richardjamesrogers.com is the official blog of Richard James Rogers: high school Science teacher and award-winning author of The Quick Guide to Classroom Management. This blog post is illustrated by Pop Sutthiya Lertyongphati.
Happy teachers make happy students. When we’re happy we have energy, passion for the job and a greater sense of overall purpose in life. Happiness can be difficult to achieve, however, when we’re dealing with the daily stresses of being a teacher: duties such as paperwork, writing reports, meeting tight deadlines, marking, and even trying to teach remotely and face-to-face at the same time (a very recent challenge that teachers all over the world have had to deal with). Today, I’ve invited Jessica Robinson, educational writer at The Speaking Polymath, to share her insights and tips for being, and staying, happy in your role as a teacher.
If we look closely, everything we do in life is focused on one thing – becoming happy. The same is true for our profession. Most of us have chosen teaching as our profession, most likely for two reasons. One is that we feel happy to teach students. The second is to earn money. If we look at both these reasons, they are related to happiness. Teaching gives us happiness, and money helps us buy things we need to be happy. Now here is an important question we need to ask ourselves: Are we delighted? The answer is most likely a no. This is because teaching is a stressful profession. Every day we have to deal with several stressful events as teachers. Noisy students, teaching effectively, and shouldering our responsibilities well are all in some way causes of stress for us, and when there is stress, there cannot be true happiness. But, we all need happiness, right? As discussed above, it is the primary goal behind everything we do. Now, the question is how to become happy teachers? Here are five tips that will help you.
#1: Cultivate acceptance for your students’ behavior
One of the biggest causes of stress we face every day is our students’ wrong behavior. Even if we are thrilled, it takes just a single lousy remark from a student to make us feel stressed and unhappy. However, if we simply understand that kids are kids, then we will be in a much better place of acceptance. They will make such mistakes, and there is no need for us to take things personally. Instead, we can try to help them become better human beings. This simple acceptance of our students’ behavior can help us become happy teachers. So, we should all try to cultivate acceptance for our students’ behavior and then take steps to improve their behavior without being impacted by them.
#2: Spend some time playing with your students
Playing is the key to feeling happy. I know we are teachers, but don’t we all have a little child who is always excited to play? Yes, we do! At times, we should try to let this inner child out and spend some time playing with our students. There is nothing terrible in playing with kids for 10 to 15 minutes. When we play with our students, they become more connected to us. As a result, they pay more attention in our classes, which is the key to effective classroom management. So, if you like, you can give this tip a try. I’m sure if you do, you’ll end up falling in love with it. [Note from Richard: This can be done with students of any age, even high-school students. Read my blog post entitled 10 Learning Games to Play With Your Students here.].
#3: Make meditation a part of your daily routine
A calm mind is a happy mind. There are no two opinions regarding it. This implies that to become satisfied teachers, we need to cultivate a relaxed mindset. For this, one of the best techniques which we can practice is meditation. It doesn’t mean that there will be no fluctuations once you start meditating, and your mental state will always remain calm. No, it is not so, but with regular meditation, you will be able to re-establish a relaxed mental state soon after your peace gets disturbed. This implies that the duration of your unhappy cycles will get significantly reduced. So, to become a happy teacher, you should try to make meditation a part of your daily routine. You can use guided meditation videos to meditate initially, and later you can switch to meditating all by yourself.
#4: Make friends with your colleagues
Does spending time with your near and dear ones make you feel good? The answer is a yes, as it is right for all of us. Whenever we spend time with our loved ones, our body gets flooded with oxytocin: a happy hormone that triggers positive feelings and reduces our stress levels. One trick to stay happy at work is to have some loved ones. This means that we should try to make friends with our colleagues. We can try to cultivate a big friend circle at work. This will help us significantly increment our happiness levels as teachers. If something goes wrong in class, we can share it with our friends, or if we are feeling stressed, we can share our feelings with them and feel lighter.
#5: Take a short walk during your free time at work
It has been scientifically proven that exercise is good for our physical health and mental health. When we exercise, our brain secretes happy hormones like serotonin, dopamine, and oxytocin, which trigger positive feelings and make us feel satisfied. Although you cannot exercise at work, you can still take a short walk during your free time at work. This will help you induce positive feelings and feel happier.
Conclusion
Happiness is the primary motive behind everything we do. So, becoming happy teachers should be one of our goals despite all the stress associated with our profession. We can utilize the above-mentioned tips for the fulfillment of this goal. Now, I wish you all the Best and have a happy time teaching!
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