That teachers’ mental health is a critical element of retention on our schools, cannot be something to be wished away.
It is important to pinpoint that, teaching is challenging work. Teachers focus their energy on meeting the needs of their students while trying to balance their lives at home.
When you sum up the pressure that comes from various sources, such as trying to achieve a good subject grade for your class and the entire school, it is not hard to see how teachers find themselves in need of emotional first aid.
Principals and school leaders can help reduce the pressure on teachers and provide the emotional first aid that teachers need to stay and to succeed in their roles. Here are some things that principals can do to support their teachers’ mental health.
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Build a Culture of Trust
This is one of the most appropriate pieces of advice for any school or organization. It is a challenge to stay emotionally healthy while working as a teacher in general, but adding in a pressing work environment makes it nearly impossible for majority of the teachers to cope. Indeed, a culture of trust does not just appear, but it has to be established over time. This means, letting your staff know that this is a priority is a good first step in providing teacher support.
Know When Enough Is Enough
More often than not, if administrators are not careful, they can bury their teachers under a mountain pressure from paperwork, all in the name of accountability. While I value accountability, too, I still feel, principals should allow their teachers to prioritize planning lessons that meet the needs of their students over clerical tasks that they ask them to complete..
Implement Morale Boosters
There are things which sound small and little in the eyes of school administrators, but very important to an extent of making someone smile. For instance, a principal can call a staff meeting only to let his teachers play board games for an hour before they resume their classwork. This means, what you choose to do will depend on your school and setting, but I think you will find many morale boosters take little time and funding at the same time that they are beneficial teacher support strategies.
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Prioritize Goals
It is important to point out that, school improvement goals can be overwhelming to both the teachers and the administration. And no matter how good a school is, you can always write a goal to get better. As a Principal, to help keep your teachers fresh, prioritize all the goals on your plan and place emphasis on one or, at most, two of them to avert workload fatigue among your teaching staff.
Let Your Teachers Be Real People
More often than not, one of the challenges of being a teacher is that the school day takes up nearly all the “business hours” of the day, not knowing teachers, like any other human being also have ageing parents they take care of and children who have assignments to attend to.
Not to mention that teachers themselves sometimes need to go to their physicians or visit the dentist. It is stressful if you think your boss is going to be upset with you because you need a day off. Administrators want their teachers in the classroom because that is what gets the best curriculum delivery targets and results, but we also need to stop and remember that our teachers are people, too.
Set a Good Example
It is equally important for School Principals at the back of their mind to take cognizance of the fact that, just as with other areas of professionalism, they should model the behavior they expect from their teachers by setting practical examples in their daily administrative responsibilities.
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In a nutshell, tell your teachers that this weekend you are going to take an entire day to not do anything that has to do with school, and then do it. For instance take time out to exercise, hobbies, pets, day trips, and pleasure reading is all great ways to defragment oneself. In this case, just pick a couple of these to try and then tell your staff about your success.
Form a Social Committee
Most of our schools have some sort of social committee to plan social extra-curricular activities and staff events. If this committee is already in place, add emotional health as an agenda item at your next meeting. You are likely to gain some insights about how your staff feels and how you can provide teacher support.
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Be Ready to Listen
They say listening is not only a leadership quality, but a gift. It is through listening principals often form strong bonds with their faculty. This helps when a principal has to offer constructive criticism that will help a teacher reach their full potential.
These bonds can also set a principal up to be a safe person for their teachers. Naturally, being a safe person means that a teacher may want to tell you about how they are going through a divorce or having trouble with a son or a daughter. Though some may argue that it is not appropriate to engage in such conversations with subordinates, it is inevitable.
By Ben Oroko
The Writer is a Communications Practitioner and Correspondent based in Kisii.
benoroko2000@yahoo.com
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