Regenerative Wellbeing For Educators

Written by Navin Amarasuriya, CEO of Contentment Foundation “As we serve educators with evidence-based well-being practices, how do we implement our work in a way that genuinely nourishes rather than adding to their burden?”

The Landscape: A Full Plate

Schools are arguably one of the hardest systems to serve: high teacher churn, underfunded budgets, structures resistant to change, and politically volatile environments. Adoption is never easy here. Every new initiative competes with a hundred urgent demands.

Many well-being efforts operate from the same scarcity and pressure they aim to heal. Organizations chase grants that demand scale before depth, bending the work to fit the donor dollar rather than educator impact.

The logic is seductive: partner with agencies, influence policy, mandate the work across thousands of schools. Inevitably, genuine practice drifts into theatre and calcifies into yet another thing to do. 

Regenerative Implementation: Becoming the Plate

Real help starts by meeting people where they are: being present, building trust, and resisting the urge to measure or engineer change. The hammer sees the world as a bunch of nails. The moment we cling to our implementation ideas or fixed outcomes, we stop serving educators needs and start advancing our own.

In her essential work on social change, Michele-Lee Moore describes three modes of scaling: out (reach), up (policy), and deep (transforming beliefs and relationships).

Here at The Contentment Foundation, we lead with scaling deep, trusting that out and up to follow. Why? Because depth compounds: one grounded educator becomes a quiet center for many. 

By tending to the deep practices within the educators themselves, scaling out can transform into invitation rather than compliance. We have seen the power of one motivated teacher who has transformed their ways of seeing the world, and how motivated they are to serve their colleagues. Scaling up becomes possible, crucially without flattening nuance. 

Implementation Integrity: Serving the Plate

• Are we becoming one more thing to do or a source of real nourishment?

• Are our intentions and actions starting to resemble the systems we critique?

• Does this decision serve educators or our organization’s survival?

We don’t claim to have all the answers.

We hold the contradictions: build systems, but hold them lightly.

Use metrics, but don’t worship them.

Pursue funding, but walk away when it warps the work.

The hardest part isn’t uncertainty, it’s accepting that integrity may mean growing slowly as we meet the moment. 

Perhaps the most regenerative act we can offer educators isn’t another flawless program, it’s honest exploration. We bring what schools need most: evidence-based tools that work, held by a community willing to walk the impossible line, not as experts who’ve arrived, but with humility and a spirit of service.