Stress can occur in both personal and professional aspects of life. It is best to deal with them so it doesn't become a chronic issue that can worsen over time.
About 50% of US work days are lost due to stress. This is a shocking statistic, and must relate back to headaches, stomach problems, and back pain.
I find that my biggest stressor is balancing being a single parent, doing everything on my own and still continuing to pursue my own dreams. I want my child to be proud of me.
So far in this course, I have learned how important critical thinking/social skills are in the workplace.
Understand and understand the stressors.
Comment on Sherry Johnson's post: Dealing with stress first begins with understanding and recognizing what your stressors are. Once that is understood, you can plan how to eliminate them and ask for help.
The biggest stressor that I experience as a teacher is always the incongruity of expectation versus reality. We work very hard as teachers but the reality of our paychecks at times conflicts with our passion for this profession. We also prepare diligently but then can have a class that does not respond in the way we thought they would (or perform in the way we thought they are capable). It is part of the job and I have learned to accept the disparity and work within its confines. This training has several strategies that I will use.
It is important to not just ignore stress. It will not go away on it's own and will in fact only get worse over time without proper intervention.
Be more transparent about your stress: Personal or professional
A stress list is a great idea to identify the stressors that I encounter. I believe will give this a try.
Lack of time for all the tasks.
Too much stress can affect our health and reduce our productivity.
The course gives us very useful tools to identify our stressors, which I think is the first step to having a better life.
Comment on Shayna Sykes's post: I agree.
the complications of daily life along with the start of a new career, long commute to work, lack of sleep due to a medical condition. But, I'm grateful for the new experiences and the opportunity to meet new people and make new friends.
In my opinion, a lot of stress comes down to time management and also expectations. There is the expectation that the teacher can carry the student to success and while that may be true for many students, it is impossible for you to provide what every student needs. Better time management has certainly helped reduce my stress levels already, and better preparation in regards to lecture will help ease a lot of the strain, but identifying and accepting the fact that you are human has done wonders for my mental health.
I'm stressed that our Administration doesn't seem to provide consistent consequences to students so "they run the show."
Staying organized helps with a less stressful life in general.
I learned that it is important to identify your stressors and to learn how to manage them individually, so they do not overlap and blend into other activities and tasks.
Stress originates from a variety of sources – depending on the individual. I think maturity has a lot to do with how people cope with stress. At the same time, a person can be stressed and not know it but people around them see behavioral traits that are ignored and or are not acted upon. If someone is stressed out or “pinging” due to something as simple as an overhead projector template not fitting properly, chances are there is something else going on in that person’s life. Then there is the issue of an instructor stressing out over course content or the institution’s policy on grading. This is certainly a justifiable reason stress given the instructor’s passion for their student’s and their perceived value of their instruction. However, it’s important to recognize what can be controlled. In both instances cited, the transparency simply does not fit. So what! Improvise and move on. Some people cannot adapt to such a simplistic solution for such a simple problem. Curriculum and grading are institutional issues of which an instructor has only so much control over the result. Again, make adjustments – then move on.
