Close your eyes for a moment and contemplate this question. ‘What do I actively do on a daily basis as a teacher that demonstrates I am looking after myself?’
Okay, take a few moments to consider this question. Grab a pen and paper and jot down the answer. Your page may be blank! That’s okay. Remember, there may be simple daily activities that you perform as practical as making sure to get into school a few minutes early to make your cup of tea or coffee before your pupils/students arrive. We all know how important that is! Some would say lives depended on it!
So don’t feel in order to be officially looking after your well-being that you have to be cross-legged on a mat behaving like the Dalai Lama, doing an hour of yoga before sunrise! That’s great if you can manage that but most of us are lucky to make it through the school gates with matching socks, breakfast eaten and teeth brushed to some degree.
Looking after our well-being as teachers does NOT need to be yet another initiative that is presented to be implemented by us either. Yes you know how much we love those initiatives! I am a teacher for the past 13 years and have been working with teachers in addressing their well-being for the past 3 years and during those workshops, most teachers arrive ready to learn a ‘skill’ and want to come away with a set of strategies to use in their classroom and we do cover all of that, but really teacher well-being means a lot more than that.
Okay, let’s go back for a moment first to teacher stress – according to a really great piece of research from the INTO last year (Mark Morgan, with the assistance of the Education committee of the INTO, working group and Head Office staff), 90% of teachers who participated stated that they feel teaching has become more stressful in the past five years and yet despite the research showing that a high percentage of teachers believe that teaching is stressful and highly demanding, over 56% of respondents stated that they still believed teaching was worthwhile and of value. So let’s then look at what all of that means for you as a teacher. In my workshops, through an assessment activity, teachers will list many factors for their stress including:
- Heavy workload
- High demands coupled with low productivity so therefore a neverending cycle of not ‘ticking those boxes’
- Problem solving in terms of societal issues,
- Parental conflicts
- Staff relations
- Feeling a lack of trust in terms of their professional autonomy
- Wearing that all so important professional teacher mask – you know it – it’s the ‘I must not under any circumstances let any of my colleagues see my flaws, doubts or problems in the job as this would show a sign of my weakness’ mask – yes if you’re a teacher, you know the one!
And yet despite these factors above, according to this study (M. Morgan 2015), quite a lot of us still believe that the job is of value. So what’s the missing piece? I believe that somewhere along the line, we forgot what the job means. Not only what we believe it means in the eyes of society but more imporantly, what it means to us. We have forgotten that we are touching young lives every day and yes dare I say it, changing young lives every day. Too corny? Maybe. The absolute truth? Yes!
We are in a privileged position to shape young hearts and minds. We get to be that ‘one good adult’ who makes the difference. That’s our job and yet for so many teachers I work with, this incredibly valuable truth has been squeezed out of them due to all of those factors above and more. And you might say to yourself ‘well that’s just great….this resonates in some way, but do we even believe it anymore and most importantly, can we dig it up within ourselves again or is it just lost through the fog of corrections and feelings of burnout?’
The majority of teachers who attend well-being workshops come for strategies but leave with something else – a different perspective. They arrive with the intention of learning how to meditate but often leave having rediscovered this lost fact. Once we give ourselves that space to look after ourselves, the ‘fog’ often lifts and what is left are teachers who realise the they are gifted teachers; who realise they actually love teaching, who realise they are actually making a difference. Does this happen with every single teacher I work with? Of course not. But it does happen with the majority and it is simply because of a change in perspective.
Look, stress is here, it’s a part of being human, and it’s here to stay. Unless we are all going to rise up in a revolution against the system and take to the streets with our placards, we need to accept this. We also need to accept that a little bit of stress is good for us too. It keeps us motivated and moving. Most of the teachers I work with spend their time in the job ‘battling stress’ and then the time that they don’t spend battling it, they spend talking about battling it, leading them into a dangerous cycle which can form feelings of serious bitterness and resentment towards the job. We have all seen it happen!
So after all that, what can we do and how is it linked to teacher well-being?
- Well, firstly we can change our perspective – what I call 360° Instead of battling stress, acknowledge what is stressing you each day. It is so often the battle itself that is driving you mad! Write down what’s going on for you and say ‘this is what it is today and that is okay. I am only human.’
- Ask yourself what you are doing for yourself each day (as above), and when you have this done, add in some simple things like pausing and breathing when you think of it, noticing your surroundings; simple things like what you can smell, see, feel and how your feet feel wherever they are in that moment.
- Drop the mask – if you feel stressed, no need to go bawling crying into the teacher next door or anything so dramatic but ask for help. Yes asking for help – a strange concept to so many of us as teachers considering how perfect we are supposed to be!
- Change your focus and self-talk when you walk out of school each day – instead of ‘I never got XY or Z done today,’ try ‘I got _____done today’ and list all of the things you achieved during the day in your head, including helping a colleague who had a tough parental interaction or finally making that small breakthrough with that student who was struggling.
Dr. Brené Brown (author of ‘Daring Greatly’ and ‘Rising Strong’), said of her work on living a wholehearted life and feeling worthy every day;
‘No matter what gets done and how much is left undone, I am enough.’
Once you have put these steps in motion for a couple of weeks and hopefully feel an ease in your stress levels, ask yourself then what your job really means to you. I wonder what the answer will be. Give yourself that space and find out. Maybe, just maybe your perspective may be changed or even altered. If it does, this will change, well, everything!
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