In honour of Mental Health Month in New South Wales, you’ve seen a series of articles by our leading experts from the Centre for Emotional Health. This week, Professor Ron Rapee talks to us about building resilience in our teachers.

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If we asked you to make a list of the most stressful professions you’d probably start with emergency services, or perhaps social services. It probably comes as no surprise to most educational staff that teachers should be on that list too. In fact, a 2005 survey of job stress had teachers as the second highest stressful occupation.

Why is this important?

Teachers play a critical role in the development of a functioning society. We entrust them with the future of our communities – the youth. But what about their wellbeing? Teaching has become one of the most stressful professions in modern society. The very people we trust with shaping the minds of our youth feel a great deal of pressure. We should be providing them the tools to deal with the pressures and creating supportive environments so they can do their jobs to their greatest ability.

Why are teachers so stressed?

First thoughts on this question naturally lead us to the obvious understating that controlling large numbers of young people – from toddlers to teenagers – can be a stressful task. Young people don’t naturally bend into orderly systems, and many of them don’t even want to be there.

However, the issue is more complex. Research has shown that there are three sources of stressful feelings: the nature of the stressor itself; the individual’s own ability to cope (otherwise known as resilience); and the structures available in the external environment.

So, we need to focus on the large variety of individual differences in resilience and the important role that education institutions themselves can play in reducing stress.

Let’s talk about resilience

Resilience in teachers is not simply dependent on their personal characteristics.

A study of Australian teachers in 2012 revealed that teachers who were more resilient had the following attributes:

• more competent and higher in self-belief
• highly organised and prepared
• calm, flexible, adaptable and had a good sense of humour
• realistic with regard to goals and expectations
• more interpersonally skilled
• happy to ask for and accept advice from others
• good problem-solving skills
• regularly worked on self-improvement

The study also revealed that more resilient teachers also came from more supportive environments. What does that mean? It means they had motivated students and well-organised classrooms. They had a clear and well-structured school as well as support from colleagues, friends and family.

To further highlight the importance of one’s environment, a large American study of over 25,000 teachers revealed that teachers’ job satisfaction was heavily influenced by the school culture, their own professional expertise, support from colleagues, principal and community, and the facilities available to them.

So how do we support our teachers?

Two clear avenues emerge when it comes to helping teachers build resilience. First, by assisting teachers with their personal skills and abilities including:

• increasing a personal sense of competence
• practicing methods to improve time management, structure, and organisation
• teaching problem-solving strategies
• encouraging realistic thinking styles, solid coping techniques, and focusing on realistic goals

And the second avenue – improving the school context, including:

• strengthening support networks, inside and outside of the school
• ensuring overt support from the principal and other leaders
• clear communication and maximising classroom organisation
• giving teachers control over their facilities

Where to from here?

So yes, teaching is an inherently stressful occupation. Stressed and burned out teachers leave the profession at a far higher rate than others. Now, we may never be able to eliminate all the pressure that teachers are under, but that doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t reduce teachers’ stress and support their wellbeing.

Our schools, education departments, and community will benefit both economically and practically by having the most resilient teachers possible. The past decade has seen massive strides in bringing mental health programs into schools for students. We now need to do the same for our teachers.