating some sort of nervous system regulation practice, then we're really eroding our health, mental and physical, and so how do we create a program that's really accessible, that's easy for teachers to say yes to?” Tapley said.

These questions have shaped Wellbeing Wednesdays and have also led to the program being part of a broader community effort spearheaded by the Health and Vibrant Community Initiative and the town's director of human services Jerico Mele, to bring this initiative to fruition.

Every Wednesday, participating educators will have access to three one-hour sessions, each focusing on different aspects of wellness, including: movement with yoga instructors; sound therapy featuring Tibetan sound bowls; and breathwork guided by a therapist.

These sessions are designed to be a balanced mix of movement, relaxation, and introspective practices and are scheduled so teachers can find a time that works best for them.

“To be able to remain calm in children's storms is such a valuable tool for an educator,” said Miller. “And I think more than anything else, is having those tools as an educator, an adult, to find that peace and calm and balance with a lot going on around you throughout the day.”

As Nantucket faces ongoing teacher retention challenges, initiatives like Wellbeing Wednesdays offer more than just temporary relief – they serve as a long-term commitment to teacher wellness.

“It would be my deep dream and pleasure and hope that when any administrator in this Nantucket school system, whether it's private or public schools, is recruiting for teachers, they can point to the programming that is happening in collaboration with the town to say, 'this is a community that supports its educators. This is a community that takes education and puts it at the top, that we believe in our students and our teachers, and we believe in the whole person, and that we have built out this robust programming that is just woven into how we do things on Nantucket'," Tapley elaborated.

The Lighthouse School's leaders have been the driving force behind the program and have made a point to ensure that it isn’t exclusive to their staff but open to all educators on the island. This inclusivity aims to foster a sense of community among each of Nantucket’s schools.

Wellbeing Wednesdays is set to run from October through December, with no cost to participants due to the generous funding from the town the program has received. The initiative is the first of its kind on Nantucket, and its organizers hope it won’t be the last.

“This should be part of the lifestyle of educators out here year-round,” Cunningham said. “I would love to see this be a year-round thing, like, this time next year, it's just like, 'Oh, it's a given' – you get to do this as part of being an educator. It's a benefit of being an educator. Because I just don't see a Nantucket in which we wouldn't keep doing it.”

For more information and to register for classes, educators can visit MAST’s website here.