Globally, teaching is a highly demanding profession that involves a high amount of emotional labour.
Simply put, the job does not end once the final bell rings. In South Africa – a country where many teachers are worried about whether their learners are getting enough to eat or if they have a safe place to sleep at night – the emotional well-being of teachers is under even greater pressure.
“Adding to these pressures is Covid-19 and the debate around whether teachers felt safe to return while infections continued to soar,” said Malcolm Mooi, founder of online Professional Learning Community Zibuza.net.
Mooi said that it’s important to acknowledge that the emotional pressure that teachers are facing did not begin with Covid-19.
As early as 2007, two University of South Africa professors surveyed close to 1 000 South African educators about their mental well-being and identified the following stressors:
• Uninvolved parents
• Poor learner discipline
• Lack of learner motivation
• Learners’ negative attitudes towards themselves
• Numerous changes inside and outside the school
• A lack of self-esteem. Teachers within the Zibuza.net network said not much has changed today.
“While awareness about the internal and external pressure teachers are facing is growing, not much is being done to mitigate this.
Unfortunately, for both teachers and learners, these issues are beginning to spill over into the classroom,” said Mooi.
This is evidenced through the recent shocking reports of violence in Gauteng classrooms.
A survey conducted by the Youth Research Unit of the Bureau of Market Research found that of the randomly selected 4 760 learners and 286 teachers, more than half the learners (58 per cent) and 48 per cent of teachers who took part in the study have personally experienced violence at school during the 12 months preceding the survey.
The researchers found that much of the violence could be attributed to an inappropriate response to intense emotions experienced by both teachers and learners.
Unwell teachers
Although a slight amount of pressure is necessary for people to perform effectively, excessive pressure can result in emotional distress, poor teaching, poor decision-making in the classroom, low levels of self-esteem, low job satisfaction and may drive some to leave the profession altogether.
“Stress manifests as physical symptoms, and teachers may find themselves calling in sick more and more often, which disrupts the flow of instruction between teacher and learner and can lead to student underachievement,” said Mooi.
Stress is also associated with high teacher turnover, as nearly half of all new teachers leave the field within the first five years.
Those who choose to stick it out have their own set of challenges to grapple with.
A 2015 Gallup poll found that nearly two-thirds of teachers who elected to stay in the profession reported feeling “disengaged,” or mentally and emotionally disconnected from their teaching role and their learners’ needs.
Learners are attuned to their teacher’s mood and can tell when they are feeling stressed – even if the teacher tries to hide it.
“This can have a hugely negative impact on the emotional state of the learners themselves,” said Mooi.
Academics from the University of British Columbia, in Canada, examined the levels of cortisol – known as the stress hormone – in 406 primary-aged learners.
“They found that those children whose teachers reported feeling close to burnout had much higher levels of cortisol than those whose teachers were not stressed.”
Changes teachers can make
With all this in mind, how can we protect the emotional well-being of both teachers and learners?
Kate Tregan Rowe, intimacy and well-being specialist at Explorare, recently appeared on a Zibuza.net podcast, The Education Show, to share some simple actions teachers can take:
• Don’t be afraid to vocalise how you’re feeling.
“Talking about one’s emotions can be quite scary, but I recommend that you begin by getting comfortable just saying how you feel, even if there’s no explanation. Just saying it out loud is the first step.”
• Have daily personal check-ins.
“Take two minutes every day to notice how you’re feeling so that you can begin to make choices that are aligned to your needs.”
• Listen to what your body needs.
“Whether that’s moving your body or finding some stillness to just rest. Too often we ignore what our bodies are telling us, and our mental and physical health suffers as a result.”
• Be honest with your learners.
“I am obviously not advocating for teachers to share every detail of their personal lives with their learners, but I do think that it is important for educators to be honest about how they’re feeling.
This establishes a teacher-learner connection that prioritises honesty and builds trust.”
“Teachers need to make sure they take care of themselves so that they can take care of others.
Without actively caring for themselves, teachers lose the capacity to care for others,” said Mooi.
