Teacher Burnout
During a discussion about stress
in teaching a relative of mine stated that in her non-teaching job she dealt
with rude, argumentative people every day and that my stress was no different
from hers. I let the argument go because there was no way she was going to give
on her point. The point I was going to make though was “Does your job deal with
exactly the same people every day for 192 days? Does your job deal with people
who you are hoping will change or at least see what you are talking about?”
I liken
the stress of teaching to the stress of a family argument that never goes away.
You try different ways to resolve the issues but they still keep coming back no
matter how much headway you make. Your students have a different perspective on
each problem. Their parents have a totally different perspective. Your administration
has another perspective that may vary with those held elsewhere. All this
continues to build as personalities push at each other in a way that children
in a family home do. Something has to give and often it is the teacher.
On top
of this stress there is the stress of non-supportive administration, an ever
changing curriculum, the need to meet the needs of all the students in your
class, performing social work and psychological counselling on a daily basis as
well as keeping up with a never ending supply of marking, evaluations, the
expectations of giving more and more, extra-curricular activities that take
time away from family and ever present marking, and preparing for pressure
ridden government testing. And this is only the tip of the ice berg. Most of these things we were not trained for
or if we were it was touched on briefly. Most of our learning comes from on the job
experience. Student teachers are constantly amazed at how much we do on a daily
basis. They cannot believe the breadth of the job that teacher training barely
touches on.
How do
we solve the problems of stress and teacher burnout? We can’t solve it because
it is inherent in the job. It comes with dealing with students every day. It
comes with each teacher’s having different expectations and different ideas
about what rules should be followed. It comes with administration, who either
never wanted to work in classrooms or dealt with burnout in their own way by
removing themselves from the daily grind. Administrators have a different set
of issues because of the pressures they face from their administrators at the
board level and parents.
The
resolutions come from taking education away from being a commodity. Not every
child will be going to University or College. Children need to explore their
world around them and learn about the things that interest them. This will
lessen the stress level as we are seeing and treating children as individuals,
allowing them to be more respectful and engaged in their learning. We need to
defocus on curriculum. As someone said to me recently, “Learning Shakespeare is
nice but what is the end result of using it?” Why are we teaching kids about
things they may never use again in their lives? Change the curriculum to allow
more interaction with the world. A child whose father is a welder may want to
learn more about welding. Encourage children to be entrepreneurs rather than
users. Chase social issues so the children can learn to be more compassionate.
These changes will lessen many of the issues we face in teaching.
We live
in a world that is constantly changing. Let’s change education to face the
realities of today.
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