Stress is crushing teachers, but there are things you can do to alleviate it. In fact, with a comprehensive approach, you can all but eliminate it.
It’s a topic I’m hard at work developing here at SCM. (More details to follow.)
But one of the quickest and easiest things you can do to put a substantial dent in the amount of stress you’re feeling is to say “no” more often.
What follows are 11 things you can start saying no to today.
1. Gossip
It can feel like an escape, but gossiping about students or colleagues is distracting, time-consuming, and risks exposing yourself to excessive drama.
2. Academic Favors
It’s good to share, but it’s not okay for colleagues to take advantage of your kindness by leeching off your hard work and planning.
3. Students
Your students are expected to listen and actively participate in your lessons. Push for more of this and less of you helping each one individually.
4. Your Administrator
If you really want to host astronomy night or organize the reading fair, then do it. Otherwise, it’s a hard pass.
5. Committees
You may be obligated to serve on a committee. Fine. But to volunteer for more can spread you too thin, causing anxiety and affecting your teaching.
6. Parents
Draw the line at your professionalism. In other words, avoid any hint of friendship or special favors. Subsequently, they’ll largely leave you alone to do your job.
7. Interruptions in Planning
You need to get your work done. So close your door. Anyone who knocks, don’t answer. Anyone who enters, be brief and escort them out. They’ll get the message.
8. Conversations
People like to stop and talk. Be choosy. Otherwise, smile, say hello (“How about those Chiefs!”), and keep moving.
9. Extensive Planning
Teach to your objective. Cut the fat. Stay on message. Lean on your subject knowledge. Better, sharper lessons take less time to plan.
10. Happy Hour
Yes, it can be fun. But if you’re stressed, you need quiet time. You need alone time or calm family time. Plus, in the end, alcohol will make you feel worse.
11. Inconsistency
Misbehavior is the biggest cause of stress. Have rules. Teach rules. Enforce rules. Don’t apologize for it.
Make a List
Choose what you can say no to, or what you feel comfortable saying no to, and do it. Starting today.
It’s not selfish.
It’s selfless because only when you’re at your best can you be a benefit to others.
It may take some discipline. It may take an awkward moment or two. But it’s a small price to pay for a peaceful state of mind.
Furthermore, you’ll discover that when you put boundaries on your time and attention, and focus more on what matters most, people will respect you for it.
They’ll honor your time and hold you in a higher regard. So make your own ‘no’ list right now, this moment, and start crossing it off.
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I taught in a rural school district as a high school social studies teacher from 1990 to 2020. It was the best of times and the worst of times. The best? Having more students score 3 or above on AP Exams than every other teacher in the district combined! The worst? Working for corrupt and cruel administrators that were would eventually be terminated and even imprisoned. Great advice but….. I would only add be VERY careful using social media. Not a concern in 1990 but often career ending by 2020.
Thanks for this – emboldens me to start off this next semester in a positive mind set!!
Happy New Year!
Saying ‘no’ to administration when you are a supply/LTO teacher and looking to be hired as a contract teacher does not put you in a positive light. Teachers in Ontario have to do so many hours of extra-curricular activities; it’s part of the contract.
25 year teacher in Ontario. This is not true.
I disagree somewhat on the academic favors. Having someone to trade with can save you a ton of time. We had a “share drive”, and the only rule was “if you use it, improve it”. It had been going for so many years that the quality of the material was excellent and was always getting better.
Much like a good marriage, my various colleagues over the years and I would invariably find a sweet spot where we would complement each others’ talents and skills. Or simply like the time I took a new teacher’s students into my class for an hour so she could finish a good cry after one of her girls physically attacked her (recalling the swallow of my own first year’s red pill). And whenever someone really stuck her neck out for me (like printing and delivering the lesson plans I emailed for a sub), I’d be sure to bring her something — a gift from the state where I rushed to for a funeral, a generous coffee card, a home-baked Friday treat to share with her students, etc. Our job is overwhelming and teacher burnout & shortages are worrisome, so I love helping teachers and never felt taken advantage of because they were always there for me too.
Many times Ringo’s voice lilted in my mind: “I get by with a little help from my friends.”
I agree. I think we are all in this together, so love that concept use it and make it better.
I come from science where it is normal to replicate, share and cite. It seems to me that every teacher is expected to reinvent the wheel, and I don’t quite understand why. I even tell my students if I’m using an idea from a fellow teacher.
I constantly gave #2 – Academic Favors – to only find my original lesson plans and the same materials were used by teachers as their own ideas and creations with absolutely no changes.
The worst offender was a 3rd grade teacher who observed weeks of my 5th grade writing and mathematics classes … at the request of the two principals to help her out as a new teacher who was overwhelmed. She then used all my writing lesson plans and materials in her 3rd grade classes, so when her students entered my classes, they never read the books with new eyes, wrote scripted answers they remembered from her coaching, couldn’t participate in predicting activities, and basically needed more original materials to be created by me. With mathematics, she used my materials for her more advanced students.
Then … she was identified as a published author using my materials in her pieces … and later was “crowned” teacher of the year in the district doing the same. I was convinced all her other lessons in other subjects were gleaned the same way from other teachers in the building.
Should have learned, but it happened over and over. It is hard to be reluctant or even say no when principals request that other teachers observe your classes, and then often know the teachers will steal your ideas as their own.
I think this is mostly good advice (especially the avoiding gossip part), but the post misses the point that a school community can also be a wonderful place to make friends and feel supported. If a person has a full-fledged support network of friends and families OUTSIDE of work, then yes — close your door, don’t have conversations, don’t volunteer, don’t go to happy hour, etc. But few of us have the time and energy to maintain and build community completely independently of our workplaces. So, choose wisely based on what will really feed you. Are you an extrovert who loves having lots of work friends? Or a person who doesn’t yet have a community of friends (or a family) in the place where you work? You might choose differently than Michael.