Teacher Well-Being & Why We Should Consider It

I seek to hone in on the ignored well-being of our educators and bring awareness to its relationship to the quality of their work and its extended effect on our children in that classroom.

The language of how teacher stress is discussed varies in the current body of research. Most focus and demand on teachers regard their effectiveness and ways to maximizing it, hence the teacher evaluations and constant professional development meetings. However, research traditionally focus on individual factors and ignore the complexity of the influence of school system and community, which affect the performance of teachers at all levels. This, in turn, creates a barrier and blind variable to the constant initiatives birthed on improving teacher performance and maximizing their effectiveness in the classroom.

In a systematic literature review conducted by Watts and Robertson (2011), twelve articles were analyzed on its regard to teacher burnout and the different causal factors extracted. Sample sizes ranged from 48 to 1067 participants and most of the papers claimed a representative sample. Predictive variables of teacher burnout include exposure to high numbers of students, gender, and age. Specifically, males tend to depersonalize while females as well as younger staff become more vulnerable to emotional exhaustion (Watts & Robertson, 2011).

Teacher-related factors that effect their well-being are grouped in accordance to its relation to the school system. Thus, the stressors that are outside of the teacher’s control as it remains in the hands of the educational system are considered contextual factors and those stressors which involve individuality such as coping abilities, individual personality traits, etc. are considered personal stressors.

Some of the factors/stressors I believe are involved in both categories (i.e., personal and contextual) are as follows:

Contextual variables (systemic level)

o   Principal interaction/leadership

o   Management styles; admin

o   Staff (office)

o   Dynamics of relationships within school (with other teachers, etc.)

o   Safety of workplace

o   Students! (Behaviors, issues, their support at home)

o   Parents!

o   Budget and supplies; SES

o   Policy

o   Community

o   Technology implementation

o   Special education needs

o   Deadlines

Personal variables (interpersonal level)

o   Stress tolerance levels

o   Personality

o   Lifestyle

o   Spiritual/religious influences

o   Locus of control

o   Goals

o   Coping strategies or lack thereof

I would further look into the interaction of both contextual and personal factors to see how the intersection of both affects teacher well-being as well.

                                                                                          

The Road to Solutions: Importance of Considering Teacher Stress

In a 2012 poll, nearly 70 percent of the 7,200 K–12 teachers surveyed did not feel engaged in their work and were unlikely to devote much, if any, discretionary effort to their work (Gallup, 2014). Those numbers are alarming given the fact that in each of those teachers, 16-25 of our students are under their instruction; that is 16-25 societal members and future decision-makers that are under the care of teachers who are too stressed out to care beyond keeping their job due to their contextual and personal stressors.

Cultivating Awareness and Resilience in Education (CARE for Teachers) is an example of a program designed to aid teachers and consider the importance in reducing their stress in order to improve their performance in the classroom as well as the overall learning environment (Jennings, Frank, Snowberg, Coccia, & Greenberg, 2013). To do so, CARE takes a mindfulness-based professional development approach to analyze and respond to teacher’s well-being, classroom efficacy, burnout, stress, and overall health (Jennings et al., 2013). In a randomized controlled trial of CARE, fifty-three teachers from urban and suburban public schools participated in the program. The program was offered two days the first week (12 hours), one day two weeks later, and a fourth day two weeks after that.

According to Jennings et al. (2013) “participation in the CARE program resulted in significant improvements in teacher well-being, efficacy, burnout/time-related stress, and mindfulness compared with controls” (p. 374). Teachers also rated the program as feasible, acceptable, and effective in reducing their stress and improving their performance as a teacher. Therefore, not only does the program show promising results but teachers self-report that they find it useful; an important combination for progress.

Current educational policy and programs are not considering this factor of teacher stress and burnout and, as polls have shown, this becomes reflective in teacher production and effectiveness. The correlation of teacher well-being and student achievement in the research provides strong implications for the effects teacher stress has on students and their academic achievement. If policies and initiatives are concerned with increasing academic achievement and caring for the students, then all correlating factors should be considered. The student-teacher ratio has improved, curricula reforms are continuously targeting the issue of the achievement gap, and teachers are constantly evaluated in order to improve standardized test scores. However, the one factor that the body of research supplies multiple evidence for through the overwhelming reported stressors, is still ignored by policies and initiatives.