When I first started teaching, it was exciting. I loved
education and working with young people. I was very idealistic and as corny as
it may sound, I thought in my own way I was changing the world.
Through the years, my initial excitement turned to stress
and anxiety. Teaching was an overwhelming responsibility. The stress of dealing
with students, papers, lesson plans, report cards, principals, supervisors,
co-workers, and parents would weigh down on me and I would doubt why I even
became a teacher. Don't get me wrong, I never stopped believing in the value
and importance of education but my passion for the work would erode sometimes.
Stress is common in new teachers as well as veteran teachers
but this doesn't have to lead to burn out and leaving the profession. Here are
a few tips that may help.
Organize: As a new teacher, you must be organized.
Paperwork will quickly pile up as you embark upon the school year. It was not
unusual for me to have piles of papers on my desk. These papers would include
homework, staff memos, attendance sheets and other things. You may also receive
a lot of staff handbooks from your school. Get a hold of paperwork right away.
Organizing papers in a file cabinet, file crates, or any other way that is
suitable for you. The point is to get organized, not how you do it.
When it comes to student work, try to get it back to your
students as quickly as you can. As you give assignments and tests and students
turn them in, you could easily have over fifty papers on your desk waiting to
be graded! It is extremely stressful trying to read and grade numerous papers
at once. You may wonder how you will get through them all and still get to your
lesson planning and other teaching responsibilities. Get these papers back to
your students as soon as possible and this will reduce your stress level significantly.
Planning: Know how you are going to run your classroom
before the first day of school. Know the physical layout you will have, the
types of assignments you will give, what behavior you expect from your
students, how you will communicate with parents and how you will handle student
discipline. One of my favorite sayings about life is "Without a vision,
the people perish." In teaching, if you have a vision about what you
expect of yourself, your classroom, and your students, this will help you feel
more relaxed and in control. This is really all stress is, the feeling that you
are not in control.
Expect the Unexpected: Unexpected things WILL happen
when teaching. This is a given. You may plan a lesson you think is absolutely
wonderful and it falls flat. You may have a great book you want the class to
read only to discover the majority of your students are not reading or grade
level. You may have been told at teacher orientation that the principals and
supervisors will be there to support you but other commitments keep them from
being available to you. Parents may be unsupportive. These things cause you a
lot of stress and can make you think "What am I doing here?"
Unanticipated problems can wreck havoc on your confidence as a teacher and even
lower your self esteem. This doesn't have to be the case. Every problem should
be looked on as just challenges to overcome. Challenges only test us and can
even make us stronger.
Reflect: I
have always been a believer in self-reflection. If you are having difficulty in
teaching, I think it is important to look at yourself, to see if there is
anything you can do better or differently. Reflecting does NOT mean beating
yourself up if things are not going the way you want them to in the classroom.
Reflection is just looking at things objectively without guilt or blame. If
your students are just not