Carole Spiers, founder of National Stress Awareness Day, suggests approaches to counter stress at work for teachers
If you were on the spot when your school received the Ofsted call, if you have had sleepless nights in preparation for pupil progress meetings or had your third observation of the term, you will undoubtedly have felt stressed.
How much stress is too much? Why do some people seem to plough on regardless? How can you control it before it controls you?
Long-term stress is invariably harmful. While a certain amount of pressure can motivate you and can, therefore, be useful, stress is never so. You will undoubtedly have often felt under pressure to keep up with pupil feedback, effectively differentiate and/or ensure that all your pupils are making good or better levels of progress. However, where this can become harmful is when you feel you are unable to cope with all these demands – you can no longer control those spinning plates.
At these times, many people will cover up signs of stress as they perceive others around them as coping better. Teachers often blame themselves for feelings of stress, which further erodes their self-esteem, confidence and motivation.
Recognising stress
Feelings of stress will often show themselves in physical symptoms: heart palpitations, mood swings, panic attacks, caffeine dependency, anxiety, aggression, headaches and attention deficit.
What do you do about it?
The first step is not to panic. If you are feeling like this, a number of your colleagues will too.
Your second big step is to talk to others about how you are feeling. This doesn’t mean spending all the time at the end of the day in the staff room moaning about your workload or marking; then you would undoubtedly become more stressed about the time you have wasted. What it does mean is meeting someone from your leadership team to discuss it.
Workload
You need to establish whether or not your workload is too great or you have received enough training to do it. If it is a case of there just not being enough working hours in the week, it would be helpful to take a timetable with you to this meeting to show how you currently use your time.
Many people find it very difficult to say no. Teachers will often put themselves in tough situations by accepting additional work or tasks when, in reality, they don’t have enough resources to complete them. The consequences are often disappointment in themselves and others, which invariably leads to both physical and psychological stress.
What you can do about it
When you are working 60+ hour weeks, often the first thing that is hit is your relationships with family and friends. It is isolating and overwhelming to give yourself only 12 hours off a week and then be too tired to do anything. You will need to ringfence time with family and friends – and, again, timetable this into your week. (Finally, when you do see them, try not to spend your whole time talking about school!)
Exercise and healthy eating also tend to suffer when we are under stress. If we are working through lunch to catch up on the morning’s marking or staying late to plan for the observation the next day, it can feel impossible to fit them in. However, they play a vital physiological role in combatting stress.
Exercise reduces muscle tension and uses up adrenalin and energy released by the body’s ‘fight or flight’ response. It not only improves your general fitness and increases overall strength, stamina and suppleness, but has other critical health benefits.
And healthy eating: our bodies are remarkably efficient at extracting the nutrients we need, but at times of stress, these needs increase and a well-balanced diet is, therefore, essential in preserving health. In periods of intense pressure, eat food that is high in vitamin B (wholemeal bread, whole grains, pasta and jacket potatoes) and vitamin C (fresh fruit and vegetables). Note: when taken in moderation, caffeine can increase alertness, but in excess it can lead to dehydration, irritability and insomnia.
To gain back a feeling of control, you will need to get organised.
Plan
1. Establish whether or not you have had sufficient training.
2. Set up a meeting with a member of your leadership team.
3. Create a timetable, factoring in exercise and planned meals.
Do
4. Stick to your timetable and avoid time-draining activities around school.
5. Have regular meetings with your leadership team to share your progress.
6. Join regular exercise groups/classes to help motivate you.
Review
7. If something is not working, speak up.
8. Go armed with your timetable when you speak with your leadership team.
Carole Spiers is an International Motivational Speaker and Chair of the International Stress Management Association [UK] and Founder of Stress Awareness Day. Find out more http://www.carolespiersgroup.co.uk/ or follow on Twitter @thestressguru.
Share this blog post with colleagues in school on National Stress Awareness Day Wednesday 1 November 2017.
Corinne Settle, SSAT education lead, gives her reactions to some time-draining activities in school:
- Marking, marking, marking – the thief of time. It took away my Sunday mornings with my family. If I had lots of time I would really enjoy it. It’s not something we can do frequently enough to have an great impact, especially not compared with the impact we can have in formatively assessing students and acting on that in the classroom
- Inputting data onto spreadsheets – who are we doing this for? Does it benefit our students? What impact does it have on them?
- Meetings about admin tasks – send me an email!
- Lesson observations – six hours of preparation, overthinking and extreme planning for a one-hour lesson. If I had stuck with my previous lesson plan it would have been good enough, and in that hour the kids I teach know I am just being a bit weird and not the usual me that they actually quite like.
- Reading emails – I do not need to know that Charlotte in year 8 is going to be off for the next week due to a minor op and would like some work for home. I don’t teach Charlotte (I am sure she is lovely and really conscientious, but I have never met her).
- As a school leader – three hour meetings about things we can’t change. Can we change it? If not – move on! Does it help our students? No? Move on! Could I have been given this to read before the meeting?
Read more about managing stress on the SSAT blog: Hello September: here we go again…
