In this week's episode of "Teachers in Transition," Kitty talks about an article she found that might help reframe how stressed teachers think about managing their stress more proactively and effectively. She is using an article by Amber Osuba at Everfi.com. The article's title is "Stress Management for Teachers: 16 Activities to Reduce Teachers' Stress," and can be found at https://everfi.com/blog/k-12/strategies-to-support-stress-management-for-teachers/.
This article is different because it clusters the strategies into 4 clusters: "Avoid, Alter, Adapt, and Accept." Listen to this week's episode to hear Kitty's take on the list of strategies. To learn more, check out the blog post.
If you want to check in with Kitty about anything, you may email her at kittyboitnott@gmail.com. Also, if you are interested in a career transition, book a complimentary Discovery Session at https://teachersintransition.com/calendar.
If you would like to recommend a topic for Kitty to explore, send an email. And don't forget to rate and review the podcast to help other teachers find it.
In this week's episode of "Teachers in Transition," Kitty talks about an article she found that might help reframe how stressed teachers think about managing their stress more proactively and effectively. She is using an article by Amber Osuba at Everfi.com. The article's title is "Stress Management for Teachers: 16 Activities to Reduce Teachers' Stress," and can be found at https://everfi.com/blog/k-12/strategies-to-support-stress-management-for-teachers/.
This article is different because it clusters the strategies into 4 clusters: "Avoid, Alter, Adapt, and Accept." Listen to this week's episode to hear Kitty's take on the list of strategies. To learn more, check out the blog post.
If you want to check in with Kitty about anything, you may email her at kittyboitnott@gmail.com. Also, if you are interested in a career transition, book a complimentary Discovery Session at https://teachersintransition.com/calendar.
If you would like to recommend a topic for Kitty to explore, send an email. And don't forget to rate and review the podcast to help other teachers find it.
Are you a teacher who's feeling stressed out and overwhelmed. Do you worry that you're feeling symptoms of burnout or are you sure you've already gotten there? Have you started to dream of doing some other kind of job or perhaps pursuing a whole different career, but you don't know what else you're even qualified to do. You don't know how to start a job search. You just feel stuck. If that sounds like you, I promise you're not alone. My name is kitty boy. Not I'm a career transition and job search coach. And I specialize in helping burnout out teachers just like you deal, not only with the stress and overwhelm of your day to a job, but to consider what other careers might be out there waiting for you. Join me for teachers in transition. In some episodes, I'll be speaking to stress management techniques and how you can manage your stress on a day to day basis. In other episodes, I'll be talking about career. What tools do you need to be successful in a job search when you're moving from one career into a totally different track. These are questions that you need answers to and I can help you find those answers. My name is kitty boy, not welcome to teachers in transition.
Speaker 2:Welcome back to another episode of teachers in transition, the podcast and the YouTube channel. My name is kitty boy, not the owner of boy, not coaching and the founder of teachers in transition. If you have listened to this cast before you know that I am a heart centered career transition and job search coach specializing in working with teachers who are ready to make a career change, but don't know how or where to begin. I'm also a certified stress management coach. And so on alternating weeks, I offer tips, techniques, strategies for either career transition or stress management. This is episode 153 and the subject matter this week is stress. Now I have admitted to you in the past that I sometimes feel like I have shared everything I already know about stress management and that I have nothing new to say on the subject and don't know what else to share that said, doesn't keep me from looking for new information, offered in a D way that might resonate with listeners in a new frame. So this week the topic is stressed. And I found an article by, uh, a young teacher. I'm assuming she's, uh, Amber OSBA and she's offered this article called stress management for teachers 16 activities to reduce teachers stress from, uh, EverFi, uh, company or organization named EverFi. And so I thought I would share the highlights from the article. There are 16 tips for managing or reducing teacher stress, but they're divided into four categories. And I seem to feel like I've mentioned these categories in the past, but it's been a while I went back and looked and it hasn't been a recent episode. So maybe it's time to reiterate or to speak to again, the clusters of activities that you can do for yourself to better manage more proactively and perhaps more effectively manage your day to day stress as a, as a teacher. And I know that you're feeling stressed. I am talking to more and more teachers every week who are on family medical leave or medical leave, or are taking medication for anxiety and stress just in order to manage their jobs. And so I know that a lot of teachers are feeling very stressed this year and, um, it doesn't seem like it's getting any better anytime soon. So the first cluster of act, so the four clusters that this author refers to are avoid alter, accept, and adapt, kinda like the steps of grief, if you will. So in the first category avoid, she talks about how are some types of stress that you can manage to avoid with some thought in perhaps planning. And one of the things that she recommends is picking your traffic pattern on your way to work. Is it possible that by the time you get to work, the traffic, the commute that you've had to endure has already contributed to getting your day off on the wrong foot and that you walk into the building already feeling under the gun because of the, the commute that you've had to experience. So one of the things that she recommends is that you can either alter your route for less. Um, even if it takes a few minutes longer, a less congested route so that the traffic isn't quite so stressful, perhaps another possibility is to listen to something that you would enjoy to take your mind off of the commute. If altering it isn't possible. And you have to stick with the same route, no matter what alter your environment, while you are in the car, by listening to a podcast that you enjoy, or like this one, maybe, or an audio book, something that will take your mind off of the commute and help you to manage so that by the time you get to school, you're not feeling overwrought and stressed out. She suggests that catching yourself before you spiral into a stress mode can also be useful. And to be mindful of your conversations with colleagues, don't let them drag you down their rabbit hole if they are complaining or gossiping. And this is one of the things I have been big on. And, you know, we all like to be, uh, in the know we all like to know what's going on at the same time, gossip for the sake of gossip, especially if it's tearing someone down or, or causing, uh, harm to someone's, that's not helpful or healthy for anyone, including the listener. It's not good for the person who's sharing the gossip. And every school has at least one, the one person who always seems to know everything and is only too eager to make tracks to the, to unload it on everybody in the, in the lounge at lunchtime. I've been there. I know, I know that. I know that that's the truth. So don't be the gossip and don't indulge in the gossip because all that does is drag you down and cause you to feel Morris stressed. So keep your head down, put your blinders on and do your job. And don't let other people, unless they're offering you cheerleading and support and they have your back, avoid the lounge and avoid the lunchtime gossip avoid taking on too much. I've talked about this too. Teachers are famous for over extending themselves over volunteering, offering to do things because they wanna please, they wanna be perceived as a team player. They want their administrator to know that they're eager to do their part. I get it. There are good reasons to do some of that, but there's a limit to how much you can volunteer outside of your regular job and have any time for yourself or your family or your friends. If you don't, if you're not married yet, you don't have a family of your own. That doesn't mean that you can give all of your time and energy to your work. It means that you need to extend yourself and find friends that you can enjoy and do things with. So don't over extend yourself and stop over. Volunteering, do take the breaks that you need to take too many teachers work through lunch or eat at their desk, or don't bother to take a break in the afternoon. And they hold their bladder until the point of bursting. And then they have to, you know, run to get somebody to cover their students while they go relieve themselves. Don't do that to yourself. It's too much on your body. It's too much on your mind to do that kind of thing to yourself, take breaks as you need them, including a lunch time, even if it's just 20 minutes, lunch away from your desk and away from your work, listen to a podcast during your lunchtime, something that's not related to school, your brain needs to disengage so that it can reengage. We've all had the experience of looking at a problem for so long that we just don't see an answer. And then we take a break from, or we go take a nap or we sleep on it. And suddenly the ha we've got the answer. Your brain needs. The rest needs to recharge, needs to re-energize itself. So take needed breaks. So those are the four, uh, suggestions for how to all, uh, avoid stress. Here's how you might alter your stress. Sometimes you need to, uh, just remember that work life balance is important in your life and the lives of everybody else. And you need to schedule time where you can think thoughtfully and enjoy your non-work time and really be present in the activities that don't necessarily include your work. That's an important skill that you need to develop for yourself. Also being sure that you're making the most of your meeting and planning times, you know, too often, I don't know about anybody else, but I know that when I was using my planning period, there would be times when I would go to the lounge to, in, to, you know, have a place to work a table somewhere. I could spread out my, my books and notes and engage in planning. The thing is that if I got engaged in conversation or got caught up in something else that was going on in the lounge, I didn't make as good a use of that time as I might have. If I had gone to the library and found a quiet corner somewhere to do that work. So make the most of your time, remember that your time is valuable and you need to manage each and every hour so that you get the most out of it. The more work you can get done at school, the less you'll have to do at home. And just as a side note, stop making work for yourself in today's world. There are plenty of resources online that you can take advantage of for free or low. You do not have to constantly be creating brand new lessons and recreating the wheel. There are thousands of lessons and lesson plans out there for you to take advantage of. So take advantage of them and free up some of your time. If you're exp financial stress, this is number seven on the list of 16 ways to reduce your stress. If you're experiencing financial stress because of an over extension of debt or an inability to save or invest, seek help for that, there's, there are plenty of opportunities for you to speak with professional finance, uh, managers who work with teachers all the time. Uh, I can speak myself to the importance of your starting some sort of retirement fund in, in addition to whatever your state district offers as retirement as a supplemental plan. So do that as soon as you can, even if you don't think you can afford it, you'd be amazed at how quickly a hundred dollars a month will grow over time. If you start early. So even$50 a month, whatever it is that you can squeeze out, but start some sort of fund set aside money for the house you want, or the car, whatever it is that you need, create a budget and try to stick to it. And finally, she mentions second hand stress. How, as teachers, we tend to hear stories from our students that are tragic and sad and draw us in and make us worry about our students, their legitimate worries, but they're not your worries. So try not to take on extra stress that you don't need to take on. If you hear that a family of a student, their family is suffering from food insecurity or homelessness, turn that over to the appropriate person or agency within your school or district and let them handle it. It's not your job to take care of that particular issue. The third a that the author refers to is accept. And one of the things that she suggests we have to accept is educators is that sometimes there are lockdown initiatives. They may come from your governor. They may come from the general assembly. They may come from the department of education. They may come from your local school board. They may come from your local superintendent, wherever they may come from. They may feel onerous. They may make you uncomfortable. Cause change always may excess uncomfortable, but there may not be a way to avoid or alter the reality of the new initiative, the new curriculum, the new latest, greatest thing that everybody thinks you need to, to adapt to. So except is the third a and the list of A's to take, um, into consideration and managing your stress. And so you would need to accept and adjust to newness for of top down initiatives, give them a, a chance. I mean, there's not much you can do about, you can be moan it, you can be grown it, you can complain about it, but it's wasted. Good energy. So accept that these are expectations that your school division has for you and do the best you can to meet them. She says also, as far as meeting student needs, there are sometimes that you just have to accept that their needs exceed your ability to meet them. And that's when you need to draw on other resources, find other places where you can draw from help and forgive yourself for not being able to be a hundred percent, everything that your student needs. As far as mistakes, she mentions that we all make, this is number, number 11 on the list, by the way, we all make them. So start practicing some self forgiveness and don't hold yourself to any sort of illusion of perfect. None of us are perfect. None of us behave perfectly all the time. So take part in knowing that it's okay to make a mistake every once in a while, if you make a mistake and it somehow harms someone else, take responsibility for it and apologize for it and sure that it doesn't happen again, mistakes are, are simply educational, uh, lessons that we learn from, hopefully you don't want to continue to make the same mistake over and over again. That will become a problem. But the occasional mistake, the occasional BL the occasional misspeaking, don't beat yourself up over it. It's part of being human. And then she says, not forget that you're in a shared experience. So find a mentor, a friend on staff, someone that you can share with and not be afraid that they're going to go tatling or ratting on you. And oh, guess what? So and so said, or that you won't become the latest subject of gossip in the line. You don't want that, but if you can find someone that you can trust as a mentor or as a buddy, someone who feels a similar way to you and shares your viewpoint, your, some of your experience that you can bounce off of each other, vent with each other, when you need to bounce good ideas on, off of create some synergy with do that, to help build up yourself and accept the things that you cannot change or alter. Then finally, the fourth a is to adapt with some stress. The author says it's a matter of adjusting our standards and expectations. If you can't alter you, can't avoid, you. Can't adapt to, you might just have, I mean, uh, uh, accept. You might just have to adapt to whatever the stress is. You don't want to hold yourself such high expectations that you constantly feel like you are falling short. As far as student expectations, the author shares that the hardest lesson she ever learned as a new teacher was not to play comparison game between groups of students year to year or even class to class. Good advice comparing, holding up false expectations only leads to disappointment, and you don't need to be, be doing that to yourself. If you are struggling with classroom management, frankly, it sounds like these days, a lot of teachers are struggling, not so much cause their strategies or, um, practices don't work anymore. But because they are faced with students who have forgotten how to behave in the classroom after two and a half years of being at home on their computer, during COVID and lockdown. And I don't know if this is accurate or not. It's my, my armchair armchair analysis based on stories that I'm hearing. So I may be totally off the mark. But my current theory is that because we had the lockdown in the spring of 2020, and many of our students were in and out of virtual school and in and out of in person school in 2021. And now that we've started 20, 21 and 2022, and we're mostly back in person, kids have, are, are demonstrating a lack of social, emotional development that they missed out on while they were at home and isolated from their classmates. There's one to blame about that. The pandemic was what it was. We had to close the schools at first to keep people safe. Um, until we could get a, a handle on how the fires was being spread, nobody knew for sure what we should be doing. So everybody was doing the best they, it could. So I'm not trying to place any blame anywhere. Everyone did the best they could, but now we all need to realize that there is a problem and that we need to address the problem and expecting that children will either be academically on track or email emotionally on track is putting an undue pressure on them that I think many of them are responding to. They don't know how to articulate that. I don't know how to behave in the classroom. They're just doing what they do. So if, if you're having issues with classroom management, because you're students simply don't know how they've gotten outta the habit of being in a classroom with other students and with you get help. There's plenty of resources online, plenty of books that you can read, plenty of, uh, experts that you can go to for suggest questions, but get help. Don't just, don't just let it get worse because that will only cause more problems down the line for you. Performance reviews the, in the end of the year, evaluations, that every teacher has to sit through, take them in stride, regardless of what the feedback is, take it in stride. Try not to take it personally. You know, I had a, an individual call me, um, on a Saturday night, this has been several years ago. She called me on a Saturday night, about six o'clock in the evening. She said she, she had been curled up in a fetal position all day, Saturday, and she was considering suicide because of something that had happened with her principal the day before. So she left this message. I mean, it, it was, it was stunning in its, in its cry for help. So I, I called her and I said, please just let's talk. Well, come to find out that the principal had on a Friday afternoon loaded on this young woman and told her she was a good teacher, but, and then went on to point out every bad thing that she thought she had ever done, including that her second graders weren't up to the benchmarks on their test scores from the year before her, which was not this teacher's fault. This teacher was a third grade teacher. She didn't have anything to do with the second grade benchmark results. And as she continued to describe the situation, I couldn't help. But think this principal had had a bad Friday and she shouldn't have been saying anything to this teacher until got her own head straight. But instead she took it out on this teacher and this teacher took it straight to the heart and felt like she was a complete mess up and here on Saturday night, still grieving over the barbs that the prince will had thrown at her. And I said to her, how long do you think your principal thought about that meeting? After she left the building and she hesitated for a minute, she said, oh, I don't know. Probably not long. I said, she's forgotten all about it. And you've been in a fetal position all day to day. She's forgotten. I guarantee she left the building. She unloaded on you. She felt better. She went about her business. She's not given that meeting another thought. And she said to you, you're a good teacher. And all you heard was what came after the book. So go back to, what did she say to you? That was pause. Well, there was a lot of stuff come to find out, but all she was concentrating on was what had come after the, but, and when I pointed out you didn't have anything to do with your, your third graders, second grade benchmark scores. So why was she taking that out on you? Well, she didn't know. And I said, I think she just bad day. So don't let people bully you, whether it's during your performance review or any other time, don't let a principal take it out on you. That they've had a bad day and understand that the principal is still human being, making a subjective review, not objective necessarily subjective. She may not like you. And so she's raking you over the Coles or he, he may just have a demeaning attitude toward all of his teachers. Okay? So don't let anybody make you feel less than if you know that you're doing the best you can. That is all you, you can do. So don't let a performance review. Do you win and finally questioning your impact? I know that that's also something that's on a lot of teachers' minds these days. What kind are you? Are you making a difference? And the answer is undoubtedly. You are, but you may not always feel like you are. And your impact may not be felt until later, which is not satisfactory, but still the case. So remember the four clusters, uh, there were 16 activities that I just went over to help you manage your stress, the clusters basically, or avoid alter, adapt, and accept. If you can do those things, that'll help you to manage your day to day stress more effectively. And that's what I want for you to be able to do that so that you can enjoy your time away from the classroom, as much as you enjoy the time in the classroom. And if you aren't enjoying any of your time in the classroom, it's time to think about a career change period. Now, I know that many teachers are and that's okay because life is too short for you to stick in a job that you don't love anymore. And if you've lost your passion, if you feel no purpose in the classroom, if you've given it your ultimate a hundred percent best shot, and it's none of it's working, then it's time to look to make a change. And it's never too early to get started on that process. If you decide that's what you need to do, we'll talk more about that next week for this week. I hope that those tips and strategies will be useful to you for helping you to manage your stress from this point until the end of the year, because I don't have to tell you from now, this is I'm recording this the end of February. So we're looking into to March spring break is right around the corner. For many of you, once you're back from spring break, you are on a whirl wind trying to keep up with all the activities and things that you have to do to get to the end of the year. Not testing to be exact, but in all the activities that go along with the testing. So I know what it's like. And I know that if you wanna start thinking about making a career change now is the time to be doing it. If you have questions about that, email me at kitty boy night, gmail.com or make an appointment@teachersintransition.com slash calendar. If you would like more information about how to manage your stress, go to the teachers in transition.com website, there is a cheat sheet on manage, managing stress. There's a, a quiz to take on a teacher burnout. There's a self assessment of your stress, and there's an ebook that you can order for free on how to better manage and more proactively manage your stress on that note, I'll say so long for the this week, and I'll see you again next week.
Speaker 1:So there you have it, an episode of teachers in transition. I hope you enjoyed the information and I hope you'll plan to come back. Please subscribe to teachers in transition so that you can be alerted of future episodes. And let me know if you have any questions or topics that you would like me to specifically cover in a future episode, I'm more than happy to help with individual questions as well. So email me at kitty boy, not boy.coaching.com. If you, you are interested in finding a new career or just enjoying your life more, this is the place to start. I'm kitty boy not. And this is teachers in transition.