Your Mental Health is their Educational Wealth
Chris Gunner, the Customer Success Manager at Tassomai and a former English teacher shares his tips on reducing teacher stress and how Tassomai can play a part in helping by reducing marking and making homework setting easier.
Setting the Scene
For all of its high-points, teaching can also come with a number of lows. No job is without stress of course, but working in education can bring some unique challenges that few other careers face. From increasing workload and concerns over class sizes, to the volatility of working with young people - with these issues in themselves exacerbated in recent years - the UK classroom can be a minefield for mental health.
There has been an increased effort to acknowledge the importance of teacher wellbeing, with initiatives being introduced to improve wellbeing and reduce stress. Yet despite proposals of a reduced working week and later starting times amongst others, true improvements have to be made at a daily level. The fundamental job of teaching remains the same, but small, lasting changes to the way it’s done can make a world of difference.
Not a Saviour, but a Sound System of Support
I think it’s fair to say right now that Tassomai isn’t going to be the panacea that improves teacher wellbeing. If such a solution existed, we wouldn’t be seeing record numbers of educators leaving the classroom. And as much as we can do, we’re just one platform. But our specialism lies in ensuring students are receiving timely, differentiated content exactly when they need it, with minimal input from teachers.
In my previous blog, I wrote about how Tassomai can help to reduce some aspects of workload through its design. Given that workload and mental health are so closely linked, it’s worth giving that a read if you haven’t already done so. Knowing that your students are being set personalised homework tasks that are marked by our system relieves the ever-present pressure of setting (and marking) meaningful homework.
Another way in which Tassomai can support teacher wellbeing is that it can help with the fear of the unknown - for your students, it’s doing that by revisiting their topics over and over until they’re familiar with the content. But, for staff, the system provides you with a wealth of data - student progress, trouble areas at an individual, class or year group level, quizzing habits of learners and more - to ensure that you’re aware of what they know, and how to help them with what they’re not 100% sure of yet. Removing the fear of the unknown can have a massively positive impact on your mental health.
Practical Advice for All
As a former teacher, I know firsthand that the job can be incredibly challenging at times. Here’s my top tips for reducing some stress and safeguarding your mental health:
Prioritise and protect your downtime. My partner and I taught in the same school so understood the importance of switching off completely. We made a rule that we would always give ourselves Friday nights and Saturdays off - no work and as little mention of it as possible! Building this routine helps to build up that sense of earned ‘me-time’ and gives you something to really look forward to after a long week.
Communicate with colleagues as openly as you feel comfortable with about how you’re doing. I was fortunate enough to have an incredibly strong team in school, and knew I could lean on them when I needed a little cry in the book cupboard. Okay, maybe it wasn’t THAT dramatic, but by talking about my concerns for a class, or an upcoming lesson I wasn’t 100% sure of yet, I felt so much better for it. Often, others around us see a solution to a problem in seconds that we’d never considered. If you don’t feel able to do this with colleagues, consider joining online spaces for teachers - you’re guaranteed to find like-minded people who share your concerns and will have helpful advice to hand!
Accept that while you’re a teacher, and thus the closest thing we have to real-life superheroes, you’re not perfect. Sometimes a lesson you thought was perfect will flop. Sometimes a student will be having a bad day and make it seem like it’s all your fault. Sometimes the weight of the world will feel like it’s on your shoulders, when it’s pitch black at 7am on a cold February morning it seems like there’s very little to smile about. But remember that the profession you’ve entered, and the knowledge and affection you impart could be the reason that one child becomes an athlete, a doctor, a writer or a business owner.
Oh, and remember to drink loads of water and let out an impressive array of curse words when you get home after work each night. Worked for me!
Read more from Chris:
New to Tassomai? Learn more about Tassomai for teachers here.