Over these past few months, I have been teaching English online to Japanese students and it has been really nice. However, there are plenty of online and offline English teachers like me who sometimes undergo the everyday stress of teaching. What practical methods could we use to manage this condition? Is there such thing as “good stress?” Here are four proven methods in managing stress levels as a teacher.
One student I tutored recently online shared with me some information about how teachers could manage stress. In this PowerPoint presentation, she shared some insightful things. One thing is that it’s important to know how stress works in our minds and bodies. This involves knowing about yourself and how you respond stress. So it’s vital that we must pay attention to how we deal with different situations and circumstances.
Once we identified how stress impacts us, we must figure out how to overcome it. The number one way of doing this is social support. You can’t be afraid to ask for help when things become too much for you to handle. This is an occasional weakness for me and it probably is for most teachers. We have to realize that as imperfect people we can only do so much. That’s why a lot of teachers have assistants to help them with their daily duties.
However, some stress could be good for you. In the article, “9 Stress Management Strategies Every Teacher Needs to Know,” health psychologist Kelly McGonigal states that viewing your stress in constructive ways will actually cause your body to respond to it differently and prevent long-lasting physical damage. However, if you continuously view it in negative ways, you will succumb to various detrimental health outcomes. So, sometimes it’s beneficial to embrace the stress.
I like this last method and I feel it is something we all need to practice more. It is working smarter, not harder. Teaching people doesn’t have to be stressful and hard. It could be the opposite. By choosing to work smarter as a teacher, you could find ways to delegate some of your work to other people. Another way to work smarter is to invest in tech software and tools that could help in getting your work done in a timely manner.
Being a teacher isn’t easy. In fact, it could be a stressful job if we allow it to be. But if you consider following these methods of managing stress, you will do well in this line of work. For more methods in managing stress as a teacher, visit www.wgu.edu/heyteach/article/9-stress-management-strategies-every-teacher-needs-know1612.html. Also, here is the link to the PowerPoint presentation mentioned earlier – https://drive.google.com/file/d/1r65iO8M4NGU5XX10AW3m70N-QP0vGt_Q/view.
