Educator Well Being

Gillian thanks Susan Rodger & Western University for their support!

What is it about teaching?

• being the expert all the time, from the start
• being in the classroom/office, all day, isolation
• the relationship with students & families over time (emotional load – every day, year over year)
• acting in loco parentis (cognitive, social & physical wellbeing)
• balancing all components: the workplace, the school, community, pedagogy & policy
• high levels of stress (because of high levels of responsibility)
• gaps in initial teacher education & PD opportunities
• highly competitive job market (from sub to full time teaching position can take a long time – highly stressful)
• “getting summers off” and other popular myths (you only work 9-3, public perception that you have it easy & complain a lot, a great deal of negative press)

​

What are the challenges?

• the wellness of a large & highly skilled group of professionals
• must be well to teach effectively
• your wellness affects your students & colleagues
• attrition, underemployment, early retirement
• many leaving the profession or retiring earlier
• work intensification & expansion of roles
• the job keeps getting bigger, less people, expanded roles
• teachers are in the best place to notice mental health needs of students first
• gaps
• in the research, in practice
• lack of good data
• the missing voices

​

Wellness is…

• A state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity. ... Wellness is an active process of becoming aware of and making choices toward a more successful existence. (World Health Organization)

Some dimensions of wellbeing:�

• Spiritual
• Mental/emotional
• Social
• Intellectual
• Financial
• Environmental (safe, stable housing, sense of belonging)
• Life satisfaction
• Development
• Belonging
• Participation
• Occupational

​

Connected to Wellbeing

• Longevity
• Fewer high risk behaviours
• Stronger and deeper social networks
• Experience of belongingness
• Lower levels of stress

(Mental Health Commission of Canada, 2015)

​

Wellness is

• An outcome & a process
• Involves functioning:
• Achievement: our successes
• Capabilities: our activities & access to resources
• Builds on:
• Freedom: choices, expectations
• Opportunity: to prepare for & take action
• Requires motivation:
• Valuing wellness & making it a priority
• And can lead to:
• empowerment

Wellness is connected to…

1. Motivation
2. Teacher self-efficacy
3. Emotional labor
4. Stress & Burnout
5. Mental Health

​

What does the research say?

• Autonomy support from leaders�– Connections with students and colleagues – Sense of competence�– Sense of independence/ownership�– Less external regulation�– More individual motivation�– More well-being (in an out of school)
• Resulting in more job satisfaction and organizational commitment (Collie et al, 2015)

​

Emotional Labour

Employees are expected to:

• Manage their feelings - showing or concealing feelings in accord with organization and professional rules
• To adapt emotional “display rules” (no smiling before Christmas, no hugging, etc.)
• Organizational expectations for expressing emotions appropriately while at work
• We learn workplace rules for regulating our emotions
• Advice, regulation, practice

​

Unmanaged emotional labour can be very stressful

1. Surface Acting
• When we pretend to feel a certain way during a work interaction (sucking it up)
2. Deep acting
• When we adjust the way we feel in response to a situation at work

3. The impact of emotional labour

• Exhaustion, distancing, dread, self-doubt (emotionally distant)

​

(Kerr & Levine Brown, 2016)

​

​

Stress…

• A normal response to demands that threaten or overwhelm our coping or well-being.
• Whenever we feel threatened because we don’t have enough resources to cope. Pressure can be:
• – Positive (excitement, challenge, learn something new), or
• – Negative (dangerous, overwhelming)
• Is subjective

​

Teacher Stress in Canada

• A survey of 8,000 Canadian teachers by the Canadian Teacher’s Foundation PRE-PANDEMIC found:
• 90% of teachers feel that class composition is a source of stress
• 95% of teachers feel stress because they lack the time needed to meet students’ individual needs
• 86% of teachers feel a source of stress is that they do not have enough of time to plan assessments with colleagues
• 85% of teachers are stressed by grading

​

​

SINCE PANDEMIC

• Teacher Mental Health Check-in Survey November 2020 CTF
• All is not Well in Education, 2020, CTF
• Teacher mental health during COVID-19 Pandemic Research Report, 2022, CTF
• More will be coming as impacts are realized

Effects of Normal Stress

• We feel that we are capable
• We develop resilience
• We accomplish, achieve, complete, deliver
• We develop mastery, acquire positive rewards

Effects of Overwhelming Stress

1. In the Workplace:
• Loss of pleasure in teaching, dread the classroom
• Difficulty coping with stressful situations
• Doubting ability or effectiveness as a teacher
2. Physical Symptoms:
• Stomach pain or upset, fatigue
• Headaches or consistent body pain
• Compromised immune system (sick a lot)
3. Emotional & Relational Symptoms:
1. Feeling overwhelmed, detached, or numb
2. Problems concentrating, irritable, procrastination
3. Emotionally distant from friends, partners

Teachers in Overwhelming Stress

1. Distance themselves from the situation
2. Cognitively distance from work
3. Are often unprepared for the next day
4. End up in a burnout snowball

What is Burnout?

• “A prolonged response to chronic emotional & interpersonal stressors on the job…defined by the 3 dimensions of exhaustion, cynicism & inefficacy.” Maslach & colleagues (2001)

​

• Experienced often among those

in helping professions: teachers,

first responders, nurses, etc.

Teaching Wisdom

We will become better teachers not by trying to fill potholes in our soul but by knowing them so well that we can avoid falling into them.

- Parker Palmer (Let Your Life Speak)

How to Build Your Wisdom

1. Pay attention to self & others
2. Practice “nonjudgmental awareness”
3. Take a deep breath
4. Practice setting positive intentions (I will smile at one person today)
5. Find joy, humour & awe in your classrooms
• Embrace positive events, take time to build community, to talk to students and colleagues
• Laugh with kids & colleagues, and at yourself
6. Let go of the negative things that happen at school and set a positive tone as you transition to home. Consider developing a transition ritual to signal the end of the work day.

​

Tips for Wellness MYTHS

1. Drink 8 glasses of water a day
• Zero evidence to support this!
• And who can hold their pee that long?

More Useful Tip…

• Be part of something good like colleagues who are positive
• Share resources & support one another - tech is a great tool but face to face is better and has unique benefits that you cannot get via tech.
• Limit the time you spend complaining – then move to solutions & ideas to make things better.
• Challenges of teaching include isolation and when we don’t have enough people to talk to we often want others to hear our pain and may get into a contest of whose class is worse…

Flip the Script on Stress

• New Grade 8 teacher in an assembly, “veteran” teacher leans over and says “You are going to have to learn how to get your class under control.”
• Flip the script: I’m glad they are excited. The assembly has not started yet. We’ll work on this routine. I’m a professional, I’ve got this.

​

Tips for Wellness MYTHS

2. Purchase these for yourself and all the students in your class who are having trouble concentrating, focusing, & regulating.

TIP #2

• Give yourself the opportunity to reflect regularly on what you experience in your work and in relation to your values, passion, experiences, vulnerabilities & strengths.
• Intentional reflection can increase awareness, bring focus, and help you to address issues before they become overwhelming.
• Can do it alone or with others you trust or some combination.

FLIP IT: BURNING IN

• Prevent burnout by burning in
• Feeling burned in means that:
• You are engaged in your work as an educator
• You feel positive about students & teaching
• You are fulfilled by, dedicated to, and absorbed by your work

BURNING IN OR BURNING OUT

The people most prone to burnout are not those who are the least committed. You can’t burn out if you’ve never been alight. The ones who burn out are often those who care the greatest, give the most. When you’ve too many people to see, you can go home feeling you’ve never seen enough of them. When your deluged by paper, it’s hard to be devoted to your people.

​

Hargreaves (in Burned In: Fueling the Fire to Teach, 2011)

BURN OUT

• Leads us to focus on what’s wrong
• Contributes to negative thinking & stress

BURN IN

• Leads us to focus on what’s right
• Contributes to positive thinking & risilience

Wellness – Mental Health Connections

• 30% (100,000) of all CPP disability recipients have claims related to mental health disorders
• 28% of workers report that most days at work in the past year have been quite a bit or extremely stressful (Statistics Canada, 2013)
• The economic burden of mental illness in Canada is estimated at $51 billion/year
• Health care costs, lost productivity, reductions in health-related quality of life

Wellness Connections

For educators:

• No more or no fewer mental health problems than other professionals
• More physical ailments: urinary tract infections, varicose veins, bronchitis, eczema (Kovess-Masfety et al, 2006)
• 54% were torn between the demands of work & home
• 25% felt their autonomy had increased; 55% felt it had decreased (CTF, 2014)
• When they felt supported by leaders, perception of autonomy, wellness & job satisfaction increased (Collie et al, 2015)

For school leaders:

• 48% feel they rarely or never achieve work-life balance, and they feel isolated (Pollock, 2014)

Educator Mental Health

• Difficulties in coping with their own mental wellbeing, citing stress, anxiety, & lack of work/life balance
• Feeling ill-equipped to manage & cope with the mental health needs of their students
• Lack of organizational support (Rodger, Leschied & Hibbert, 2014)
• Evidence that teachers are leaving the profession
• But is this outside of what we expect, compared to other professionals?

Student Outcomes

• Evidence is beginning to appear
• Students whose teachers reported higher levels of emotional exhaustion:
• had higher levels of morning cortisol (Oberle & Schonert-Reichl, 2015)
• Had lower grades, school satisfaction & perceptions of teacher support (Arens & Morin, 2016)

Tips for Wellness Myths

Drink lots of coffee!

Tip #3 �Put your own oxygen mask on first

Workplace Health

My workplace 1 = strongly disagree to 5 – strongly agree

1. Meets & adheres to the legal requirements of a psychologically safe & respectful workplace
2. Promotes, encourages & enforces respectful language, attitudes & respectful behaviours toward mental health & mental illness
3. Provides its employees with the appropriate knowledge & means of protecting & supporting one’s mental health
4. Provides & facilitates a supportive, safe & respectful atmosphere where you could turn to a colleague if you felt you were experiencing psychological distress
5. Is overseen & led by an individual who is respectful toward mental illness & seeks to promote & implement mental health literacy amongst employees
6. Promotes, encourages & provides the means for employees to maintain a healthy work-life balance
7. Would provide appropriate & adequate assistance if you came forward with a mental health issue or while in psychological distress

Mental Health…For Students & Teachers

• Awareness: attuned & accepting of your own needs & those of others – body, mind, emotion & spirit
• “I’d like to see mental health become more like dental health...most people brush every day and see a dentist once or twice a year – why can’t we take a few minutes for ourselves every day and get a mental health check at least once a year?” (Peter, Secondary Teacher)
• Balance: Finding ways to engage in all the important areas of your life
• “I work full time, teach part time at the university, have a partner and two teenage children. Everybody asks how I make time for long distance running, triathalons, hockey and soccer teams? Everyone in my family knows that I need that time to recharge...or I’m no good to anybody. Especially in teaching when you’re not only caregivers to your own children, but also caregivers to other people’s children.” (Robyn, Elementary Teacher)
• Connection: To oneself, to others, and to your mission
• “You have to find the people you can tell your story to.” (Patti, Elementary Teacher)

​

Tip #4 It’s Complex

• Wellbeing is subjective, individual, & influenced by many factors
• Reflect, consider, challenge, repeat
• Make plans, make them known, make them a priority
• Notice what has changed, and what has not
• Do more of what works, and less of what doesn’t

Getting help

• Utilize your Employee & Family Assistance Program – it’s free & confidential
• Starling Minds – free & confidential
• Training in Mental Health (Go To Educator Training)
• Use evidence based websites for teaching & learning

Starling Minds

www.teachresiliency.ca

Bringing Mental Health to Schools Online Course, UBC Faculty of Education

​

https://courses.cpe.ubc.ca/browse/ubcv/faculty-of-education/

​

teenmentalhealth.org