Coping with Teacher Stress

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Teaching, like any work that involves other people, can be highly demanding. Meeting these demands without falling victim to stress and burnout requires that you remain strong both in body and spirit.

When people are overwhelmed by the job they are doing, a common response is to work even harder in an attempt to catch up and get back in control of things. But working harder is not the best solution for coping with stress—working smarter is. Working smarter means making changes in the way you handle your job so that you are less stressed and more efficient.

In practical terms, this means that you have to work out a list of specific accomplishments that you can shoot for on a given day, a given month—even for the year. The key word here is specific—the accomplishments you hope to achieve have to be well defined in concrete terms. If your goals refer to specific behaviours, rather that general abstractions, then they are clearly “do-able.” Not only should the goals be specific, they should be realistic as well—there must be a reasonable chance that you will actually be able to accomplish each goal.

As a starting point, begin by doing things differently. By choosing to do things in different ways and varying your work routine, you can get out of a rut and feel more in control of your job.

Breaking away from your work by arranging intermittent breaks or rest periods can help you cope with stress. Such breaks serve as emotional breathers, allowing you to relax, “take five,” and get a little psychological distance from a particular problem. Even if brief, this is a “pause that refreshes” because you slow down and relax when a situation is becoming too stressful, and then start again.

As teachers, we are entitled to forty minutes of uninterrupted lunch break. This can be an ideal opportunity for emotional recharging, but unfortunately, lunch breaks are often misused in ways that aggravate stress and burnout. Most commonly, people continue to work during their breaks, catching up on paperwork, making telephone calls or doing other chores. It is far better to take advantage of these breaks and really get away from the pressure and demands of work. When the lunch hour comes, leave the classroom or school and go for a walk, read a book, get together with friends, indulge yourself.

Stress can also be reduced if you try to take things less personally. The emotional exhaustion of stress escalates when you get overly involved with people—taking on their problems as your own, reacting to negative comments as if they were personal insults, and so on. When things begin to get intense, try to stand back and look at the situation in more abstract and intellectual terms. By “objectifying” the situation, you are less likely to get emotionally entangled in it. Emotional over involvement can also be reduced if you do not “take home” people’s problems. By leaving your work at school and not reliving it again at home, the emotional stress is confined to a smaller part of your life.

Teaching is a helping profession and may tend to take on a negative bias, especially if the teacher is under stress. All too often, problems take precedence to the point where people focus only on what is wrong and forget about what is right. An effective way to counteract this negative bias is to emphasize actively what is good or pleasant or satisfying about working with others. Taking the good with the bad makes the bad less total and overwhelming. Frustration and failures can be put into perspective when balanced by satisfaction and success.

To cope with stress it is essential for individuals to know themselves. People who recognize their need for counterbalancing coping strategies are people who are tuned into their inner feelings. They are sensitive to their personal reactions and are willing to reflect on the underlying reasons for them. Tearing yourself apart for all your flaws and failures is not the same as recognizing your limitations and learning from your mistakes. Acknowledging your strengths is as central to self-understanding as admitting your weakness.
Learning to relax can be another effective way to cope with stress. The relaxation technique that you choose—meditation, walking, listening to music, reading, yoga or tai chi—should be one that suits you. The key to any relaxation technique’s effectiveness is the same in all cases: practice. It does not matter what you do so long as you actually do it. This means setting aside the necessary time every day and practicing the procedures until they become second nature to you. Regular relaxation will yield a significant reduction in stress.

Making the transition between home and work is very important to coping with stress as well. The bringing home of stress and burnout can be hazardous to your home life. The tension and emotional strains of work are not easily left behind and can be bad for relationships with family and friends. To cope with this problem, you should think of work and home as two different environments and recognize that a transition is needed to get from one to the other. Select some activity that will allow you to unwind, relax and leave the job behind before getting fully involved with family and friends. Activities such as a favourite hobby or interest, reading, playing music, artistic activity, carpentry, stamp collecting, gourmet cooking, physical exercise, and many other leisure activities can be used as a vehicle for transition from work to home.

Another way to cope with stress is by realizing that you have a life of your own. There is more to your life than your work, and your after-school life can offset the emotional strain of work and help you recharge your batteries. However, it is a sign of trouble if your non-working hours are just that—an absence of work, rather than a presence of something else. When your whole world is your work and little else, then your whole world is more likely to fall apart when problems arise on the job. The lesson to be learned is the importance of a rich and varied private life to complement the public one. The activity or activities you choose to do during your private time should be whatever is most fun filled and rewarding for you, but be sure to translate those choices into action. Good intentions are not a good way to cope with stress.

Finally, it is important to realize that while many changes are for the better, some changes are not. Change does not automatically guarantee success and happiness. Make your expectations realistic ones and be prepared for mistakes. Well-planned change can be a positive step in personal growth, and is crucial to the process of taking stock in order to take better care of yourself and to reduce stress, allowing you to be the teacher you were meant to be.

Hector Earle is a grade 7 teacher at Riverwood Academy, Wing’s Point, NL. He has worked for 29 years as a teaching principal, and has done extensive graduate work on teacher stress.