Stress Management: Long-Term

What’s in this Issue:

When is the Stress Too Much?
You’re Not Alone
Strategies for Long-term Stress Management
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When is the Stress Too Much?

Everyone experiences stress, teachers included. Stress is not necessarily bad and can even be motivating sometimes. However, stress that lasts a long time or is more intense than typical, can have negative consequences. Unmanaged stress can also lead to burnout. Burnout consists of 3 components:

Emotional Exhaustion: feeling drained, fatigued
Depersonalization: Cynical attitudes towards students, parents, and the workplace
Reduced Personal Accomplishment: Feelings of not helping students, not worth the battle

When you start to experiences symptoms of burnout, it may be a sign that you should take extra care to manage your stress level.

You’re Not Alone!

Teachers are especially vulnerable to experiencing high levels of stress and burnout due to having to cope with challenging student behavior, high workload, low pay, frequent changes to the curriculum, turnover in administration and other school staff, and stressful parent and community
relationships. That stress and burnout can lead to low patience with students, including sometimes saying or doing something you may regret. Remember: just as you likely tell your students, mistakes happen and nobody is perfect. The goal of this handout is to share strategies you can use in the moment to make the best of a challenging situation.

Strategies for Long-Term Stress Management

Strategies for the School Day

Body Focused:

Stretching – Find whatever stretches help relax your most tense areas. Then, stretch in between dropping off or picking up students or before/after school.

Mind Focused:

Examine Expectations: Think about your expectations for your students and yourself. Are they realistic? Consider setting more realistic expectations.
Write a gratitude list: Is is easier to focus on the worst parts of a situation. to refocus on the positives, write a list of things you are grateful for, even if small.
Take a self-compassion break: Take a moment to express some self-compassion by saying something like, “Everyone has hard moments/days. I am not defective because I feel this way, ” or “I’m having a hard day but I am dealing with it to the best of my ability.”
Imagine your closest friends and family supporting you: Before a difficult task or during a difficult day, imagine several of your allies and what they would say to you right now.
Consider a change in grade or subject to get a change in pace.
Remind yourself of your values: Write down your top 5 values. Reflect on how teaching fits or does not fit with those values. consider putting the list in your classroom or on your desktop.
Do something good or help someone else: This can be something as simple as wring a kind note
Examine negative assumptions, attitudes, and thoughts: Ask yourself where these negative attitudes are coming from and think about how they make you feel. Then, reframe the assumption by writing down 1 to 2 alternative thoughts. Notice the difference between how you felt before and how you feel after.
Plan special days and vacations to look forward to: Mark down the days until those special days and the end of school.
Set-up a buddy or mentor: Consider finding a colleague or mentor of the same subject or grade to get support from.
Take-a-break in the classroom: If it has been a really hard day, consider getting the students to do something you know they will be entertained by for a short time (5-10 minutes). During that time take a short mental break. The students might appreciate it too!

Strategies for at Home

Body Focused:

Pay attention to your basic needs: Are any of them lacking (e.g., sleep, hydration, nutrition, exercise, social connection?)

Mind Focused:

Build in time to your day that is not focused on work: Consider creating a morning routine that focuses on getting ready but not stress of the upcoming day (e.g., avoid email until at work, have a ‘prep for work’ playlist). Leave school work at school and while at home focus on family, hobbies, other organizations.
Select a self-care activity to focus on: This website has a list of 275 to pick from! https://www.developgoodhabits.com/self-care-ideas/

Resources

Some other stress-relieving techniques from teachers:
15 Stress-Busting Tips From Teachers | Scholastic

A great article about teaching taking an emotional toll as well and some tips for dealing with that:
Emotional Stress Management for Teachers – WeAreTeachers

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