Teacher Mental Health Is At An All Time Low: The Current Management Focus On It Is, At Best, Patronising And, At Worst, Actively Damaging. Discuss.

Sometimes we just need to sit back, have a hug and relax.

At lunch today, with a group of colleagues, we were discussing the impact of teaching on our mental health.

Unanimously the verdict came in: devastating.

Yet, I think that, without exception, we all love teaching.

With so much pressure, regular observations, extreme workloads, is it possible for us to protect ourselves and our mental health as well as supporting our colleagues? Whatever levels of resilience we have, it is so easy for us to be knocked down. Our classes certainly won’t hold back from telling us our failings. Observations from above mean that we’re judged regularly. Work scrutinies tell us whether the work in books and our marking meet the standard. Results tell all. We even have performance related pay.

What can we do?

Looking back on my career so far, I remember feeling like I was only ever as good as my last lesson. I was yo-yoing between euphoria (occasionally) and despair (more regularly). I would take on every extra activity I was asked to. Critical students always hit home with snide and sometimes personal comments.

And some of that still holds true.

What I learned was that there’s an art to saying no, that I have to accept my own limitations and that the only audience that actually matters is me and my conscience.

The Art of Saying No

There are some things in teaching that we have to do.

More than that, I think that a lot of us really enjoy doing a job well, soaking in the gratification. So many of us love creating resources or planning a really well thought through lesson.

If we’re people who’ve fallen for teaching, we will want to give our students our all. We will.

We do.

The mistake that we perhaps make is that we try to give our everything.

When we can’t say no, to ourselves or other people, we lose control and forget or neglect our own boundaries. That’s not to say that we find it easy to say no, many of us are people pleasers, but it is important to put ourselves through the discomfort of saying no when we need to.

And when we want to.

The amount of work we can do in teaching is limitless. We can always do more. We can always do it better. We can always do things differently. I guess, what we have to discover is where we’re happy to draw the line and how we’re happy to etch it out.

Sketching out my own boundaries has proved to be a challenge, involved lots of erasing and re-drafting, but it’s essential if we’re to be happy, healthy teachers.

Accepting Our Own Limitations

We all have our strengths and weaknesses. I have decent classroom control, one of my colleagues has the capacity to make students (and staff) desperate to please her, another has the most contagiously enquiring mind. Knowing these things, and appreciating the strengths of others, is a good starting point for accepting our limitations.

Sometimes it can be tempting to compare ourselves to others, coveting their gregariousness, their wonderful way with the students, their ability to mark quickly and accurately, whatever it may be that we value but feel like we fall short of.

Realising that we can’t be the best at everything, and accepting that it’s okay, enables us to happily admire these qualities in others, rather than beating ourselves up for our limitations.

Limitations aren’t necessarily simply quirks of personality but can also be situational or personal. If you’re ill, if you’ve got commitments (such as children or elderly parents), if you’re tired, stressed or anxious, it’s okay to lower the bar.

We can only give what we’ve got, we can’t do more. We can’t.

Giving ourselves permission to work below our typical full capacity is an art worth learning.

“Don’t worry about this not being perfect, you’ve only got an hour so just do what you can.”

“Take the evening off tonight. You need a break so that you can cope with getting up and going in tomorrow.”

“Take a nap/bath and try to leave what happened at school behind you so you can approach tomorrow with a bit more verve and positivity.”

Talking yourself through cutting yourself slack starts with acknowledging your personal limitations and the current situational limitations impacting you.

Audience Of One

Perhaps the point at which I can start to destress myself is when I remind myself that it is my own opinion of myself that matters. Only I know whether I am doing my job properly. Only I am in all of my lessons. Only I see how much work I do. Only I know whether the work is effective.

Once I have considered my own work ethic, approach and lessons, I don’t need to be validated by somebody else.

If I am doing my job properly, an observation or a work scrutiny or a criticism need not massively knock me back.

I have an audience of one.

Perhaps more importantly, only I know what my reserves are at any given time – how much energy, time or concentration. That means, only I am able to decide when I need to cut myself slack or tell myself to buck up my ideas.

If I’m ill, stressed, upset or unwell, my conscience can dictate that I work less hard and let myself recover. No one else can know that or pass judgement on it. I can only do what I can do with what I’ve got.

 

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