[color=indigo][/color]I have a few questions for a class i am taking: Are there any stressors that you as a teacher have (distruptive student behavior, gangs, insufficient resources, etc.) If so what stratigies do you use to cope with them? :?:
stressors
First reply is absolutely right! I think that a lot of the politics of a school are not even discussed in college, however, you can’t avoid it. sorry. I teach in a very “culturally diverse” school, and I have too many students with insufficient home lives. My first few months were spent crying until I realized that it’s not about me at all. It’s about them. Students come to school TALKING about everything from sex, drugs, gangs, and somethings I’ve never even heard of. They teach you to be “withit” in the classroom, and that’s exactly what you have to do. I spend more time discussing “life” with my kids than I would like to, but then again, a 90 minute block isn’t enough for me whew…You kind of have to go with the flow and take each day one at a time. I try to teach my students self respect and control along with equations and pythagoreum theorum-it’s not easy but I love it!
Myh biggest stressor is an incoherent and inconsistent philosophy of education as ‘envisioned’ by our school administrators. Our principal has no game plan of any kind and offers no guidance to faculty. New faculty is left confused and hanging. In terms of teaching approaches and styles, it’s a free for all here. We have grade teams and the grade teams establish their own requirements which can and do vary widely from grade to grade. Within the grade teams, individual teachers vie for power and that battle takes precedence over dealing with the needs of the students.
How I deal with that? I close my classroom door and try to block it all out. I avoid meetings whenever I can or they would drain all my energy for teaching.
Some of the stressors in a school come from within the school itself and are not brought to school by the kids or their families.