Generally, a lot of people in the workforce experience one form of stress or the other. It is very likely that if you are a teacher/ educator or if you work with children, you must have a lot to deal with, therefore you may have experienced some sort of stress on the job.
Working with children could be stressful, exhausting and very demanding but also fulfilling at the end of the day, especially when you see the children make progress.
The stress could be from trying to continuously maintain effective class management, ensuring discipline in the classroom, juggling different assignments, insisting rules are followed closely, planning lessons, marking, meetings, trying to be on the same page or getting adequate support from colleagues, other educators, school leaders and parents. The stress could also come from issues that has to do with finance or not having an effective work life balance especially between the home and workplace.
When teachers/ educators or adults that work with children are stressed, it shows. We are usually not at our best and the children can sometimes see through us. They sense there is something wrong because we are not very excited.
As educators, how do we cope with the stress we encounter frequently? How do we reduce the stress? What can we do to ensure we don’t burnout? What can we do to ensure our physical health, emotional well-being and mental health is intact?
Here are a few tips:
ENSURE YOU CONSCIOUSLY TAKE CARE OF YOURSELF
It is a big deal to ensure you take care of yourself deliberately. A lot of teachers/ educators take care of others but forget to care for themselves.
Spend some time doing what you like. Pamper yourself once in a while, eat well, eat healthy, have enough rest, sleep well. Have the recommended hours of sleep for your age. Put everything aside and rest. Relax more. Exercise. Take a break.
Self-care is so important, it is what we do deliberately to ensure our mental, physical and emotional well-being are always intact. However, a lot of us pay little attention to it. It’s important that you take care of yourselves and pay attention to your well-being. Let’s be a little bit deliberate. Have a healthy relationship with yourself. It will reduce the stress and make you feel good and then you can pour out that good feeling to people around you. Take care of yourself and don’t burn out.
HAVE A GOOD SUPPORT SYSTEM
When we have good support systems it helps reduce our stress level. Support systems are network of people who provide practical or emotional support to individuals.
Research shows that there are lots of positive benefits when strong support system are in place.
When you are going through some challenges, find someone you can trust within your support system share and open up to them. Don’t bottle things up. When you hide your feelings and you don’t express them, it adds more to your stress and may eventually affect your health.
Your support system can also help you out with your children. If you want to take some time off and you need to have someone care for your children. Your parents, siblings, close friends, colleagues, family members can fall under your support system.
PRIORITIZE THE THINGS YOU HAVE TO DO
Teachers/ educator are usually engrossed with a lot of work. One of the best things you can do is to look at everything in front of you and decide on the ones are the most important and deal with them according to priority. Sort out the most important ones first and the least important ones last. This will reduce our stress level. The truth is that we can’t handle everything at the same time. Let us focus on the extremely crucial things on our table, in our classroom or at home. If the least important things can be delegated let’s go ahead and delegate to someone who can sort it out well.
HAVE A ME TIME AND GIVE YOURSELF A NICE TREAT ONCE IN A WHILE.
This is a time for you. A time you have for yourself. You can decide to use this time to do something for yourself. We sort out everyone; our student, parents, spouses, children, colleagues, the list goes on and on. It is good that we take time out just to give ourselves a treat once in a while. Nurture yourself in an enjoyable way. Do something you enjoy. Do something that makes you happy. Take your mind off everything and focus on yourself.
Treat yourself without feeling guilty. You deserve it. If you don’t treat yourself, who will?
RESOLVE CONFLICT ALMOST IMMEDIATELY, DON’T SUPPRESS ANGER AND FRUSTRATION.
Try as much as possible to express yourself and discuss how you feel concerning difficult situations at work or at home that may be getting at you. The discussion could be with a friend, your colleague or family member. Be open about the situation and ensuring the issue is resolved. Don’t allow it linger or go unresolved. Try not to take things too personal. Block your ears and don’t listen to the rumors that fly all around. Don’t let people’s comments offend you. Brush it off and move on happily. Be always ready to apologize when you are wrong.
DO SOME FORM OF EXERCISE OR JUST CONSCIOUSLY MOVE YOUR BODY.
It is important that you set a few minutes aside each day to exercise or deliberately move around. Most likely the thought of finding time to squeeze out just to exercise is additional stress for educators, but the benefits of exercising is amazing.
Exercise doesn’t have to be strenuous, it’s essential that we look for what works for us and flow with it. It could be walking up and down the stairs, skipping, jogging, playing football, swimming, cycling or even dancing. It will be fine and helpful as long as you are moving your body regularly.
MANAGE YOUR TIME WELL
You have to learn how to manage your time well. Your stress level can go up if you don’t know how to manage your time well.
IDENTIFY THE CAUSE OF YOUR STRESS
It is also important to sit down and identify what the cause of your stress is at this point in time. Is it mainly work-related? family issues or financial strain? Is it some other external factor? If it is external, is it blowing the small workplace issues out of proportion? Could it be issues that has to do with your co-workers or your boss?
If you are able to identify what your stress issues are, find out if it is something that can be fixed? Is there something you can do about it, that would help reduce or eliminate the pressure or stress entirely? If there is something you can do about it, take action immediately and fix it.
ASK FOR HELP
If you need help, ask. Do not be ashamed to ask for help. Asking for help can reduce your stress level. You may be talking to someone who has passed through the same situation you are in currently and their experiences or advice can just take a whole lot of pressure off you. There is nothing shameful or humiliating in asking for help or advice. We are not perfect and we may not be good at everything. Getting help makes a lot of difference.
If you are struggle with a project that has been assigned to you and it is stressing you out. It just makes sense to reach out to someone who is more knowledgeable in that area and your stress level will definitely reduce.
We all have to ensure we are in control of our emotions. We should try as much as possible not to function under stressful situations all the time.
If we do not handle stress well, it may have a negative impact on our physical health and our behavior. You may observe that you get upset unnecessarily, or you get easily irritated and off course we wouldn’t be able to function at our best.
As educators when we function at our best the impact we make is incredible.
Don’t be that teacher or educator who is always stressed, unhappy, grumpy and struggling to enjoy the teaching job. Be the one who is happy, effective, encouraging, highly motivated and has a positive impact on all the children around.
