We all have days like the one I had yesterday where afterwards I just have to wonder how the heck I get through them. It was just a rush of one thing after another from 7 a.m. up to 8:30 p.m. Do an hour and a half on an elliptical exercise machine, run an errand to pick something up on the way to a doctor's appointment, go sign a contract to refinance my car, drive around the south of Madrid to two different in-company English classes, go home and take and make two calls, one for a new private student, another for a possible new contract teaching in a university next year, teach a private one-to-one Cambridge Proficiency Exam prep student for 2 hours, take a call from the telephone company about a new service I'm in the process of contracting, make plans with my family about driving them to that birthday party tomorrow evening and the astronomy event on Friday night. It's all fine and dandy - just a typical day for me - mostly positive with no economic disasters, pandemias or funerals to attend, but despite my generally positive attitude about it all, if I sit around and analyze it for very long, I just have to wonder about the long-term sustainability of it all because of the stress I've been putting on my body for so long.
It worries me because stress has been demonstrated to deteriorate memory, which is an especially important fact for teachers and students to consider because it basically means that stress eventually makes us all stupid. That's not cool! And as a teacher, in my opinion, teachers would be advised to make adjustments to their methodology according to the level of stress detected in their students on a day-to-day basis. They are going to have plenty of days like the one I outlined before and they're not necessarily going to always react positively to your trying to get their @sses into gear. I tend to try to be as organized, firm and on-track in my classes as possible, especially in the beginning, but it's mostly bluff. The reality is that I'm usually forced to adapt to circumstances as they develop and evolve. My students in companies tend to be managers managing far more important problems than mine and I often consider myself lucky to even get them to come to class. In other words, stressed out students (or teachers) are not as likely to remember as much of your classes because of the problems these have to compete with in their cognitive space or to even be as enthusiastic and motivated about work-intensive lessons as their more relaxed peers. At times they are so stressed out that they can't even handle just one more little problem.
Don't underestimate what stress can do. Stress is a result of fight-or-flight evolutionary adaptations as improperly applied to modern-day problems and obstacles. What it does is: kill, shrink brains, change brain chemistry, unravel chromosomes, add fat to bellies, cause heart disease (and heart attacks, and atherosclerosis), cause strokes, shut down the immune system, impair adaptive flexibility, cause maladaptive responses such as quickness to anger and irritability, cause premature ageing, deteriorate the length and quality of sleep, impair memory, and so on. The effects of a short-term exposure to stress can be bad. The effects of a long-term (chronic) exposure to stress can be really horrible. Stress also deteriorates the ability to produce dopamine, which is related to feeling miserable and depressed (depression). Chronic stress seriously undermines the ability to learn, especially if started in childhood. The worst kinds of consequences are produced when control is not an option. People who can't cut back on work when they're overloaded are especially at risk.
By the way, there is a good kind of stress (stimulation) and a bad kind of stress (fibrillation . . . that's a joke . . . it rhymes see . . . What I mean is that it tends to be really bad for your heart and your health). The National Geographic video I mentioned about the science of stress has mostly to do with the bad kind. I really recommend you watch it.
It focuses on things such as the fact that a low social standing in formal and/or informal hierarchies tends to magnify the negative aspects of stress. People stress each other out. "Alphas," or the dominant people, stress us subordinates out on the job, but we can influence this via being successful at alternative activities, having a positive attitude, having good friends, belonging to appreciative and inclusive clubs or groups, laughing a lot or having a good sense of humor, having a job that we love, adapting and going with the flow whenever possible, etc. Unfortunately, long-term pervasive stress such as that arising from suffering through economic difficulties tends to make it more and more difficult to keep in contact with these good feelings. Unfortunately, in our often implacably cutthroat world, you can all too often let yourself get trapped in a sort of vicious circle of stress. Hopefully, the schools that English teachers work for won't add to their already stressful lives by paying them low salaries, but there are other things which they can do.
Schools can help their teachers to be more productive and creative by rewarding them in other ways and involving them and giving them a say in goings on. Some sort of year-after-year stable job security would be helpful. Also, many agencies and schools have little real socializing going on between teachers either within or outside their walls which tends to accentuate feelings of isolation, alienation and consequently depression and anxiety. Ironically, in the English teaching profession, employers tend to undermine their own efforts to have and keep "quality" in-company English teachers by disregarding this area and perhaps, on the contrary, by using heavy-handed "alpha" approaches to human resources management. For example, there are a few schools that tend to "sergeant" their teachers because they prejudicially assume that 95% of first-year teachers are absolute sh@t (pardon my French), except for the brown-nosers of course. This undermines their authority and self-confidence causing even more stress. (By the way, you can tell I'm stressed out, can't you? It's the irritability that gives me away, isn't it?)
It would also probably be helpful for very stressed out teachers to try to be a little less self-centered and a little more "self-giving" as well. I think you would find it hard to find people high up in any informal hierarchy anyway who are not very giving in some way. Apparently, this usually has to do with "grooming", but also it seems that compassion promotes longevity and rejuvenation. For example, connecting with others in 12-step or self-help groups apparently helps mending and leads to a longer life (eg: watch the film "Fight Club" for more info on such groups). More importantly, teachers and others would be advised to avoid stressful workplaces and their bossy bosses if at all possible. One other good piece of evidence as to the viability of the job will probably have to do with the number of hours required weekly in their work schedule.
There are a lot of different ways of dealing with stress and different people have completely different reactions to and interpretations of stress. Whatever works for you may not work for me. Actually, what works for me doesn't always work for me, but when it does, it includes: 1) keeping a balance between work and life even if it means cutting back on work for a while from time to time (which means keeping a certain amount of control over my work schedule, which is one reason why I as a freelancer prefer not to put all of my eggs in the same basket with a single employer - given there aren't many contracts worth spit around for grown-ups anyway. . . . Aw shucks, there's that irritability again.). I've found fine-tuning proper time management techniques tends to be a real help. This basically means that I only teach 5 days a week and work on a sixth day to prepare classes. 2) Taking time off from work every evening and one day on the weekends to spend with my family is also important for me. We often play games and video games together. 3) After extremely stressful days, I might resort to autogenic relaxation or self-hypnosis - see below. I'd like to learn how to meditate, but I have so much else to do, it would just stress me out to do so right now. 4) I exercise on a ski-machine for about 1.5 hours about 5 days a week. 5) I tend to work a lot on my computer in a dark room, which can be depressing (it's a sort of self-inflicted seasonal affective disorder), so I've started using a bit of light therapy in the mornings and it seems to help. 6) The best of all therapies seems to be my just getting enough quality sleep, which is something that stress seriously interferes with. Stress-induced sleeplessness apparently seriously deteriorates nocturnal processing of memories, which is the main reason I suppose why pervasive chronic stress eventually ends up making one stupid. 7) Expressing myself "creatively" via my writing and the creation of my website. This is also my own bid to be an "alpha" in an alternative hierarchy, by the way. But, besides that, I simply really enjoy learning and the final creative article such as this one on stress is one way that I have to keep myself centered and focused on the subject I'm currently researching at any given time. 8) Which brings me to my final reason, which is to simply to try to keep a sort of geeky interest and enthusiasm about every topic imaginable. Partly, I'm this way because talking about just about every topic imaginable with my students over the years has made me this way and because you just can't get your students worked up about a topic unless you yourself are so enthused in the first place, and it can't help but rub off on you in the long run. Partly I'm this way because I suppose it just runs in the family. My aunt completed her doctorate in psychology at the age of 65 which is something I've always admired.
Though I think that much of the stress caused by learning is "good" stress, as opposed to bad stress, I was reminded the other day about the kind of bad stress that teachers and students have to suffer through when I attended a presentation about astronomy for a group of children and their parents. It was really top-notch with all sorts of gadgets and projectors. But, the astronomy teacher was obviously stressed out because before the children even got a chance to make much noise, he was already giving the whole group a talking to and separating the worst of them. About a photo of a half-moon, one child raised his hand and commented when called upon, "it looks like an egg." About other photos of the planets, another child shouted out, "they look like soccer balls." The parents asked other similarly silly questions such as, "was the U.S.A.'s moon landing a fraud? Just look at the wind in the flag." There were similar questions about the power of astrology and evidence of intelligent design in the universe. So, you could tell the teacher was getting more and more nervous throughout the session, but when the baby started crying it took me by surprise. The teacher's microphone picked it up and magnified the sound what must have been 10 times, which made it a lot worse. This went on for no longer than 10-15 seconds when he just thanked us and said that it was the end of the presentation. He had obviously had this sort of experience before and knew just what to do about it: it certainly looked like he ended the sessions early whenever a baby started crying. On the way out he anxiously mentioned twice that it was worse with groups made up only of school children.
I really felt sorry for the guy and I could really relate to his problem. Certain students get the same sort of rise out me when they ask me how long it will take for them to learn English. They always react with the same sort of shock and rejection when I tell them the truth. It certainly does not take 30 hours or 1,000 words, but that is, in fact, what they want to hear.
Which brings me to the topic of a future video-presentation about other similar sorts of things that can interfere with the learning process.
"There's never enough time to do all the nothing you want." by Bill Watterson, Calvin and Hobbes.
LinkedIn interviews Dr. Robert Sapolsky about stress:
