(c) Lorena Sanchez 1 Lecture 5a: ES210 Stress in teachers and trainers Strategies to prevent it

(c) Lorena Sanchez 2 Index 1. Definition of Stress 2. The prevalence of teacher/trainer stress 3. Causes of Teacher/Trainer Stress 4. Strategies used to deal stress 5. How does Stress affect your life? 6. What to Do about Stress?

(c) Lorena Sanchez 3 Symptoms STRESS insomnia Back pain Tension headaches Inability to eat/ overeating irritability depression Physical exhaustion Digestive disturbances

(c) Lorena Sanchez 4 1. Stress Condition of disequilibrium within the intellectual, emotional an physical state of the individual. Generated by one’s perception of a situation, which result in physical and emotional reactions.

(c) Lorena Sanchez 5 1.Stress Perceptions of the events (negative way) by Feelings (fear, anger) Stressful reaction within our bodies (cry, shout…) STRESS

(c) Lorena Sanchez 6 2.The prevalence of teacher/trainer stress Most of teachers experience some stress from time to time, and some experience a great deal of stress fairly frequently (Travers and Cooper 1996)

(c) Lorena Sanchez 7 In Ireland 49.7% of teachers indicated that they found their job very stressful. 27.5% of Teaching Principals reported that they found their job extremely stressful. (Ireland Teachers Health and Wellbeing Survey)

(c) Lorena Sanchez 8 3.Causes of Teacher/Trainer Stress Personal Stressors – Health – Relationships – Financial – Recreational – Living Conditions Professional stressors – Disruptive students – Excessive paper work – Curriculum issues – Complex scheduling – Environmental pressures – Change (diversity in school population)

(c) Lorena Sanchez 9 Strategies used to deal stress Survey by Cockburn (1996) 1. Ensuring that you understand the work you are about to teach. 2. Thorough lesson preparation. 3. Finding the humour in the situation. 4. Abandoning sessions that are not going well. 5. Discussing your concerns with other teachers/trainers in the school. 6. Getting to know your pupils as individuals. 7. Setting priorities. 8. Making lists. 9. Sharing your failures. 10. Chatting to colleagues about recreational interests, etc.

(c) Lorena Sanchez What to do about Stress? 1. Changing Beliefs – Positive self-image help you to focus on your strengths and accept your limitations. 2. Changing Behaviour – Positive thinking alone will no change your behaviour

(c) Lorena Sanchez 11 4.What to do about Stress? 1. Changing Beliefs, your expectations are producing negative effects with you. – Identify your faulty beliefs which lead to faulty thinking: “I’ll never finish all of this work” (believing the work never ends) “I hate feeling so nervous like this all of the time” (believing I have no control over being nervous) “Worrying about my performance when someone is observing me” (believing I must teach perfect lessons)

(c) Lorena Sanchez 12 Positive way of responding Negative Statement “I’ll never finish this work” “I hate feeling so nervous” “Worrying about my performance when someone is observing me” Positive Statement “I’ll do what I can” “Stress is part of life. I’ll turn it into positive stress and stop worrying so much. I’ll concentrate on the positive” “It will be good that someone can correct me, so the next time I will do much better”

(c) Lorena Sanchez 13 4.What to do about Stress? 2. Changing Behaviour – Try to reinforce yourself when you do something in a new and more profitable way. – Keep your stress at a minimum and continue to work on relaxing.

(c) Lorena Sanchez 14 Task Identify any one stress that is currently impacting on you as a learner. Think of new thoughts and actions that will shift you to positive beliefs about yourself as a learner. Write 3 statement. Discuss them in pairs. Be patient with yourself as you go through this process, It takes time to change!

(c) Lorena Sanchez 15 "In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity." ~ Albert Einstein