Exercise, yoga, good planning, balance between family and work, meditation, mindfulness, are some of the things I have just recently found when I tried to get valuable info on how to increase the well-being.
Obviously, there are different positions with respect to this point, and I do not pretend to diminish the importance of the different approaches to improve well-being in our teacher’s life, which comes back to my mind a Coldplay lyrics song which says, "Nobody said it was easy", and everyone who has experience, not matter if it were little or not, would certainly recognise that teaching is not easy at all.
For that reason, in this article you will find relevant information about some well-known approaches and tips to cope with stress and burnout, in order to increase our well-being.
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| Picture 1: Credit Stuart Kime |
Before that, let us see succinctly the answer of the following questions: what is well-being?, why is it important? What factors can affect it?
What is well-being?
According to Wang et al. (2021) "Well-being is part of (...) psychological mechanisms and is considered a combination of feelings that can support work performance". Additionally, Hupert (as cited in Wang et al, 2021) said it "encompasses happiness, interest, participation, self-confidence, and other emotions that influence the development of potential abilities and control over human life" (p. 4).
These definitions shed light on how well-being has a positive relation with the control of our regular basis activities which can include our work performance and personal life (Richter, 2021), in other words, when individual well-being increases, the work performance and personal life quality gets better.
In addition, Fraser (2020) defines four key dimensions: "cognitive well-being (self-efficacy and concentration at work), subjective well-being (particular feelings or emotional states, satisfaction, and purpose), physical and mental well-being (psychosomatic symptoms), social well-being (quality of the working relations)" (p. 5).
Why is it important?
Fraser (2020) pointed out that "research suggests that teacher well-being can impact the effectiveness of teaching, and, consequently, students’ own well-being and learning outcomes." (p. 2).
Besides, high well-being "low[er] stress, burnout, depressive symptoms, sleep problems and insomnia"(Aulén et al., 2021).
What factors can affect teachers' occupational well-being?
We cannot take for granted the value of identifying what may exacerbate our well-being even if we have already found something that works for us.
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| Picture 2. Credit: Depositphotos.com |
1 Differentiating Stress and Burnout
Stress is the constant exposure to demanding surroundings, such as, job, family concerns and others. Kyriacou (as cited in Simon, 2016) defined stress as "the experience by a teacher of unpleasant emotions, such as tension, frustration, anxiety, anger and depression, resulting from aspects of his work as a teacher" (p. 352). Stress is the result in combining a chosen cognitive process to deal with a situation which affects our emotions, having a negative impact on our health (Simon, 2016; Richter et al., 2021).
On the other hand, burnout has a dissimilar concept. Cristina Maslach explained that burnout entails three dimensions: 1) Exhaustion which "is also described as wearing out, loss of energy, depletion, debilitation, and fatigue" (Maslach, 1982, p. 32), this exhaustion could sometimes be physical but also psychological and it involves "loss of feeling and concern, a loss of trust, a loss of interest, a loss of spirit" (ibid); 2) Depersonalisation "refers to a detached attitude towards the job itself and/or the colleagues, sub- and super-ordinates. Reduced personal accomplishment indicates a decrease in feelings of achievement and competence" (Simon, 2016, p. 350); 3) Reduced one's personal accomplishments, it means dissatisfaction, "depression, low morale, withdrawal, reduced productivity or capability, and an inability to cope"(Maslach, 1982, p. 32).
To know the difference of these terms will help us examine our condition and to be willing to get advice from experts if necessary.
2 Lack of individual resources to deal with new situations
According to Lazarus & Folkman (as cited in Bastian & Uta, 2021) "stress emerges when individuals fail to cope with the demands of their environment, hence when work-related stressors outweigh individual resources" (p. 503). Everyone has different capabilities to deal with stress, and that potential is under the influence of our own experiences in training and work.
Moreover, this lack of resources to cope with new and difficult circumstances might happen in the interaction teacher-student. Bastian & Uta (2021) claim that "there is ample evidence that student misbehaviour and problems with classroom discipline, motivating students, dealing with heterogeneity, or the establishment of relationships to students constitute major stressors" (p. 503), especially for beginning teachers.
3 Workload and use of new ICT
Somehow everyone has been through a lot of pressure in order to continue working in distance learning environments during this pandemic, in spite the fact that most of us did not have previous work experience in this new context, changing the way how we teach, probably sharing less the time with our students, learning how to use new ICTs and also to dealing with pupil's frustrations of not knowing how to use some of those tools properly (Zadok-Gurman et al., 2021).
Also, drawing on my personal experience sometimes the paperwork increases due to last-minute requirements from the Ministry of Education.
Now that we have identified some factors that may affect our well-being, let us see what the Problem-Focused Coping Approach is, in what way is it different from other approaches and how can we put it into practice.
Problem-Focused Coping Approach
According to Folkman & Lazaruz (as cited in Aulén et al., 2021) "Problem-focused coping strategies are used when the problem is solvable or when further information on the problem can be obtained" (p. 2). Sometimes, it is not enough with just disengage from a stressor (Symptom focused coping approach) or decide to choose what to pay attention to and help oneself by doing exercise (both are part of the cognitive and behavioural aspects of Emotion-focused coping approach).
When using the Problem-Focused Coping approach, an individual tries to change what is making the surrounding difficult to deal with by re-evaluating her/his available resources, instead of waiting for the situation to be changed passively.
Think of the following questions, when you are under pressure what is the first thing you do? Are you the type of person who disengage from problems by doing something else or doing exercise maybe? Again, I do not pretend to say that it is not worth doing it, because if that works for you go ahead and continue doing so! However, if you think this is not your case, your might probably have to use the strategies of the Problem-focused coping approach.
In fact, according to Aulén et al. (2021) "the more a person is stressed, the more he or she uses emotion-focused coping (...), and the more one uses emotion-focused coping, the more stressed he or she is" (p. 3).
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| Picture 3. These graphics show the positive relation between Stress and depression, and two different approaches, in other words, the more an individual uses one of these approaches the more stress or depression they get (Aulén et al., 2021). |
Different from that, lots of studies show the negative relation that burnout has with problem-focused coping. Further problem-focused coping is negatively related to depression (to find the large list of studies, around of 26, which support these two ideas, I recommend you can read Aulén et al., 2021 which is cited in the references).
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| Picture 4. The graphic shows the negative relation between stress, depression and Problem-focused coping approach, in other words, the more an individual uses this approach the less stress and depression they get (Aulén et al., 2021). |
Now, it's time to see how we can apply this approach in our teaching practice so as to improve our own well-being.
Applying Problem-Focused Coping Approach
1 Improve your classroom managements skills
If you reach this point and notice that the first advice is nothing to be surprised about, you are right. Yet, one of the biggest stressors that teachers will find during their career is classroom management. In fact, I rightly remember a sound advice of one of the persons who was my principal in one of my jobs who said: "much of your expertise as a teacher can be seen in the way how are able to apply classroom management techniques which are suitable for your students". Although you will not find any classroom management strategy or advice (which makes me think of the necessity of writing an article on classroom management, if I do it, be sure you will find it here), it is important to continue polishing our classroom management strategies by getting more training (Wang et al., 2021) or even getting advice from experience teachers who work with you. Kim et al. (2021) claim " the importance of providing teachers with proactive classroom management strategies [, above all if they are novices,] to enable them to create an orderly learning environment and alleviate stress" (p. 56). It easy to end up applying "punitive strategies" (ibid) to control the classroom behaviour when we are under pressure and with high levels of stress.
On the other hand, if you are a beginner teacher, to find suitable classroom management techniques is of paramount importance, because they reduce emotional exhaustion, which leads to burnout, and increase assertiveness, which plays a significant role for the following point.
2 Listen to students’ feedback about how your lessons are and which activities could be included
As you saw when reading the definition of well-being, it involves different positive emotions such as: happiness, interest and participation, in other words, satisfaction. Regarding to latter, Wang et al. (2021) says "satisfaction is a concept that comes from the business field and involves customers’ intentions to purchase goods or to spread a positive attitude toward goods and services. In education, understanding learner satisfaction is the best way to assess the effectiveness of the training program" (p. 4).
Why don't you try doing different things next class? Not only will it motivate your pupil's to pay more attention and see what you are about to do, you know break out the routine increases motivation and also, it is a good classroom management technique, but also if you try something new using your students suggestions on how they think the lesson would be, it will help you to spend less time thinking of activities that may engage them. Furthermore, they will notice you genuine interest in them for taking them into account.
Besides, Kim et al. (2021) mentioned there is a "connection between teacher burnout levels and students’ physiological stress response and found that higher levels of teacher burn out are associated with higher cortisol levels in students" (p. 56). Remember that high levels of cortisol causes more stress, and during this pandemic both teachers and pupils are exposed to different stressors that might exacerbate our condition, not matter what their background is.
If you want ideas to break the routine you can read my posts: VIRTUAL AND MULTISENSORY LESSONS. IS IT POSSIBLE? and if you are an English teacher PRONUNCIATION: WHAT, WHY AND HOW IN THE VIRTUAL ENGLISH CLASSROOM. Finally, if you think your students won't suggest anything you can start improving the way you give feedback to set the example and improve your communication with them, to do that you can find some useful tips in my post: FEEDBACK: WHAT, WHY AND HOW IN VIRTUAL LEARNING ENVIRONMENTS (VLE)
3 E-schoolbags with teaching material and Innovation
Don't you think it would be good to have all or most of your materials ready at the beginning of the school year? It will certainly be fantastic because it will give you time to focus on other aspects of teaching, for instance, assessment and classroom management. At this point, it is necessary to remember that a person who applies Problem-Focused Coping recognises her or his limits and when there is a lack of personal resources available to deal with stress is time to look for help from others. For that reason, to work in conjunction with the teaching staff in our workplace is vital, also it improves the social interaction needed for novice teachers (Bastian et al., 2021).
Now let us talk about innovation. First and foremost, it does not necessarily mean to have great imagination, it means to simply start with doing things in a different way. Even if you already have a really good classroom management and the ability to engage students, remember that break out the routine from time to time will give you what you need to make your work more enjoyable.
4 Cooperation with families is a must
"A well-functioning relationship with parents allows the teacher to set common goals with the parents to support the children"(Lepp et al., 2021). It is really important to be in constant communication with families, but, this does not mean that we have to talk to them every single day, not at all. However, we have to avoid writing to families only when something bad happened, it is highly recommendable to change that practice, and start writing about the good things their childre do whenever is possible. This will motivate parents to be more willing to cooperate with us, above all when students misbehave (Paccaud, 2021).
Obviously, we are not in a perfect world, so be cautious in this regard because there are some families which show a higher degree of interest which sometimes could be a bit suffocating. For that reason, it is useful to arrange a schedule, share it with families and respect it. Personally, something that has helped me is to tell families that my time schedule is from 8 am to 6 pm, so if they send a message within this time I will answer immediately, but after 6 I will only respond to those messages I deem as urgent. Since I started doing so, only few families have written to me after working hours to talk about a real emergency. In this way you can assure your commitment to establish good communication and you will become an "easily accessible teacher (...) , which in turn increases school satisfaction"(Paccaud, 2021, p. 3).
Conclusions
In sum, no matter how much experience we have, we can always increase the satisfaction of teaching by take care of our own well-being. Take into account that exists different ways how to cope with stress and burnout, the one presented here is only one approach. Moreover, if you think you are going through an episode of stress or burnout, it is never late to ask for help, the ideas shown here are only suggestions, and under no circumstances must be considered as a replacement for professional assistance.
What do you think of this article? Write in the comments section your thoughts and do not forget to subscribe to receive the latest posts.
References:
Bastian, C. & Uta, K. (2021). Assertiveness and adaptation: Prospective teachers’ social competence development and its significance for occupational well-being. Journal of Educational Psychology, 91, 500–526. The Authors. British Journal of Educational Psychology published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of British Psychological Society. doi: https://doi.org/10.1111/bjep.12377
Fraser, P. (2020). How Can Education Systems Better Understand Teachers’ Well-Being? https://oecdedutoday.com/teachers-well-being-framework/
Kim, S., Crooks, C. V., Bax, K. & Shookohi. M. (2021). Impact of Trauma‑Informed Training and Mindfulness‑Based Social–Emotional Learning Program on Teacher Attitudes and Burnout: A Mixed‑Methods Study. School Mental Health, 13, 55–68. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12310-020-09406-6
Lepp, L., Aaviku, T., Leijen, l., Pedaste, M., Saks, K. (2021). Teaching during COVID-19: The Decisions Made in Teaching. Education Sciences, 11, 47. https://doi.org/10.3390/ educsci11020047
Maslach, C. (1982). “Understanding Burnout: Definitional Issues in Analysing a Complex Phenomenon.” In Job Stress and Burnout, edited by W. S. Paine, 29–40. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/240370761_Understanding_burnout_Definitional_issues_in_analyzing_a_complex_phenomenon
Paccaud. A., Keller, R., Luder, R., Pastore, G. & Kunz, A. (2021). Satisfaction With the Collaboration Between Families and Schools – The Parent’s View. Frontiers in Education, 6:646878. doi: 10.3389/feduc.2021.646878
Pagán, E., Sánchez, J., Garrigos, F. J. & Guijarro, M. (2021). The Influence of Management on Teacher Well-Being and the Development of Sustainable Schools. Sustainability, 13, 2909. https://doi.org/ 10.3390/su13052909
Simon, D. E., Froehlich, C. D. & Philip, R. (2016). Effects of support on stress and burnout in school principals. Educational Research, 58(4), 347-365. doi: 10.1080/00131881.2016.1220810
Wang, M., Wang, M., Cui, Y. & Zhang, H. (2021). Art Teachers’ Attitudes Toward Online Learning: An Empirical Study Using Self Determination Theory. Frontiers in Psychology, 12, 627095. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2021.627095
Zadok-Gurman, T., Jakobovich, R., Dvash, E., Zafrani, K., Rolnik, B., Ganz, A. B. & Lev-Ari, S. (2021). Effect of Inquiry-Based Stress Reduction (IBSR) Intervention on Well-Being, Resilience and Burnout of Teachers during the COVID-19 Pandemic. International Journal in Environmental Research and Public Health, 18, 3689. https:// doi.org/10.3390/ijerph18073689
Spanish version:
https://cuttingedgeducation.blogspot.com/2021/06/bienestar-docente-estrategias-de.html
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