Tag: wellbeing

Stress Management Techniques for Online Teachers in 2023

Posted on by richardjamesrogers

An article by Richard James Rogers (Award-Winning Author of The Quick Guide to Classroom Management and The Power of Praise: Empowering Students Through Positive Feedback)

Illustrated by  Sutthiya Lertyongphati

Accompanying podcast episode:

Being an online teacher can be both rewarding and challenging. While it offers the flexibility of working from home and a broader reach to students worldwide, it also comes with its own set of stress factors. In 2023, as the world continues to digitize, the number of online teachers will likely increase, and so will the pressure to excel. In this post, we will look at some stress management techniques to help online teachers stay sane and healthy.
 
1. Prioritize Time Management
 
Online teaching requires meticulous planning, preparation, and execution. To minimize your workload and maximize your productivity, develop a routine that helps you stay organized. Create a schedule that balances your teaching workload and personal life commitments. Make sure you allocate enough time in your day for relaxation, exercise, and self-care. Setting limits on work can ensure you have enough energy to teach effectively.
 
2. Avoid Overworking
 
Online teachers often have to work outside normal working hours and weekends to accommodate students from different time zones. However, consistently overworking without taking time to rest can lead to burnout, fatigue, and diminished productivity. To avoid this, ensure you have a set work schedule that includes regular breaks and days off. When you are not teaching, avoid checking your email or working on your laptop to keep the boundaries clear.
 
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3. Find a Support System
 
Online teaching can be a lonely experience, especially when you work alone in your home office. Reach out to other online teachers or join online communities where you can share common challenges and success stories. Many online teaching platforms offer peer support groups, mentorship programs, and professional development resources. Take advantage of these opportunities to expand your network and alleviate stress.
 
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4. Practice Stress-Relieving Activities
 
Stress can take a significant toll on your physical and mental well-being. Engage in stress-relieving activities such as meditation, yoga, or deep breathing exercises to calm your mind and release tension. Taking a daily walk outside or performing simple stretches can also promote relaxation and reduce anxiety. Creating a calming workspace with soothing music and comfortable furniture can also help you relieve stress.
 
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5. Continuously Improve Your Skills
 
Online teaching technology is constantly evolving, and to stay relevant, you need to regularly develop your skills. Developing new skills through courses, workshops, and reading can boost your confidence and performance. Continuous learning can lead to new opportunities that can alleviate some of the stress of online teaching.
 
Conclusion
 
In conclusion, stress management should be an ongoing process and not a one-time solution. By prioritizing time management, avoiding overworking, finding a support system, practicing stress-relieving activities, and continuously developing your skills, you can stay healthy and productive in your online teaching career. Be kind to yourself, and remember that a little self-care can go a long way in reducing stress.
 
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3 Ways to Keep a High School Student Motivated

Posted on by richardjamesrogers

An article by Richard James Rogers (Award-Winning Author of The Quick Guide to Classroom Management and The Power of Praise: Empowering Students Through Positive Feedback)

Illustrated by Sutthiya Lertyongphati

Accompanying podcast episode:

As your children’s high school career nears its end, achieving good grades becomes ever-more important. There’s a lot at stake, in particular, the range of colleges from which they can choose after graduation. And with the cost of a college education being so high, excellent grades could be worth money in the form of bursaries and sponsorships. Even kids that don’t want to study further need to work hard. If a high school diploma is to be their highest educational achievement, it will be with them for the rest of their working careers.

While being a pushy parent can be counter-productive, keeping your children motivated in their final years of high school can be a challenge. Try the following strategies to improve their chances. 

#1: Get Help From a Private Educational Counsellor

Can you offer the right guidance for your child to get into top colleges? Chances are, you need an inside edge. Going Ivy College Consulting works with your children to help them map out their future for themselves, choosing the right courses and the right elite colleges to set them up for success. 

If going ivy isn’t on the cards, career counselling can still be enormously beneficial. Having an impartial third party to talk to about their future helps your children to feel more in control of their future learning and career paths. With a future they decided for themselves to look forward to, the chances of giving their final years at school their best effort becomes more likely.

#2: Be Supportive

Parents want to see their children embarking on a secure career. Sadly, this can lead to conflict and a lack of motivation at school.  For example, your daughter says she wants to study drama. You’re horrified and suggest accounting instead. With your support for what she really wants to do being absent, how motivated will she be as her final high school year draws to a close? Will your support for her exam preparation make a difference?

If you think your child is making a risky career choice, tell them about your concerns by all means, but never withdraw your support. Your aspiring drama student will open several career paths through her studies. For example, if she isn’t able to become a movie star, she can still apply her skills to teaching theatrical skills to kids. Whatever happens, remember that it’s up to your children to choose their careers, and not up to you. 

#3: Give Them Time

Although you feel that choosing a future career is an urgent matter, your high schooler may not feel ready to commit. Let’s be fair. A school student has no experience of the working world, and may not have found his or her passion yet. Some kids need to spend a year or two in the working world before they discover what they really want from a career. Push too hard, and your children might end up studying something they committed to on a whim only to find that it isn’t really for them. 

By all means, provide opportunities for them to explore possible careers, but make it clear that you aren’t pushing for a big decision just yet. When they find a career they can fall in love with, you’ll be ready to support them. Until they find their path, you’ll still be there for them whenever they need you. Apply too much pressure, leave your child with the impression that it’s about you and not about them, and they might decide the whole thing is a nasty business and start underperforming at school. 

Strike the Balance

We all have ambitions for our children, but ultimately, their future is up to them. Although you may not be sure that your children are making the right decisions, your role is that of wise counsellor and ardent supporter. It can be difficult, but the decision maker in this instance is your child. Opposing their wishes or pushing too hard will be counter-productive. Help your child to build a vision of his or her future that’s all their own. 

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Five Tips for Becoming a Happy Teacher

Posted on by richardjamesrogers

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.

“An AMAZING book for teachers!”

#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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