This course will equip participants with the knowledge and skills necessary to identify, understand, and implement strategies to support students who exhibit unhealthy perfectionism. This includes understanding types of perfectionism, its root causes, and its ultimate effects on student achievement and well-being. By identifying the broader cultural and classroom policies that foster unhealthy perfectionism, participants can reflect on the pedagogical shifts that can support greater well-being for their students. Ultimately, this course should equip teachers with the tools to reduce student anxiety, stress, and procrastination and increase student self-esteem, motivation, academic performance, and coping skills.

Educators themselves are often perfectionists. In addition to helping participants support perfectionist students, this course will allow teachers to reflect on their perfectionistic tendencies that may be adding additional stress to their work. Perfectionism causes chronic stress, anxiety, overwork, unrealistic expectations, self-criticism, and negative feedback loops–all of which contribute to burnout. With approximately half of teachers leaving the profession in the first five years–citing burnout and stress–it is more critical than ever to ensure that teachers can mitigate their unhealthy perfectionistic tendencies.

Upon completion of this course, the student will be able to:

• Identify the types and characteristics of unhealthy perfectionism
• Recognize the causes of different types of perfectionism
• Apply practical strategies to mitigate individual students’ perfectionistic tendencies
• Develop classroom policies to mitigate a culture of perfectionism in the classroom
• Develop practical strategies to support self/students exhibiting unhealthy perfectionism
• Reflect upon the ways that culture fosters perfectionism and teacher burnout
• Apply practical strategies to address unhealthy perfectionism within the field of teaching