Those who can, do.. Forty minutes into the day, it’s only…
By: Tomas Okienka
Tags: Teaching, Mental Health, Management, Education, Stress

Those who can, do.

Forty minutes into the day, it’s only 8.10am on a Monday morning and my head is already full of questions and concerns. Did my planning get uploaded to the server properly? Will senior leadership be alright with me leaving the box empty for Friday’s maths plenary session for the third week in a row? Are my different coloured highlighters where I left them before the weekend? Where’s the remote for the projector that I need to lead the whole school assembly? There’s both a morning briefing and an after-school meeting today — when will I get time to print out photos of last Friday’s drama and ‘hot seating’ session, and will everyone in the class leave a blank page to make sure everything’s in chronological order? Where did I leave my time-saving Two Stars and a Wish stickers?

All of this before even having opened the door to the thirty young pupils who enter the room each day brimming with excitement and energy, keen to share tales of their recent adventures.

Granted, stress at work is not a new issue and neither are the constraints and pressures in the public sector. But the toll of the stress that teachers face on an almost daily basis has accumulated so many column inches in recent years that it is getting harder to ignore, with one article calling the long-term sick leave an ‘epidemic’. For many in the profession, however, actually acknowledging there is a problem and asking for help is far easier said than done.

I left the teaching profession after the best part of a decade working in the classroom. While there is truth in the cliché (it really is a rewarding job), I also saw many colleagues, both with more and fewer years of experience under their belt than myself, burning out and taking increasingly long periods off work. In a profession that is now so driven by data, the statistic ‘one in three’ should be printed on thick card (although anything thicker than 80 gsm in any Resources Cupboard is like gold dust), highlighted in yellow (laminating is optional) and left on the desks of those higher up the ladder. Because the fact that one in three teachers now leaves the profession within their first five years cannot be overlooked for much longer.

Of course, every job has its ups and downs, its good days and bad. But teaching, and the toll that the job can take on staff wellbeing, is increasingly making the headlines — from ‘soaring stress levels’ to how AI can ease teachers’ workload. And all of this was long before the word ‘lockdown’ featured in everyday vocabulary.

Staff wellbeing

Put simply, teaching is not a job that is easy to switch off from at the end of the working day. On a daily basis you are actively involved in the lives of many young learners, their parents and carers and the wider community as a whole. Contrary to popular belief, the work does not start at 9am and stop at 3.30pm and several days of each half-term and end-of-term holiday are also dedicated to planning and preparation.

Speaking from personal experience, I have never spoken to a teacher who wants to leave because of a ‘bad year group’ or because the ‘kids just don’t listen’ — this is part and parcel of the profession and teachers develop strategies to better manage these situations as each term goes by. I have, however, spoken to numerous teachers who use the words ‘workload’, ‘management’ and ‘work-life balance’ when voicing their thoughts on finding another job.

Professor Cary L Cooper, co-author of ‘Teachers Under Pressure: Stress in the Teaching Profession’, is a specialist in workplace health and wellbeing. He believes people skills should be on a par with technical expertise when staff are promoted, arguing that more emotional intelligence amongst managers would create a better workplace for all.

Staff morale varies greatly from school to school. Having worked in several schools, I have witnessed the positive outcomes of strong and genuine leadership and its effect on staff morale. Equally, I have also witnessed senior leaders miss opportunities to make significant changes to wellbeing and morale by falling into a trap that, as trainee teachers, we are always told to avoid: going straight to ‘telling off’ for something rather than leading by example and giving praise for progress made.

Fortunately, the public humiliation of an individual pupil is gradually becoming less common in classrooms. With well-timed praise and positive feedback, much progress has been made in classroom behaviour management since the days of recurring detentions and missing out on school trips. However, this can be a very instinctive human trait when under pressure and things aren’t going as planned, whether as a class teacher of thirty or a head teacher of a large school. While it may seem to bring about short-term gain in the eyes of the more senior, reverting to negativity and sanctions (in the form of, say, excessive action plans and lesson observations) is certainly not a good management strategy to boost staff morale, or indeed good for staff retention.

Sadly, many statistics from the most recent Teacher Wellbeing Index continue to hover around the three in four mark: 71% say workload would be the reason they would leave the profession, 72% are stressed, 74% can’t switch off from work and 78% have experienced behavioural, psychological or physical symptoms due to their work.

Reinventing the wheel

With such pressure to make each lesson unique, differentiated and consistently engaging, there are simply not enough hours in the day for one person to plan, prepare and deliver such classes. Fortunately, in this digital age, there are many people out there who can help. There are forums where you can share ideas and advice or ask for help from others that understand the position you are in. There are also a number of sites that offer ready-made and time-saving materials which can be adapted to the needs of your pupils.

Of course, an element of stress and some pressures are to be expected in the workplace and can in fact help with motivating staff and meeting targets. But when the needle rarely drops out of the red, and when many teachers are already putting their all into the job, something really needs to be done. Thankfully, mental health issues are gradually suffering less of a stigma and the more accepted it is to speak out about the way we feel, the more awareness about the issue is raised. While predictions about the future of teaching include more technology and collaboration among students, we must acknowledge the current situation that educators find themselves in and help those who work so hard to help others.