|
Teaching & Stress
by Joy Jones
If there was a personal masseuse stationed at every
school, and I had a Jacuzzi in my classroom, I could
take the stress of being a teacher easily in stride.
But there is no whirlpool to whirl away my troubles and
no massage salon in the teachers’ lounge. So what
to do?
We know what stress is. We live daily with the mental
and physical tension of trying to discern when to go
back to basics and when to embrace a brave new world,
figuring out how to use the new software without losing
everything on the disk, deciding if it’s worth it to
stand in line at the grocery or if there isn’t
something in the pantry we can fix for dinner. As
teachers we have additional stresses. Teaching is a
stressful job; there’s no surprise at the fact that
according to a Newsweek article, (6/4/01) 20% percent of
new teachers leave in three years and by the fifth year,
one third of them have left the profession.
What makes teaching difficult? Aphrodite Matsakis, Ph.D., professor of psychology at University
of Maryland said, “The hardest part is reaching students
who are at different levels of interest and background -
and all at the same time!”
I find disciplining the most challenging
part of my job. Trying to regulate fifteen or twenty
different personalities and still get some instruction
in has always been tricky for me.
“Stress and teaching - is there any
difference?” said Dr. Aphrodite Matsakis. Too often
there isn’t. But the stress doesn’t stop at the
classroom door. I spent years working in central
administration where the endless demands for more
paperwork, the office politics, all created pressure and
resentment.
Parker J. Palmer, Ph.D., author of The
Courage to Teach, invites teachers to look beyond
the nasty principal, the difficult children or the
mounds of paperwork as the cause of stress. “The stress
comes from us being out of alignment with our own
lives,” he stated. But by delving deeply inside to
re-align one’s self with one’s genuine nature and truest
values, he believes we can achieve serenity and attain
sanity.
The key to sanity for me was through
journaling. Journaling is not just for aspiring writers
and keeping a diary is not only for adolescents in
love. On the job, when I couldn’t express my
frustration outright, writing down my thoughts was a big
stress reliever. My reflections on how I was feeling
were the genesis for my book, Private Lessons: A Book
of Meditations for Teachers.
In addition to journaling, there are other
tools you can add to your teacher survival kit. Some
easy and practical stress soothers include:
1) Breathing deeply - It sounds simple, and it is. But
because breathing deeply is simple, that doesn’t mean it
isn’t also profound. It is no mistake that the word
inspire derives from ‘inspiratio’ which means ‘to
breathe into’. Breathing deeply helps to connect with
that which gives us life, that which can give us
inspiration. It helps us to draw in that divine
influence that can help us cope with a situation.
2) Quiet time - a best selling author once commented
that he performed better when he regularly scheduled
rest breaks for himself. However, when he would tell
people that he needed time alone to rest, they would
often interrupt him anyway. As a result, he decided to
tell others he needed time alone to pray. Then they
almost always honored his request. However you have to
do it, make sure you schedule in some personal down
time.
3) Creativity - I’m a big believer in the ability of
art to save the soul. Whether one is enjoying the fruit
of someone else’s creativity (good) or expressing one’s
own creativity (even better), the experience of the
creative is rejuvenating to the spirit. I think of
Carolina Maria de Jesus who lived in extreme poverty in
Sao Paulo, Brazil. She fed herself and her children by
salvaging scraps of food she found in garbage. To
distract herself from the daily stress of her dismal
existence, she wrote in a journal. That journal evolved
into a book entitled, Beyond All Pity, published
in 1960 which immediately became a best-seller.
Carolina Maria de Jesus‘s formal education had only
taken her to the second grade. But her imagination took
her to the peak.
Stress can’t be eliminated from anyone’s
life. After all, stress is even a part of good things
- getting married, having a baby, starting a new job,
holiday celebrations. To try to live without stress is
to live without truly living. Therefore, we must strive
to find peacekeeping and creative ways to approach
stress, which means we will be able to live lives that
are peaceful and creative.
Although, a masseuse assigned to every
school wouldn’t be a bad idea, either.
|
