Teacher Candidates' Perspectives on Self-Care: Lessons from the COVID-19 Pandemic

How are teacher candidates conceptualizing self-care during the COVID 19 pandemic?We initiated focused attention on educator self-care for teacher candidates after identifying this content as a missing yet necessary component of trauma-informed teaching (Authors, 2019). In the fall of 2020, with the COVID-19 pandemic affecting every element of candidates’ lives including our now remotely-delivered course, we reconsidered how that content needed to fit into the realities of learning to teach during a pandemic. Following these revisions, we explored the research question, how are candidates conceptualizing self-care during the COVID-19 pandemic? We describe findings and provide recommendations and resources for educator preparation programs (EPP) to include self-care content during COVID -19 and afterward.