Stress Management for Teachers: Learning to Take Care of Oneself

Teachers can be regarded as a backbone of children’s education and play an important role in children’s lives.  They have various roles and responsibilities in the school system that can contribute to the experience of stress and negative emotional reactions.  South African schools are plagued with negative interaction related to racism, violence and antisocial behaviour such as bullying, which teachers are expected to deal with.  Teachers have to maintain a learning environment in the class, play multiples roles (teacher, social worker, counsellor), cope with a high administration load and continuous changes in the education system in a climate of a lack of infrastructure and resources, such as overcrowding. This can contribute to teachers’ experience of lack of efficacy and stress, which can result in diminished psychological well-being, negative teacher-learner relationships and a lack of productivity.

 

To assist teachers to improve their ability to deal with many challenges, the Masters students in Counselling Psychology presented an intervention for teachers to cope and manage stressors and to promote their psychological well-being despite the challenges. 

 

After a needs assessment, where focus group discussions were conducted with primary school teachers, an intervention was developed to address the most important challenges of teachers. Because we could not address systemic challenges in this intervention, the focus was on providing teachers with skills to cope with and address some of the challenges and to develop their psychological well-being.

 

Primary school teachers were invited to join the intervention on the Tshwane South's teachers informal WhatsApp communication platform. Fifty-two teachers interested in the intervention, volunteered to participate.  The intervention consisted of six sessions presented once a month at the Mamelodi campus of UP.  The content consists of the following themes, presented in workshop format:

 

From the feedback of the teachers, it shows that they valued the sessions.

 

 

 

The sessions allowed the teachers to focus on themselves and to freely express their feelings and challenges, which led to a sense of unity amongst the teachers due to their shared experiences.  They realised the importance of prioritising their personal well-being and were equipped with different skills that allowed them to do so. The teachers became aware of the importance of being assertive and to set boundaries, both in their workplace and in their personal lives, which helps them in maintaining a work-life balance that could contribute to their psychological wellbeing.  

 

This intervention can be a first step to help teachers to develop their own psychological wellbeing. The intervention should continue to involve more teachers consistently until such an intervention is institutionalised as part of the educational system.