Teacher Stress Pack

Stress is part of the job, but when 70 percent of teachers quit within their first five years because the stress is making them physically and mentally ill, things have gone too far. This pack provides advice on dealing with stress in teaching. It seeks to combine self-help guidance with a core of professional reality to provide solutions that are effective and tailored to the demands of the educational sector.

The Teacher Stress Pack includes:

Onward: Cultivating Emotional Resilience in Educators – A practical framework to avoid burnout and keep great teachers teaching. Onward tackles the problem of educator stress, and provides a practical framework for taking the burnout out of teaching. Stress is part of the job, but when 70 percent of teachers quit within their first five years because the stress is making them physically and mentally ill, things have gone too far. Unsurprisingly, these effects are highest in difficult-to-fill positions such as math, science, and foreign languages, and in urban areas and secondary classrooms—places where we need our teachers to be especially motivated and engaged. This book offers a path to resiliency to help teachers weather the storms and bounce back—and work toward banishing the rain for good. This actionable framework gives you concrete steps toward rediscovering yourself, your energy, and your passion for teaching. You’ll learn how a simple shift in mindset can affect your outlook, and how taking care of yourself physically, mentally, and emotionally is one of the most important things you can do. The companion workbook helps you put the framework into action, streamlining your way toward renewal and strength. By cultivating resilience in schools, we help ensure that we are working in, teaching in, and leading organizations where every child thrives, and where the potential of every child is recognized and nurtured. Onward provides a step-by-step plan for reigniting that spark.

The Onward Workbook: Daily Activities to Cultivate Your Emotional Resilience and Thrive – An empowering journey that keeps great teachers in the classroom. The Onward Workbook is a collection of tools and strategies that help teachers banish the burnout and cultivate true resilience. Keyed to the framework presented in Onward, this companion piece augments the text with practical exercises, coaching, and step-by-step walkthroughs of beneficial practices. Deep introspection allows you to verbalize your feelings, name your challenges, and identify the tools you have and the tools you need—from there, you’ll explore each of the 12 Key Habits and learn how to put them into practice every day. In cultivating resilience within yourself and your teaching practice, you improve your health, your outlook, and your relationships while building an environment in which every child succeeds. This workbook takes you on a journey of specific self-discovery that changes your perspective, renews your confidence, and empowers you to make the much-needed changes that allow you to continue inspiring young minds. Resiliency is an underrated skill—one that can make all the difference in our schools. Challenges will always arise, but it is your response that dictates the outcome. Can you think of a more important lesson for your students? When some 70 percent of teachers quit within their first five years, it is clear that changes must be made. The Onward Workbook equips you to make the changes that you can, and flourish into the future. While this book can be used by individuals, it is also designed so that groups, teams, departments, or an entire staff can take up the learning together. There are specific suggestions in the workbook for using this with a group, and educators will reap even more reward from discussing the practices and experiences with colleagues.

Teacher Burnout Turnaround: Strategies for Empowered Teachers – Stress and burnout are eroding teachers’ motivation, performance, quality of classroom interactions, and relationships with students, as well as their commitment to the profession. Principals are leaving in droves, and teacher shortages are becoming the new normal. Our teachers are underappreciated and our schools underresourced. Educational psychologist Tish Jennings presents a matrix of stress-causing factors that lead to burnout, and shows how teachers can tackle the sources of stress at each pressure point. From the development of social and emotional competencies, so important to teachers and students alike, to the achievement of systemic change through collective efficacy, she offers hope and practical remedies for overcoming a toxic trend in education.

Everyday Self-Care for Educators – If you’re an educator experiencing burnout, compassion fatigue, or vicarious trauma, this book will help you embrace tangible self-care practices to improve your well-being both in and out of the classroom. Using the framework of the “window of capacity”—the zone of the nervous system arousal in which a person is able to function most effectively—the authors illustrate not only “the why” of self-care, but also “the how.” Chapters explore how stress at school impacts personal life, the way teacher self-care benefits students, and ways in which schools can implement and support well-being. The book includes a variety of tips and interactive activities to help you identify your own needs and implement helpful practices. You’ll leave with a toolbox of information and simple practices to effectively advocate for your well-being in educational spaces and beyond.

Coping With Everyday Stressors Workbook – In our frenetic society with demands being placed upon people in the workplace, school, community, and home, it is more important than ever for people to find creative ways to cope with and maybe even eliminate distress in their lives. Distress is different than eustress (a name for good stress), which is the helpful type of stress, one that is a burst of energy, telling one’s body what to do. It is the type of stress that can help one accomplish tasks, goals and projects, motivating one to move forward. Eustress becomes distress when it is overdone. Use the assessments and activities in this workbook to help your clients look at the four prominent dimensions which make up a sense of optimal wellness and help them experience Eustress, rather than distress, in their lives.

Managing Stress in Education – a practical stress management programme for use in schools and colleges. A comprehensive resource that includes up-to-date theory and practice, Managing Stress in Education uses session plans and practical activities to help develop stress management skills in staff and students. The basic principles and techniques of stress management are straightforward, enabling the activities and sessions in this resource to be used across all Key Stages.  This resource will: reduce the stress levels of students and staff; train staff to manage the effects of stress in the classroom; develop resilience in students; key information from stress literature; understand the triggers of stress; understand others under stress and the stress that comes with exams; teach students to choose what to think and learn muscle relaxation techniques; and embed stress management in schools curriculum.

PEP Talks Coping with Stress – Wouldn’t it be great to have the expert advice of a psychologist to carry around with you? Now you can, with our new PEP Talks card decks, written by internationally recognised psychologist, Dr. Lawrence Shapiro. Contains 55 cards with inspiring quotes and psychological techniques as well as action tasks. Each card has three parts: on the front is a quote or simple psychological technique, on the back is an explanation of the quote or technique, and also on the back is a behavioural assignment. You can use the cards any way you like. You can try a new card every day or every week or whenever you need a little “pep talk.” Just pick a card and you or your clients will take another step forward towards a deep sense of emotional control and well-being. Can be used for individual counselling or group discussions, as well as a home wellness program. These cards are not intended to replace psychotherapy or counselling, but they may be an aid to the therapeutic process. Comes in a handsome tin box.

Taking Care of Your Mental Health During the COVID-19 Pandemic (PDF) – COVID-19 has caused a worldwide health crisis as well as a worldwide mental health crisis. This workbook was written to help you understand the many ways the pandemic can affect your mental health, and it offers practical tools and solutions to deal with problems before they become too serious.