Blame the teachers

Contributory Stressing Factor: The Media and Public Perception

Everyone has been to school and therefore everyone's an expert on education. Does this happen anywhere else in life? I don't think so but it certainly seems the case when it comes to schools and children. The media plays an enormous part in skewing perception and acting as a mouthpiece for anyone with an axe to grind. The viewing/listening/reading public are then bombarded with views which appear (more often than not) to be damning of the teaching profession. It seems that those who want to be critical of the profession are simply louder and less reasonable than those attempting to engage in intelligent dialogue about education. An example came for me this week when watching a morning talk show where the annual teaching union conferences were being discussed. A guest was very vocal and forceful on the matter of assessment claiming that testing children as often as they are is a good thing. Irrespective of the arguments for and against testing the message was that this person knows little about assessment, teaching and learning and child psychology yet he was given a platform from which he decried the standpoints of a profession grounded in wisdom and knowledge. Unfortunately the subtext was simple, the teaching profession is full of whingers who know less about children than parents and political commentators and should be viewed with suspicion.

We know that the population is persuaded, cajoled and bullied by the media into holding views that may be contrary to instinct. I believe that most people are reasonable but are open to persuasion, and this does not necessarily have to be rational!

We all know that we teachers have short days, long holidays and easy lives and that we deserve to be an easy target. No one wants to see the real work, the 60/70 hour weeks, the stresses and pressures of our working lives, and all too often the portrayal of the profession in the media is unsympathetic and ill-informed.

Consequently teachers feel even more under-valued.

I am not suggesting that the whole of the broadcast and print media are anti-teachers, but I am suggesting that when ill-informed media outlets take a pop at teachers that there is a negative impact on not only the profession as a whole but also on individuals.

I will talk about parents as a source of stress at a later date, but consider some of the negative attitudes we deal with and ask yourself where these come from?   

Beware the staffroom

Contributory Stressing Factor: The Staffroom

We all know about the raft of external factors that heap stress upon the shoulders of teachers and in time I shall discuss these. Unfortunately there is little that individual teachers and school leaders can do to remove these stressors, OFSTED are going nowhere, DfE will keep piling pressures on schools and exam boards will continue to change specs, and so I'll leave this for now. Let's start a lot closer to home, a place that most of you would think is a source of solace rather than anxiety but for some this creates mortifying anxiety, the staffroom.

The staffroom is a crucial part of teacher life. In a job where adult company is limited it provides an oasis of grown-up conversation, social interaction, catharsis, counselling and support. Its where you can generally say what you want with lie-minded people. It is vital in the emotional well-being of staff  and yet many teachers feel excluded from staffroom life. For some the staffroom becomes a source of anxiety, an additional stressor and a no-go zone.

I can remember starting out in teaching in a large inner-city comp with over 100 teachers. I was in my 20s, some of the staff had been teaching in that school far longer than I had been on the planet. I was warned that Mr So-and-so had his own chair (whatever you do don't sit in it) and that the Maths teachers occupied one corner and that this was a no-go zone, and so on. Hardly welcoming! Now I was a little threatened but being a little older than many novice teachers I did have a go and eventually settled in, but in my early days in the school, during the days when I most needed support I felt excluded. Ask yourself, has this happened to you, have you seen this happen to others, does this happen in your school? Do all members of staff use the staffroom? Do some spend their breaks and lunchtimes in their classrooms? Do they claim they are too busy?

I appreciate that teachers are adults and that we often think they should be able to deal with new social situations, but look at it from their point of view. You may be old enough to their parents, you have been doing the job years and appear to do your job effortlessly, you get good results and you have the children eating out of your hand. How would that appear to the anxious novice? It is also worth noting that this doesn't just apply to younger, less experienced teachers. Experienced teachers may also find the staffroom intimidating and a source of further anxiety.

I know that some staff feel actively excluded from staffrooms feeling that cliques exist which exclude all newcomers. A key feature of my writing is that I believe that all perceptions are real and that if a colleague believes this then to them it is 100% real. The staffroom then becomes a further source of anxiety rather than a safe-haven. A place where banter becomes bullying and confidence is shattered.

Teachers are leaving the profession in droves. We have to all be in this together and a simple place to start addressing issues is through the mutual support that staffrooms offer.

Checklist:

• Do all staff use the staffroom?
• Are you conscious of cliques in your staffroom?
• Can you identify any colleague who appears to have "excluded" themselves from the staffroom?
• Do you actively welcome new colleagues?
• Do you have an induction process that also includes the social element?
• Do school leaders recognise that the staffroom provides key support for colleagues?

 

Dealing with multiple perceptions

On my leadership blog I wrote about the challenges of managing diverse, and often conflicting, perceptions. Some may have read this on that blog but if you are only looking at the TMM blog (and that's great if you are) you may find this useful in the context of teacher mental health.
Link to article on "perceptions" in my other blog

Please bear in mind that what may appear as trivial, unimportant, or even non-existent to you will to someone else be real.

The best job in the world... or how to make you feel a real failure

I wrote this early in 2016, however it might contain something of use to someone out there. I've also added a final paragraph with some crucial data.

I recently attended a conference for heads and listened to many great talks from experienced and dedicated heads. They were very good talks, largely inspiring and offering vast amounts of wisdom, in fact they would have been truly excellent had it not been for a couple of throw-away remarks which I believe could have had a very negative effect. In two of the talks the speakers said roughly the same thing, that this is the greatest job in the world. Now of course we could all point out that being a rock star would clearly be better (and I believe that this would be the best job in the world) and laugh this comment off as simply a bit of throwaway bravado but actually there is a danger with statements like this.

I've heard similar things throughout my teaching career, how teaching is the best job in the world, how being a head of department is the best job in the world, how being a head is the best job in the world (spot the obvious failure of simple logic?), but do we actually believe this? Now when I heard this I was feeling relatively upbeat and simply dismissed the assertion as nonsense, but I could have had two other reactions. The first is that I could believe it and think that I had the best job in the world and wasn't I lucky. The other interpretation is the one that worries me. Imagine being sat in a room of 100 peers and being told that you have the best job in the world and seeing the smug smiles and self-satisfied nodding of all those around you. Now inside you are feeling oppressed and stressed, the job's a nightmare and nothing is going your way. In fact it is a disaster, you're not coping and feel you should have stuck with your original career plans of becoming an accountant! How does the throw-away comment make you feel? Like a failure? Whilst those around you are living the dream you are simply surviving the nightmare.

At any level of the teaching profession and with any amount of experience we can constantly find ourselves daunted. We need to know that others share our own sense of inadequacy and that this is a challenge. We need to know that there are times when we hate our jobs and those for whom we work. That the world isn't rosy and that we are not saving mankind from itself.

So please think before you make a comment about whatever you do being brilliant. It may be brilliant for you, you may honestly believe you have the best job in the world but for someone else this may well be reinforcing a feeling of failure.

Just to wrap this up, and to add some flesh to the bones of this piece originally written 3 or so years ago, I would like to recommend the excellent work from Education Support, and their annual Teacher Wellbeing Index, the most recent edition having been published in November 2019. Please take a look, realise you may not be alone, and that there are people out there able to help.
 https://www.educationsupport.org.uk/resources/research-reports/teacher-wellbeing-index-2019

A few definitions

Since I want to consider a wide range of stressors for teachers over the next few weeks it is probably worth asking who is at risk from these stressors.

The simple answer is "everyone" but it is worth identifying two groups and having these at the back of our minds when looking at the main stressors.

Group 1: Those with a  diagnosed mental health problems. In my first post I showed a list basically taken from the MIND website showing some of the dominant mental health problems experienced by the population, including depression, anxiety, OCD, bipolar etc.

I am sure that there are plenty of teachers out there in this group who cope perfectly well and you would not know that they had an underlying problem. However conditions can be exacerbated by stress, and there is plenty of that in the working life of a teacher.

Group 2: Those who experience stress and as a result find work harder than it ought to be, MIND page on Stress

The next few posts will consider a range of stressors that are experienced in the workplace, some will be blindingly obvious (but I'll still mention them) and others a little less so. In these posts I will state the stressor followed by a discussion and then (hopefully) some ideas about how to manage these stressors.

What makes them great can also make them vulnerable...

I've worked with hundreds of teachers, all of whom are very different and so what I write in this blog can never be seen as applying to every member of the teaching profession. I've seen every type of personality and every quality of teaching. Every good teacher makes it work for them in their own way, their personality determines their teaching and so they have their own vulnerabilities.

Here's something to think about. Some teachers appear to be able to put on an "act" in their dealings with children but most with whom I have worked are authentic, their relationships genuinely reflect their personalities. So what type of teacher do want working with 5 year olds or vulnerable teenagers? Do you want detached automatons or teachers who are emotionally engaged? I believe that engagement is at the heart of great teaching and to work with children you have to emotionally connect with them. But at what price? I want sensitive, empathetic staff working with the children in my school, but does this make them vulnerable to the stresses and strains of teaching?

If we want teachers who can fully engage with vulnerable young people do we require an element of vulnerability in them? Does this then place them at risk?

It is worth remembering that counsellors and social workers who work with children are trained to deal with the emotionally charged turmoil of life. Teachers aren't trained to do this and yet spend their lives at the eye of the hurricane. There is no supervision for teachers (as in the sense of the supervision social workers receive) and so who is there for teachers?

If this assertion is correct, that some (a few or many) teachers are vulnerable precisely because of having a personality that also makes them great teachers, then the emotional well-being of teachers should be a priority for those wanting great teaching.  

 

Teachers' Minds Matter

A huge amount of time, effort and expense is devoted in schools and in services around them to look after the mental health of children and adolescents, and rightly so. However I have noticed that we rarely consider the mental health of the teachers themselves, those entrusted with guiding, teaching and counselling the young people in whom we invest so much.

You may think that this is simply an issue of mental health at work and so any consideration of it should simply align with any other occupation. I suppose this is probably the case but over the coming months I want to provide a teacher-specific viewpoint because I do think there are some aspects of teaching and teachers that make this setting unique and also simply because I want to raise the issue of the emotional wellbeing of teachers.

Why does this matter so much? Whether because it simply should as we care for our colleagues or because we are cynical and only worried about the impact of staff absence, we cannot ignore that mental health conditions have an impact on school life and so should be actively considered.

Given an approximate teaching population of 450 000 I have taken the following data from the MIND website and worked out (on average) how many teachers may be suffering from one of the listed conditions:

 

Teaching has its own set of stressors which exacerbate underlying mental health conditions or as the catalyst for conditions such as depression. As colleagues, school leaders and parents we ought to be aware of these. Whatever your motivation I would ask you to visit this blog from time to time; I would like to raise awareness and provoke debate and in doing so hopefully help some of my friends and colleagues.