A Stressed Teacher Can Learn How To Become Resilient To Stressful Situations

Such a programme might help in the short term, but unless an intervention programme treats the actual causes of stress rather than just the symptoms the damaging effects of not being able to cope with stressful situations will eventually reappear.

Stress is a natural phenomenon and our brains are hard wired to experience it. In our caveman days stress was a warning sign that alerted us to danger and we had to make a choice: either to stay and fight the danger or run away to safety - the innate 'fight or flight' response. Feeling stress is automatic - it's how we respond to it that determines our success.

The real secret of dealing effectively with stress is that stressed teachers must learn to control it rather than have stress control them. We must learn to be resilient to stress and gain strength and energy from that resilience.

How to develop the resilience needed to avoid becoming a stressed teacher

Thhe real stress busters are the decisions we make about how we respond to the challenges stressful situations present to us as teachers. We need to learn how to make conscious decisions to listen to the warning signs that stress indicators give out, and how to take specific action to stop stress impacting negatively on our bodies and our minds.

Stressed Teacher Action Step #1: Listen to the body

If you're suffering regularly from headaches, low back pain, sleeplessness, ignoring the knots of physical tension in your body, becoming more and more tired and irritable, the chances are your stress levels are becoming unmanageable and if you don't do something to reduce them your body will - it will shut you down so you don't do any further damage. You can respond by making sure you sleep properly, have balanced nutrition, find ways to relax, and, not least, take some physical exercise

Stressed Teacher Action Step # 2: Learn to swich your mind off

Many teachers bring their work home in more ways than one. As well as the necessary lesson preparation and marking of student work, many teachers lock themselves into playing out problems in their mind long after the school day has ended. If you're still worrying about problems throughout the evening and even when you should be sleeping you're working an 18 hour day or more, because your mind is still stuck in a rut when it should be resting or thinking about something more positive instead.

The really destructive aspect of this kind of obssessive after-hours thinking is that it causes you to worry - and worrying is a very negative strategy. Worrying will NOT solve any problem - only action will do that. So it's better to stop worrying, clear your mind for a while, let it fill up with more pleasurable thoughts, and when it's time to address the problem again, ask questions of yourself that are more resourceful - ask yourself what practical steps you can take to solve the problem - which by the way will still be there in the morning, whether you worry about it or not. At least if you've switched off for a while and relaxed, your mind can come to it afresh.

Stressed Teacher Action Step #3: Work in real time

All teachers claim, with some justification, that they never have enough time. It's true that, unlike in some other professions, teachers have much less freedom over how they use their time - the school timetable is an unforgiving tyrant. There's simply no getting round the fact that a teacher has to be in front of class x at time y on day z every week of the school year.

However, teachers often delude themselves about how much time specific projects can take and fail to allow enough time to ensure the success of some projects they undertake. In the same way as stress itself can work as a positive force in that it forces us to make a choice about how to proceed, having a tight deadline can focus our attention on producing what's needed in timely fashion. Of course, the opposite is also true: we set unrealistic timeframes that guarantee our failure to complete the task in hand.

Take the task of correcting student work. I know I'm not the only one who's learnt some hard lessons by underestimating how long it can take to correct the work of a class of 30 students. I've paid the price many times by staying up to 1 in the morning because I'd set myself unrealistic time frames. Eventually I realised that it is okay to say to students that I had to correct work from 2 other classes before I could correct theirs, so they could expect it in 3 days time, but not the following day, as I wanted to give each class's work my full attention. That meant I could allow enough time to correct the work of each class without having to spend an excessive number of hours in the evening.

Stressed Teacher Action Step #4: Talk it over

If we become aware that we're starting to suffer from the negative effects of stress, a useful strategy is to talk about it. Many teachers might see it as a sign of weakness to admit to a colleague that they're struggling, but I have found that almost invariably there is someone working alongside you who can help, just by listening. It's the opening up and getting it out that helps to see the problem for what it is.

You may need to choose carefully who you talk to, but stating the problem helps to externalise it, to make it more concrete, and eventually easier to solve. Many colleagues will have experienced the same problem and a good few of those will be able to offer some useful advice, or at the very least, some words of comfort and solidarity. That's better than suffering in silence, alone.

If you can't find someone to talk to , or don't want to talk to someone else, talk it over with yourself. Writing down what you're feeling and experiencing can be very helpful, because you begin to see the problem as if it were someone else's, as if they had sent you a letter and were trying to explain how they felt. The talking won't of itself fix the problem but it often provides the clarity to see the nature of the problem.

Stressed Teacher Action Step #5: Live with purpose

Stress prowls for victims who've lost their sense of purpose. It's a bit of a vicious circle - you're stressed so you don't feel very positive - but unless you feel positive you won't be able to beat the stress, and redicover your sense of purpose.

Try getting back in touch with why you want to be a teacher, with the core value principles that pushed you to invest so much time in getting the qualifications and completing the training to become a teacher.Try to recall the times when you know you were successful in th classroom - in most cases there will be many to recall.

Think of your job as more than a way to pay the bills, think of it as something you are proud of, because you know you are helping to form the character of hundreds of young people, most of whom will grow up to be good, honest citizens, making their own contribution to the world, and you will have played a small, but perhaps very important part in that.

Tony Robbins, top self improvement expert, suggests that each day you should run through a checklist of things you have going for you: for example, what are you grateful for; what are you excited about; what are you proud of; and so on. The answers - anything from a wonderful family, a great education, a loving spouse, a secure job - may well let you see that you do have great purpose in your life - you may just have lost temporary sight of things.

Stressed teacher Action Step #6: See opportunities not problems

Every time we're faced with a challenge we can learn something about ourselves.How we react determines our success but even if we choose the wrong course of action we learn a valuable lesson for the future. So experiencing some difficult problems and challenges actually helps us to toughen up mentally, so we don't have to repeat the mistakes in future.

Often when teachers are stressed they see only problems: they have difficulty, for example, seeing that the hard time some students have been giving them recently in the classroom is actually an opportunity to examine the whole teacher -student dynamic, and allows them to make changes to how they react in class.

The sad fact is that many stressed teachers have the same stressful experience repeatedly, and fail to learn from them each time. Naturally, when you're in the middle of a tough time you probably can't see ooportunities, only problems, but as things become better [ by taking these action steps] find time to reflect on what you learn from the problems you suffered and think about how you can turn stress to energy

Stressed Teacher Action Step #7: Look outward

It's easy for teachers suffering from the efffects of stress to retreat inside themselves. This is usually a mistake. It's helpful to look beyond yourself, by making a real effort to be in the company of family and friends and to enjoy being in their company.

Contact with the people you care about reminds you that you don't define your existence or your worth simply in terms of the roles you play as a teacher. You have other social roles, in which other people respect you and cherish you, other people depend on you and want to be with you, so cutting yourself off from those connections will make things worse, as you're missing out something really important to you as a human being.




Return from Stressed Teacher to Sharpen The Saw


Return from stressed Teacher to Classroom Management Success

New! Comments