Teachers help grow and shape youth into functioning adults, but most teachers deal with anxiety and stress.
According to the Pew Research Center, “77% (of K-12 teachers) say their job is frequently stressful.”
It’s not only students that are stressed, it’s the teachers too. They sponsor after-school activities, make lesson plans and still find time to grade hundreds of assignments. When students stress out teachers to certain points, they need breaks too.
After an interaction with a disrespectful student, English teacher Greg Hall left for the day. He made a Facebook post about the situation.
“I was just mad, and I knew that I wasn’t going to teach for the rest of the day, so I went home to calm down,” Hall said.
Even though many students don’t notice that most of their teachers are just as stressed as they are, it doesn’t diminish the anxiety and stress educators experience daily.
Teachers experience high stress situations which can be because of students. These situations can range from a noisy classroom to a disrespectful student.
“There was a student who wasn’t passing that hadn’t done anything (in class) up to that point,” Hall said. “I said ‘Can you pick your head up? We’re all doing this assignment.’ And he started cussing me out, and it evolved into a big blowout.”
It’s not just student actions that stress teachers out, but also afterschool activities, as teachers from nearly every department coach a sports team or sponsor a club.
Some teachers even sponsor several clubs and teams at once, which can affect their stress levels too.
English teacher Jessica Walpole coaches JV cheer and the dance team. She says that if she were to rate her stress level, it would be a 10.
Even though there are various reasons educators are stressed and anxious, there are also different coping mechanisms to help them through their struggles.
Lowering the noise level or even just taking a break can help teachers calm down before someone snaps.
“A day where there’s no obligations, that’s my favorite (coping mechanism) in the whole world and sleeping in,” Walpole said.
Even though teachers may stress students out, that doesn’t mean that students don’t stress out teachers. They try their best to stay calm in stressful situations, but sometimes it’s best to take a break.
“As a teacher you are asked to do a lot of things for a wide spectrum of students,” Hall said. “Currently there’s not a lot of support for us to do those things.”
