Stress Management and Resilience

Today's academic professional development lecture has focused on stress management and the effect of your own resilience. For me personally, this lecture has been very enlightening.

Wiggins (2015) states that 'Teaching is among the top three most stressed occupations'. Stress management is important for yourself and your classroom as it can effect your ability to teach affectively.

During professional practice I was trying so hard to become the best teacher I could be that I forgot about my work life balance. I spoke to my family less and less and my mum called me a 'boring teacher'. This sent my stress levels through the roof as I was then trying to please my family, little did she know I was working so hard to plan, put together evidence for my teachers' standard's portfolio and learn on the job. After this I had to order what was urgent and important and then complete my mental check list.

I tried to get my mum to understand the stress I was under, especially the day before an observation and confiding in her was the best decision I made. She taught me a simple method to use at night-

I imagined a post it note .... Wrote on it the jobs I needed to complete, scrunched it up and blew it away! It was as simple as that and it honestly helped me to sleep better. In future practice I will use this method to cope with stress and become more resilient as a result! After all... your mother always knows what's best. (cheeky wink)

This works towards Teachers' Standard 1 as you are expected to 'demonstrate consistently the positive attitudes, values and behaviour which are expected of pupils'. Therefore I will set myself the target to use the time evaluation matrix to determine 'jobs' that are either:

-Urgent and important - Important but not urgent

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-Urgent but not important -Not important and not urgent

Here are some other top tips for coping with stress-

Bibliography-

WIGGINS, 2015. Teaching is among the 'top three most stressed occupations' [online]. Available from: https://www.tes.com/news/school-news/breaking-news/teaching-among-top-three-most-stressed-occupations [Accessed 12th May 2016].

#TS1 #PartTwo