Why is my Teacher Angry? Importance of Teacher SEL for Students
Here is a conversation between two 12-year-old kids.
Sasha: Hi Rubin! You don’t look so well? Is everything cool?
Rubin: Hi Sasha. Just not feeling so great. My teacher got really very angry at me in the online class in front of everybody for not turning the audio off during the class. It was very embarrassing.
Sasha: Did you forget switching it off or something?
Rubin: Yeah, it was a weird accident. I switched my video off and audio on. I had to do the opposite. There is so much noise due to the construction happening in the neighborhood…ugh. Well it’s just silly, every day my teacher has to remind us to do so and that’s the first thing I do but somehow today it slipped my mind.
Sasha: I am sure it is not that serious, why are you feeling so sad?
Rubin: Probably you are right. I was just wondering why my teacher gets angry on little things. She is no doubt a very sweet person and is very helpful but there is no way of telling how her mood is. Anyways it just does not feel good. I don’t know what my classmates are thinking about the situation.
Sasha: I totally get you! But cheer up Rubin. It’s totally cool. No one will remember anything tomorrow. It will be a new day!
Rubin: Yeah, hope so!
What do you think about this conversation? Why do you think the teacher got angry with this kid? What could be the reason for this teacher’s outburst? Is it just the mishap that happened with the kid? Or can this anger be a manifestation of exhaustion and stress the teacher feels in the job? Can this issue be addressed? Let us give a little thought to all these questions.
We often think of teachers as super beings but in reality being a teacher can be extremely stressful. There is relatively less research conducted on teachers’ emotional well-being but here is a paper written by Rosemary E. Sutton. Miss. Sutton is a teacher herself and has conducted interesting research on teachers’ emotions and need for self regulation. She also looks into the effects of teachers’ emotions on children. Miss Sutton describes her experience with anger and frustration in the classroom. She says in a classroom environment actions/appraisal to a situation are formed instantaneously. Emotions like anger and frustration can be instantaneous. To understand this better let’s recollect Rubin’s experience, Rubin says the teacher has been asking children every day to switch the audio off due to background noises and when she saw Rubin doing otherwise her instant reaction was to get angry. This reaction was instantaneous. However upon reflection the teacher might realize that she could have managed the situation in a better way. Not being able to reflect on one’s emotions can be an outcome of being stressed to reach a set goal or it could be absence of the tradition of self reflection itself. It is established through research that teachers’ increasing stress levels influence their behaviour towards children and also impact their professional commitment. However, there is no denying that it is important for the teachers to understand their emotions and deliberately regulate them while addressing children. But what is it that really causes stress among teachers?
Let’s take a little time to think about why teachers are exhausted and stressed. To find an answer to this question I spoke to a few teachers and received a very long list of reasons. The heavy workload, unreachable academic targets, skewed teacher student ratio, ton load of syllabus to complete, non negotiable administration duties, children misbehaving in classrooms, not knowing if children are learning what is being taught, complaints from parents, low salary, lack of support, no autonomy to make decisions are just few among many reasons that cause exhaustion and stress among teachers.
Here the next important question to ask is how does this stress affect teachers’ social, emotional and mental well-being? Kimberly A. Schonert-Reichl, finds in her research that chronic stress levels among teachers causes occupational burnout, dissatisfaction in professional life and creates a feeling of low sense of achievement. This leads to teachers falling into a mechanical lifestyle. This can have severe consequences on their physical health too. This amount of chronic stress not only affects teachers’ personal well-being but also has adverse impact on children’s social emotional well-being.
At this point it is pertinent to ask how high stress levels among teachers affect children?
In search of answers to this question Melissa A. Milkie and Catharine. H Warner conducted a study with 10,000 first grade children and their teachers. They wanted to understand how the learning environment affects the development of children. They found that teachers who are highly stressed had more children with mental health problems in their classrooms. These kids showed signs of impulsive behaviour, anxiety and low self esteem. Interpersonal issues like not being able to express emotions or resolve conflicts was also observed. This brings us to say that stress is contagious. A stressed out teacher has a class of stressed out students. Hence it is not wrong to say that we need to address teachers’ social emotional well-being to be able to help children to improve their social emotional competencies.
But what can be done to support teachers’ social emotional well-being?
There is advocacy for introducing stress management courses and courses on social emotional well-being in formal teacher training degrees. Alternatively in recent times there are several capacity building programs that teachers can take up while in service too. These programs are specially designed to improve teachers’ stress management strategies and social emotional competencies. These capacity building programs extend support by giving the right tools to the teachers to manage stress at personal level, improve their social emotional competencies and cater to children’s social emotional needs. They are tailored to build resilience, encourage mindful reflection and equip teachers to build positive relationships with children. The aim is to strengthen the position of teachers in a school system and equip them to become an active agent of boosting their students’ academic, social and emotional well-being.
‘Lead Well’ is one such social-emotional capacity building program for teachers developed by Learning Curve Life Skills Foundation, Hyderabad, India. It is designed to support, develop and promote social emotional well-being among teachers. The intervention (Lead Well) was provided to teachers in Kasturba Gandhi Balika Vidyalayas, Vikarabad district and in Affordable Private Schools (APS) of Hyderabad. Results in both school categories showed that teachers were able to establish better student-teacher relationships and also manage classrooms better. There was improvement in academic and social-emotional competencies of students too. Hence, the first step to teachers’ positive social emotional development is to believe that teachers like in any other profession need support to develop their social emotional competencies and deal with challenges they face in their professional life. Hence, a little support extended to teachers can go a long way in improving social emotional well-being of both teachers and children in the long run.
Here are a few articles you can read to delve into aspects of social emotional well-being among teachers.
REFERENCES
Oberle, E., & Schonert-Reichl, K. A. (2016). Stress contagion in the classroom? The link between classroom teacher burnout and morning cortisol in elementary school students. Social Science & Medicine , 159 ©, 30–37, DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2016.04.031
Button, R. E. (2007). Teachers’ anger, frustration, and self-regulation. American Psychological Association , 259–274, DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/B978-012372545-5/50016-2
Schonert-Reichl, K. A. (2017). Social and Emotional Learning and Teachers. Future of Children , 1, 137–155. https://www.jstor.org/stable/44219025
Milkie, M. A., & Warner, C. H. (2011). Classroom Learning Environments and the Mental Health of First Grade Children. Journal of Health and Social Behavior , 52 (1), 4–22. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/0022146510394952
Cynthia K. Buettner, Lieny Jeon, Eunhye Hur & Rachel E. Garcia (2016): Teachers’ Social–Emotional Capacity: Factors Associated With Teachers’ Responsiveness and Professional Commitment, Early Education and Development, DOI: 10.1080/10409289.2016.1168227
