Stress Relief For The Weary Teacher

Stress, we often hear how stress can affect our health but as a teacher this risk is even greater. Teachers encounter a huge amount of stress and it's become a part of the norm and most of the things that others would find stressful; teachers consider a part of the everyday routine. The one room school houses of yesterday would be a welcome change for the average teacher in today's public school. The headlines that have promoted changes for teachers have amounted to nothing more than just words, and in reality there has been nothing that has changed the dynamics for educators and what they are up against. How can teachers perform from year to year and still in the end be healthy enough at retirement to enjoy it?

I'm not the first to write on this topic, however as an educator I am all too familiar with the barrage of demands and the scarce amount of support. Over crowded classes, lack of resources, antique text books, clean and safe classrooms, quality leadership, lack of funding and low pay all add up to teachers doing what I call The Dance. The dance is a school year that teachers try to accomplish getting students to where they need to be all the while using whatever tricks they can to mend, get by with, hold things together, create, allocate their scant resources, work with other over loaded teachers and parents all the while putting what they need or want behind the needs of 30+ others, including their families. Teachers by nature most of the time are nurturers so they already tend to put the needs of others first and nurturers often attract people that have a need to be nurtured right? So what little time is left is often snapped up by everyone and everything else. Here are a few things that can help elevate stress and help teachers get more of what they want for themselves!

First off recognize that what you do is hard. If that's a trade off for a secure paycheck consider your options. You only get this one lifetime, and if you are saying things like, "I'm miserable but I can't leave, I can't afford It!" then it's time to re-evaluate your idea of what it means to live. Don't start off by saying, well you have no idea how in debt I am, I can assure you there are solutions; I have been there and there are options. If you are a die-hard teacher through and through, but need strategies for making it through a rough spell, then you have to really be intentional about taking care of yourself.

1. Don't take work home. I can almost hear the laughter from where you are. Im serious though, get what you can at school, conference time and half hour or so after school you're required to stay, but that's it! The fact that teachers wear the time they spend not getting paid as a badge of honor, is in fact one of the reasons why they are not getting paid! You hear the powers that be say, teachers did just fine even though we increased the class sizes, that's because you took the time from yourself, that's why.

2. I know the teacher in you wants everything done, and you don't want to let the kids down, not meet a deadline etc. Make a priority list weekly and then a to-do list daily. Except that there will be things you don't always get to, accepting will help you adjust to not getting as much done, since you will not be using Your time!

3. Don't wait until the summers and holidays to relax! Taking time daily to take a brisk walk, read something you like, hot shower, relaxing bath, meditation, exercise or calling a friend for a laugh. Once a day find, plan one thing that you can schedule into your to-do until it becomes a habit and no longer needs to be written down.

4. Monthly schedule something meaningful like a massage every pay day or month's end. This can be whatever you like, a manicure /pedicure, golf, horseback riding, hiking, whatever you love, it needs to be at least once a month. Massage schools often have very inexpensive costs. So don't write off something because of the cost. The same with manicure, there are salon schools. This gives you something to look, forward to and something that you can focus on when you're having a bad day.

5. Expect more not less. One thing I realized in looking back over my teaching career is that I slowly over time shifted my way of thinking from expecting to be given enough time to do the things I needed to get done, to one of hoping to be given enough time to get things done. The district I was in had a change in superintendants and the person that took over was not big on giving teachers time to prepare. We used to get 3 days to prepare our classrooms and lesson plans at the start of a new school year and slowly it trickled down to a day and a half at best. It was overtly being pushed into our own time, by stating you can't work in your rooms until the day before school, but we are opening up the school on Saturday from 8-3. Lots of us grumbled and complained to one another but truth is, we felt we had no choice. I did have a choice. I prepared the best I could given the time frame but I refused to allow my baby to not see me on the only day I had off because someone else decided what was best was to take that time for something other than planning and preparation. I'm the first one to stand behind rules that are fitting but I started to draw the line when I could feel I was being taken advantage of. So it's critical not to allow these things to take hold in our minds that somehow we are not to expect enough time to do our jobs. It may not change policy but it does take the pressure off of us by shifting the responsibility back onto the people making the policies.

I use this example because it's one that sticks out in mind as a way that I put undue pressure on myself and I know that when whoever was creating the schedule knew that teachers would not be able to complete the prep work in a day, so they did it on purpose. It had nothing to do with the way the days worked out on a calendar, or how much other material had to be covered, it was about control. I allowed it to control me the first year then by year 2 I was starting to see the ways I was putting pressure on myself by allowing it. I did have a choice and I chose to not get as much done as I would have if I had been given the right amount of time.

So know your own worth, value and realize that you are doing the best you can given the circumstances and don't put yourself down because you didn't get to that bulletin board or create the lesson plan template you wanted to. The goal is to be there for the kids and to teach them, and although the room needs to be presentable, there is no student that will notice if you don't have everything just this way you want it.