Mental Health: Coping with Stress

#UKEdChat Session 404 – Thursday 17th May 2018

Take a deep breath…

There are lots of stressful careers, but teaching combines the elevated baseline of chronic stress of the day to day, coupled with bouts of intensely stressful events. Inspections, staff meetings, work scrutiny, piles of unmarked books in the boot of your car, all can cause stress and anxiety. Plus the current culture of the profession, where boasts about the long hours individuals work are wore like medals rather than alarm bells, make us feel inadequate unless we are working ourselves to the verge of medical exhaustion.

In this session of #UKEdChat, that took place during Mental Health Week, we discussed how to avoid stress, cope with it when it occurs and examining the culture and practices in schools which unnecessarily lead to stress for staff, pupils and the wider community.

Click here to read the session summary

Questions

1. What, in your experience, are the most stressful aspects of being a teacher?
2. What are the most commonly witnessed characteristics of a stressed-out colleague?
3. What support systems could school managers put into place to help colleagues deal with stress?
4. How do you support pupils who show that they are stressed?
5. How can individual teachers support colleagues who are not coping well with stress?
6. What activities, within schools, can teachers undertake to help relieve stress?
7. What outside school activities can teachers undertake to help relieve stress?
8. Was teaching always this stressful? What happened?

Read the discussion archive here

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