Tag: stress

End-of-Term Teacher Tired.

wordynerdbird3 Comments
An image of a woman with her head on her computer keyboard as though she has fallen asleep there.
Photo by Andrea Piacquadio on Pexels.com

In response to requests from several quarters to explore the ways in which the added stresses of online and remote learning, social restrictions, working from home and everything else that has come with COVID-19 have affected teachers this year, I conducted a survey.

Open to all teachers worldwide, I distributed the survey both on social media and via professional networks.

I asked teachers to respond honestly to nine questions, which I formulated based on comments and social media posts by teachers. To remove any possible disincentive for honesty, participation in this survey was completely voluntary and anonymous.

Thus far, there is only a relatively small number of respondents , and my little survey is by no means scientific research. Still, the results thus far bear out my own experience and observations, and what I have heard others saying: as resilient and committed as we might be, it has been a really rough year that has left teachers exhausted and, at times, quite discouraged.

The survey is still open for any teachers wishing to respond.

Thus far:

  • 79% of respondents say they have been much more stressed and tired than previously
  • 21% reported no change in their levels of stress and tiredness.
  • There does not appear to be any correlation between how tired and stressed people are and the number of years of experience they have as a teacher.
  • 50% of respondents said their stress was created by their own expectations of themselves
  • 36% said that other people’s expectations of them as a teacher created their stress
  • 14% reported that their stress came from the media’s continual reporting of COVID-19 related news and issues.
  • 64% of people said that the tiredness experienced was longer term than usual, while 36% that it was about the same.
  • 29% said they had consumed more alcohol in 2020 than in previous years
  • 71% said their alcohol consumption was about the same as in previous years.
  • 36% of people also said they had increased their caffeine intake
  • 36% said that their caffeine intake had not changed.
  • It did seem that there was a correlation between people who had increased alcohol consumption and increased caffeine consumption with
  • The respondents’ responses regarding nutrition, though, was interesting.
  • Only 28% said their eating patterns had not changed
  • 7% said they had paid more attention to good nutrition
  • 65% said they had paid less attention to good nutrition.
  • 79% said they wanted to continue their career as a teacher.
  • 14% said they would only keep on teaching because they felt they had no choice.
  • Sadly, 7% said that the stress of the year had brought an end to their teaching career.
  • 14% of respondents said they had sought medical advice for issues related to the stress of teaching this year.
  • None had sought counselling.

This final statistic is, to me, evidence of our collective resilience and commitment: we’re stressed and we’re tired, but we keep on going.

I do wonder, though, if we as a profession need to be more proactive in seeking help and support when we are experiencing increased levels of stress and tiredness, and possibly not taking such great care of ourselves at the same time.

The key to my own determination to keep going this year has been that I wasn’t actually doing it for me– I was doing it for the kids. I suspect that most of us feel the same way. It’s not just me, and not just my colleagues, having a hard year. It’s everyone. Every family, every community, every workplace, every career, every school, every student… you get the idea.

If I can model resilience, positive attitude and commitment to making the best of a tough situation, that’s exactly what I’m going to do my best to achieve.

I hope my students are encouraged by my commitment to them. I hope they learn from my example. And boy oh boy, do I hope their parents are watching, because I want them to love this school and to understand how much we value them and their children.

I have been enormously encouraged by a my colleagues, and some have said that I have been an encouragement to them. The members of my faculty office have been a lifeline for me as we laughed, cried, and collaborated together throughout the experience of teaching remotely for two terms of this most challenging year. The entire staff of my school committed from the outset to making the whole deal of working from home and teaching online something that was achievable, coordinated and professionally delivered. “That will do” was never going to be acceptable.

At the end of every school term, I comment that the break is well-deserved. That has never been more true than at this end of 2020.

As the final term of 2020 winds down to a close and teachers (and students!) everywhere look forward to the Christmas break, I truly hope we are all able to stop working long enough to get some much needed rest and downtime.

Merry Christmas, Teachers. You’ve earned it.

End-of-Term Teacher Tired.
#TeacherLife #TeacherTwitter #survey

Stress Management Tips For Workaholics.

wordynerdbird2 Comments

At a time when my state is still in lockdown, we’re back to teaching online and trying to tick all the boxes that go with that while at the same time dealing with all the other demands of life.

It’s very easy to become consumed by the job. It’s very easy to rationalise going those extra steps to create whizz-bang lessons that will engage and interest the students and hopefully keep both them and myself motivated despite the malaise that I have dubbed ‘online learning fatigue”.

I have learned over recent months how important it is to set limits for myself. I have consciously tried to avoid overburdening my students with work, and sought to develop learning activities that they can complete offline. I’ve tried to remind them to get up and walk around, to drink water, to get sunshine on their face and on their back.

Ironically, I’m not always so great at managing my own stress. In the midst of trying to be Super Teacher or Little Miss Motivator, I still have to remind myself to do those same things.

This post from Nerdome appeared in my feed at an opportune moment. It’s a good read, providing some quick tips and good insights about managing stress.

I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

Nerdome

Those who spend more time with their works tend to suffer from stress more than the other. The mental and emotional burden that is often attributed to the demands of work can affect our productivity and efficiency with our task that would often lead us to troubles than not. This is one reason why it is very important for workaholics to undertake stress management to avoid compromising their career.

You don’t have to be in a special place to apply stress management. In fact, you can do it anytime and anywhere if you feel like it. You can do it while at your work desk, in the comfort room, or even out in the lobby. The idea here is to control your mind to relax so that you can continue fresh with your task — emotionally, physically, and mentally. Here are some tips that will surely help you out.

Tip…

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Why report writing stresses teachers out.

wordynerdbird2 Comments

We’ve all seen those funny things that teachers post about writing school reports.
Some of them suggest things we’d love to write, but we know we never could… no matter how tempted we might be.

Others are translations of teachers’ comments commonly found in school reports. Here’s an example:

“Murgatroyd is highly social and engages well with his classmates.”
In other words, Murgatroyd doesn’t shut up and distracts the entire class from what they are supposed to be doing.

“Murgatroyd demonstrates strong interest in science, and is very creative in his use of hypothesis and experiment.”  That is, Murgatroyd isn’t scared of bugs or creepy-crawlies, and was brave enough to put a snake in Prissy’s school bag and a venomous spider in the teacher’s desk drawer. He figured they would be upset, but he did it just to see what would happen.

Okay, so we can laugh at those examples.

However, it is really hard to balance the need for both honesty and diplomacy when writing school reports. It’s important to let parents know what their little treasures are doing at school and how they are progressing.   It’s important for our students to know what they are doing right, and how they can further improve their learning.

It’s also really important for parents to understand that writing reports is not an easy job. It adds pressure  because we are so keen to get it right. It adds stress because we are working to an extra deadline while we’re still teaching classes, grading exams, doing yard duty, marking students’ work, and attending meetings.  We go home to our homes and families, where all the regular things parents and spouses do needs to keep happening.  It often means late nights of unpaid overtime, looking at a computer screen until our eyeballs threaten to bleed or we get nauseous because we’re sleep deprived, not eating properly, and surviving on caffeine and sheer determination.

When kids are well-behaved, attentive, cooperative and soak up information like a sponge, their reports are quite easy to write.  The biggest danger is falling into the trap of making things sound like the kid has it made and just has to show up to get those As. It’s easy to praise, encourage and motivate those students.

Don’t let that fool you into assuming that every kid in every class is like that. It’s simply not true.

Writing a report for a student that hates your subject, or one  who doesn’t want to behave, or one who is determined to see just how many times they can be told off, sent out, given detention or how quickly they can make the teacher cry… that is a really hard job. Especially when schools all have guidelines and rules for writing reports that prevent teachers from telling it like it really is.

Sometimes you want to tell parents that their kid is a law unto themselves, and that they won’t take correction or discipline without a fight. Sometimes you want to tell parents that even though their child behaves like an angel, her self-righteousness and conceit make her really hard to have around… especially when she insists on telling the teachers how they should be doing their job, or on trying to do their job for them.  Sometimes you want to tell parents that their child has given them the term, semester or year from  hell, and that both you and the student in question are lucky to have made it through alive.  Sometimes you wish you could let parents know, just in case they haven’t realised, that their child is among the laziest human beings on the planet and he’s not going to make it into rocket science with his attitude and work ethic. 

Having to be diplomatic about those things is a really tough gig.  And there is at least one kid like that in every class.

Parents, for the love of everything educational, if there are things in your child’s report that you don’t like reading… please consider that perhaps your little treasure may not be quite as well-behaved and super-intelligent as you believe.  Please consider that the teacher isn’t making it up, singling out your child, or blaming a student for their own lack of ability or patience.  Please consider that maybe the teacher is saying something you need to know and understand about your child.  Understanding that might make a bigger difference in your parenting and in your child’s life than detentions, notes, consequences and meetings with teachers ever will.

And if you are lucky enough to have a child who brings home reports that glow with praise and encouragement, be very, very thankful.  You can bet their teachers are.