Strategies for Teacher Wellness

Explore resources and strategies that teachers and school organisations can use as they take steps toward improving teacher wellness.

School-Wide Strategies

Teachers report stress from having extreme amounts of paperwork (comprehensive and meaningful grading, student conflict, parent conflict, etc.), feeling alone and not having confidence in their ability. To alleviate this schools can try the following strategies:

• Dedicate 1-2 hours of faculty meeting time to completing paperwork on a monthly basis.

• Create a buddy system that provides the opportunity for teachers to collaborate.

• Facilitate building relationships between teachers. Providing an avenue for teacher to develop collegial partnerships with each other is proven to reduce stress.

• Create a mentoring program for new teachers or teacher new to your school/district.

• Ensure that your new teacher induction process includes opportunities for building relationships, understanding how the organisation runs (the who to call and what to do if) clearly identified avenues for support and peer to peer coaching, which will help with the lack of professional confidence that many new teachers have.

• Embed emotional wellness techniques such as mindfulness, meditative practices and exercise classes into the school culture.

What one strategy would have an impact at your school and on teacher stress?

Additional Reading

http://www.educationalleadership-digital.com/educationalleadership/2018xx/MobilePagedArticle.action?articleId=1429763#articleId1429763www.educationalleadership-digital.com

http://www.ascd.org/publications/educational-leadership/oct18/vol76/num02/SEL-for-Adults.aspxwww.ascd.org

Individual Strategies

Where to Focus