Exam time can be stressful for students, often leading to a deterioration in the expected levels of behaviour in the classroom.
It is no surprise that emotions are often heightened due to the pressure, with many students finding it difficult to express their feelings. Teachers can make a real difference if they introduce some simple strategies to minimise low-level disruption.
There is a growing view that teachers in England are more stressed than other teachers worldwide. This view is backed up by some recent research and appears to be due to several factors.
Indeed, teachers who leave cite work-life balance and pressure as critical factors in their decision to leave the profession.
Let’s look at what the research has found to be the crucial issues that negatively affect our teachers and cause them stress.
Teaching is often described as a vocation, and indeed, many teachers are driven by their passion for education. However, it is also true that teaching is a profession where career development has an important part to play.
As teaching is constantly evolving, it makes sense for teachers to take ownership of their own growth.
There are plenty of good reasons to look for a new job as a teacher. You might want to progress to a more challenging position, find a more specialised role or travel to a new location.
Whatever the reason for your search, here are some excellent ideas for making your job hunt more successful.
Sometimes it seems as though there is no greater issue of contention in education than marking! Whether in Primary or Secondary education, there seems to always be an ongoing conversation about the value, necessity and regularity of marking with differing opinions from teachers, pupils, parents and SLT.
Teachers themselves don’t always agree about the benefits of marking, with some seeing it as an essential tool for feedback and progression while others see it as a waste of their precious time with no real benefit to pupils.
What exactly is it that causes marking to be so open to debate with no agreed solutions?
New Year resolutions are banded about in January with many good intentions and then often forgotten by February. Teachers might do better if they think about making some changes that will have a real impact in 2022.
Here are 4 ideas for changes that teachers can consider:
The stress and anxiety experienced by children due to lockdowns and lack of socialisation has already been well documented. However, one thing we are beginning to see is the effect of the government’s pressure to “catch up” children to meet their age-related goals and regain momentum towards pre-pandemic results.
Inevitably, teachers are already coming under intense pressure to ensure the pupils in their classes are reaching their expectations with very little mitigation of the difficulties this is causing.
Unfortunately, it isn’t just the teachers feeling this pressure, as the children are at risk of experiencing the fear of failure too.
Did you know that whilst many children of parents serving in the British Armed Forces attend schools that have a high percentage of service pupils, the majority attend schools with less than ten service children?
Children in this situation have unique circumstances where they may have been separated from a parent for long periods, moved homes and schools frequently, or even relocated to different countries.
Teachers can be ill-equipped to understand how they can help these military pupils but fortunately, a charity called Little Troopers has developed a programme of resources to help pupils from reception to sixth form. Designed with the help of educational psychologists, behavioural experts and play therapists, the resources are very helpful to any school that has children from a service background.
Time spent on marking students’ work and writing individual feedback has long been seen as adding to teacher workload. Moving away from written feedback is an obvious option to reduce teacher workload but schools are often reluctant to let go of the evidence that written feedback provides.
In an environment where school leaders are looking to reduce teacher workloads, it is important to be able to prove to Ofsted and parents that verbal feedback is an effective alternative to providing written feedback.
Looking at some current research into verbal feedback methods may help school leaders and teachers ensure they are following best practices. It should certainly open a debate into how changes could be trialled.
A question often asked in education is how to determine whether a head teacher is a good one. The attributes required to be one of the best head teachers may well be the same as required by any great leader, but a head teacher’s role can be particularly complex whatever type of school they are leading.
This is a list of eight qualities that you will want to see in the best head teachers.
A great head teacher:
