Strategy 3: Learn the Difference Between Good and Bad Coping
Every teacher has a unique way of coping with stress, and teachers hoping to successfully confront challenges and changes will need to reflect on their go-to strategies. Professor Cameron Montgomery and research director André Rupp (2005) make a distinction between active coping and passive coping strategies, and they say the most effective teachers thoughtfully embrace the former.
Teachers frequently engage in passive coping, but this coping style is usually detrimental to the long-term viability of teaching success. Montgomery and Rupp (2005) pinpoint a number of passive coping behaviors, including “resignation, drinking, wishful thinking, and avoidance” (p. 468). These behaviors in turn can result in “anxiety, depression, or even suicidal ideation” (Montgomery & Rupp, 2005, p. 468). Passive coping strategies are almost all short term in nature and can be broadly described as avoidances of taxing classroom realities. Such strategies don’t fix the root of the problem but rather delay a person’s facing those problems he or she must inevitably deal with.
Active coping, on the other hand, generally takes the form of “cognitive strategies” such as “changing perspective,” “exerting self-control,” and “rationally distancing oneself” (Montgomery & Rupp, 2005, p. 468). This form of coping can also be emotional in nature and involve “setting limits for work,” “seeking advice from others,” and “engaging in relaxation exercises” (Montgomery & Rupp, 2005, p. 468).
RIDE the WAVE
STRATEGY 2
List up to five colleagues whose advice you value. These are people you would call on first if you needed advice or if you simply wanted to vent. Next to each name, write a sentence or two about why you think he or she would be a good person to seek out.
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Active coping mechanisms provide you with cognitive and emotional capacities that will empower you, as a classroom teacher, to contextualize your teaching life by enhancing your perspective on your career and personal life. For example, a particular year of teaching may be trying, but an affirming form of coping will allow you to recognize that the difficult period will eventually end. A specific student may be challenging, but a successful episode of active coping will help you realize that most students are not difficult or a source of frustration. Also, active coping helps you realize that although your job might be a source of stress, that does not negate the blessings of your home life or remove all the interests you have outside of school.
Strategy 4: Be Self-Reflective and Set Realistic Goals
Change can distort what success and failure look like and make the very definitions of success and failure take on different qualities and appearances. As a result, constant change may create uncertainty over how teachers ought to feel about the outcomes they experience in their classrooms. Teachers can find it very difficult to self-reflect in the aftermath of a disappointing school year or in the face of new changes. However, four helpful reflective practices will allow teachers to process past outcomes in a relatively painless way yet aspire to turn failures into future successes. For all the suggestions that follow, it is important that teachers talk to one another about the lists and goals they create for themselves—otherwise, these are just mandatory exercises done in isolation. Because some of these suggestions require writing and all of them could reasonably involve the writing process, it might be wise for teachers to invest in a journal so that when they self-reflect and set goals, they have a single dedicated place to record and revisit their thoughts.
1. Write down three disappointments and three successes from the school year a few weeks after the school year ends: Give yourself a few weeks of perspective before making this list. The end of the year often leaves teachers feeling raw and run-down, even when the school year has been successful or concluded on a positive note. But with a bit of perspective, teachers can self-reflect in a manner that is not unduly negative or triumphant. Even the best years of a career can be improved on. Even the most dreadful years have their highlights. Making these lists will allow you to chart a realistic path to improvement that is both helpful for the future and comforting as you process the disappointments along the way.
RIDE the WAVE
STRATEGY 3
Researchers Vicky Austin, Surya Shah, and Steven Muncer (2005) offer the following list of activities for coping with teacher stress. Place a check mark next to each activity you have done and an X next to each one you wish to do in the future.
_____ Being active in a social club
_____ Being busy
_____ Being by myself
_____ Bicycling
_____ Breathing deeply
_____ Crying
_____ Eating
_____ Exercising
_____ Jogging
_____ Listening to music
_____ Preparing for work
_____ Relaxing or lying down
_____ Running long distances
_____ Screaming
_____ Sleeping
_____ Taking a hot bath or shower
_____ Talking to a friend
_____ Throwing something
_____ Visiting friends
_____ Walking
Source: Adapted from Austin, V., Shah, S., & Muncer, S. (2005). Teacher stress and coping strategies used to reduce stress. Occupational Therapy International, 12(2), 63–80. Accessed at www.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1002/oti.16 on July 17, 2019.
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2. Write about your best moment and worst moment from the school year: Writing is a form of catharsis. It also triggers thought and reflection. Simply writing about an event—especially one that you have thought about over and over—can help you see the event in a different way. Writing it down in a straightforward manner can bring closure to a difficult moment and preserve moments that are worth remembering. This practice can provide a new, more nuanced layer of introspection, and sometimes, it brings clarity to the moment so that you better understand what made it so good or so bad. If nothing else, you will now better remember a moment that in the future might have eluded you.
3. Reflect on why the disappointments happened, and create an action plan for next school year: There are dozens of reasons why classes, units, or entire years sometimes fail to meet expectations. And there are different forms of disappointments. Was class rapport lacking? Was performance poor? Did you fail to get through all the curriculum, or did you mismanage your time? Was the school itself in crisis or suffering from a vacuum of leadership? Did your private life interfere with goals and outcomes? Objectively reflecting on the year’s letdowns allows you to emerge from the negative headspace you may have been in, and to look back and see where you were situated the entire time. The next part is intensely personal. How are you