Safeguarding teachers’ mental health

THERE CAN be no doubt that teaching is one of the most emotionally demanding jobs. On a daily basis, teachers, inclusive of administrators, are forced to balance powerful competing forces that can sometimes overwhelm their emotional capability. Over the decades, these forces have been apportioning more responsibility while simultaneously demanding more accountability from teachers.

The net result of this dynamic is frustration and emotional dysfunction. Facing this emotional burden on a daily basis can take a heavy mental toll on people who are unprepared to manage the sometimes highly charged environments which often characterise schools. This mental state is manifested in teachers sometimes being unable to maintain a cool, calm disposition required of them as professionals.

At many schools, the rise in indiscipline and deviant behaviours has been one of the greatest challenges for teachers and administrators. The sheer numbers of students displaying social and emotional deficits continue to overwhelm the capacity of many schools and school personnel.

These teachers are usually the first to interface with this challenge and oftentimes the pastoral imperative required to treat with these social shortfalls disrupts the curriculum delivery process. Compensating for these deficits at the level of the school requires a significant amount of time and emotional effort and is emotionally demanding.

Notwithstanding professional guidance, emotional bonds and attachments between teachers and students are formed leading to varying levels of empathy based on students’ socio-economic differentials. Oftentimes, school officials feel compelled to make significant emotional and even financial investments in their disadvantaged charges.

This can sometimes be the result of students reaching out for the support that their homes are not providing. While this is sometimes very effective in establishing trust between the teacher and child – a critical ingredient for the treatment of deviance and indiscipline – it often comes with a heavy emotional toll on teachers.

School leaders are compelled to offer guidance to subordinates in managing this emotional baggage.

In an era where child rights are being championed on a multitude of fronts devoid of child and parental responsibilities, teachers are feeling the social fallout. This has been taking a huge toll on teachers and school officials.

The lack of support, willingness of parents to openly confront and challenge school officials for not executing their duties and an indifferent employer who compounds existing challenges with ever increasing, sometimes unrealistic, demands, continue to be huge stressors to school officials. Frustrations and even anger are often the outcome of prolonged and sustained idealistic demands of stakeholders.

Work-life balance is a delicate but complementary act under normal circumstances of supervisor/supervisee and peer/peer relationships. In the school setting, this is compounded by these emotional responsibilities school officials assume owing to their social contracts and their obligations to maintain that professional image in private and public life and their sheer compulsion to reach out to as many students as possible.

Dealing simultaneously with multiple human issues can make it very difficult to cope with other responsibilities of professional and private life. School officials are well advised to seek help whenever they feel overwhelmed.

Peer and family support is critical in keeping perspectives and emotions in check. Knowing when and how to step back is a critical skill that all teachers must develop. Being able to resist the compulsion of allowing modern information and communication technologies from intruding into and violating private time and space is an imperative that is assuming gigantic importance.

Supervisors must be reminded of the need to not intrude unnecessarily into teachers’ private lives under the pretext of teacher commitment. Parents must also understand the need to respect the private space of teachers. They are, after all, human just like the rest of society and have their personal commitments to treat with.

Teachers are consistently reminded of their responsibilities and most often rebuked for failure to perform these but parents and, to a larger extent, members of the wider society are not held to the same standards.

Preserving one’s mental health and emotional stability must be a conscious and deliberate facet of one’s professional practice. Being aware of the limits of one’s emotional quotient is an exercise in self-awareness that teachers and school officials must consistently engage in given the stakes.

The unconscious ease with which many professionals can lapse into mental disequilibrium requires self-vigilance on a continuous basis and must be encouraged by employers on an ongoing basis.

Unfortunately owing to the negative stigmatisation associated with mental health, too many people, including highly qualified professionals, fail to take adequate steps to safeguard their mental health until it’s too late.