Stress

Hello everyone,

I received an email reporting that Health Magazine lists "inner-city high school teacher" as the number 1 most stressful job. While other lists report other jobs as most stressful, and while the middle school teachers among us would be willing to go head to head with the high-schoolers on which is the more stressful job, I think it is fairly safe to say that our jobs are stressful, regardless of who's number one.

I did some other reading after receiving the email (I include some links at the bottom of this email), and I've thought of my own levels of job stress over the years, and I think I can give some advice on this issue--more from personal experience than from hard research, but with some research to back me up if you need it.

Many people rank job stress as a major challenge, and the symptoms of job stress (yelling at each other, physical threats, susceptibility to sickness) have a way of creating more stress.

It's interesting to note that the stress of a job is not always the job itself; rather, it is the milieu that the job happens in. For secondary teachers in East LA, apart from the normal stress of teaching teenagers, there is the additional stress of helping them through such problems as pregnancy, drug use, and gang affiliation--not to mention the stresses of working in a large bureaucracy.

Still, an important thing that I have discovered is that, for me, it is more stressful to have things be easy than to have things be challenging. I thrive on challenges--less now than maybe twenty years ago, but I still prefer a job that requires something out of me over a job that allows me to sit around and do nothing. The latter is extremely stressful for me; the former is more exhilarating than stressful.

That leads to an important idea: We don't necessarily want to eliminate the stresses of our lives. We really want to manage them.

In LA Unified, that can be difficult sometimes, but it's possible.

For me, the most important tool for relieving stress is exercise. Really. I obviously haven't been exercising enough to lose much weight, but I have learned from sad experience how essential it is to manage stress. Even 15 minutes a day is sufficient to de-stress.

Along with exercise is diet. If you're not eating a healthy, balanced diet, you will feel your stress levels rise. Of course, when my stress level rises, I eat more, and I seek "comfort foods," which are high calorie. (When I figure out how to conquer this completely, I'll let you know--meanwhile, my girth is a testament to my struggle). Still, the more I eat of fruits, vegetables, and whole grains, the less I have room for the more unhealthy foods that represent my downfall, and the better I manage my stress.

I think it is very important to have a cut-off line between work time and personal time. Teachers are sometimes made to feel that they must give every minute of every day to the profession or they are inferior teachers. Don't fall into that trap. Be the best you can be at work; give yourself fully and professionally; enjoy what you do at high intensity--then end it when the time comes.

Finally, seek friends among your peers and co-workers. Have someone to talk to. My friends at Garfield have been filter and purifier of all my negative stress, and many times they have given me a kind word when I was at the brink of discouragement (or across the brink). Have someone that will do that for you, then go BE someone that will do that for others.

Listed below are links to some websites that have information on work-place stress.

Jeff Combe

Information on job stress and how to cope:
http://www.health.com/health/library/mdp/0,,ta5662_ta5662-sec,00.html
http://www.stress.org/job.htm

Various interesting lists on stressful jobs:
http://cord.acadiau.ca/documents/StressFacts.pdf
http://www.wctv.tv/news/headlines/17373899.html