Teaching is hard and difficult and extremely stressful. This seems to be the best kept secret outside the teacher’s lounge.
People outside the profession think we have the “easiest” job in the world with our two-week holiday vacation and ten week summer hiatus.
We know the truth.
We know what we do and the enormous amount of time and energy and sweat and tears it takes to do it day in and day out.
We know the emotional toll it takes on us.
Yet, we do it anyway.
The first step in learning to stress a whole lot less is to figure out what’s causing you the most stress then you can create a plan to lesson them one by one.
Step One: Think back to an incredibly stressful time at work. List at least three things that made you want to do one of the following:
Pull every single strand of hair out of your head
Throw something across the room
Give another human being a piece of your mind complete with a few explatatives and lots of other colorful language.
Got it? Now write it down.
What was it? Can you name the action or incident that made you angry?
What were you really angry, upset or disturbed about? It might not be what your just wrote down. I’d like for you to dig deeper.
Here’s an example from my life. I wrote a student up for using his cell phone. I had asked him two times to put it away and on the third offense I asked for it. He refused and I called security to escort him to the dean’s office (as per our discipline procedures). A few minutes he came back with the cell phone bragging to another student that he knew he wouldn’t get in trouble. I’m sure steam was billowing out of my ears as I quietly asked him to step outside in the hall. After a few deep breaths I asked him what happened and he said the dean was busy so he called me in and told me to put it away and he gave it back to me. So now I was not just angry at the kid but the dean as well. I kindly asked him to please make sure that I don’t see it again and that I would be calling home to let his parents know that he we had this discussion. He said okay with a big smirk on his face.
After class I was livid at the kid and the dean. What I realized is that I was really angry that I wasn’t supported when I followed the proper protocol. I could deal with the kid but was furious with the lack of respect the dean had shown by giving the kid back his phone. The answer I would give for this question would be Lack of professional respect by the dean.
How did your thinking increase your stress?
I thought that he thought I was a bad teacher and that I was unfair when the kid had been given two other chances to do the right thing. I always tried to follow the school rules and his blatant disrespect hurt my feelings. The more I thought about it the angrier I got.
What could you have done to minimize the stress?
I could have realized there had to be a reasonable explanation as to why this happened and not jumped to the immediate conclusion that he thought I had done something wrong when clearly I didn’t.
What was the story you told yourself and probably everyone else that you came in contact with for the next few days?
That the dean was a jerk and he was sexist and he didn’t like me and he thought I was a bad teacher.
Was the story true?
It turns out it wasn’t. He didn’t give the kid his cell phone back. The kid borrowed another students cell phone and knowing his made up story would make me angry. The dean showed me the confiscated cell phone and told me he had already talked to the parent. When I explained what happened he called the parent again explaining that the student would now have to serve a three day suspension for lying, taunting the teacher and being disrespectful.
When we allow our emotions to get the best of us we do and say things that hurt peoples feelings.
We can’t take them back but what we can do is take a few deep breaths before responding in a stressful situation. Of course there will be times when you need to stop students from doing a particular thing in order to control your classroom.
It’s simply being mindful of the stories you tell yourself when your emotions first start to get out of control.