Have you ever walked into one of you field placements or a classroom you do not know and get instant anxiety or stress? How you think you could manage a classroom of 20-30 3 to 4 year old’s by yourself? I know I have! My biggest fear is talking into my future classroom and failing! In today’s post I am going to discuss a question that I have been pondering from my field placement for this semester.
Observations
I am currently placed in a head start classroom with 2 teachers each day with the students. During my field days I noticed a big difference in how the students react behaviorally to each of the teachers in the class room.
With one the students test their boundaries and play games with them to push the teacher’s buttons, with the other they do things independently or with the other students, they do not come and talk to them as much as the other due to being directed for things that arise to figure out the solution independently. 
The teacher that they test the boundaries with is reserved, quiet and worrisome about each student and following the lesson plan. The teacher that they can be independent with is silly but also strict when needed. The students know that when they speak in Spanish to them or gives them a look they did something wrong or need to redirect themselves.
Question
With this observation in mind, I started with the question “how do teaching strategies affect students’ behaviors?” I was unsuccessful in finding the research articles I was looking for on that specific topic, therefore I had to further my search out. I found an article about psycho-social stress and their affects on classroom management. I felt that this was close enough to the topic I originally wanted. I made a new question based on this, “How do teachers psycho-social stress affect their management of the classroom?”
Research
I found two articles that stood out to me as relevant. The first is “Understanding and Improving Classroom Emotional Climate and Behavior Management in the ‘Real World’.” The second is “Child Behavior Problems, Teacher Executive Functions. And Teacher Stress in Head Start Classrooms”. When I refer to article one I am referring to the Understanding and improving article, and when referring to article two I am referring to the Child behavior problems article. Some research to answer “How do teachers psycho-social stress affect their management of the classroom?”.
Some statistics that stood out to me are “20-40% of teachers report that teaching is a highly stressful profession”, “Classrooms with higher percent of less experienced teachers = lower rated”, “Substantial percentage of teachers encountered high demands as well as few resources and low control at work”. These three statistics stood out to me because I relate to them on a high level. As stated in the beginning of this post I have a lot of anxiety and stress with running my future classroom. Do any of these statistics surprise you? Or can you relate to any on a personal level? If so comment below! I would love to hear your thoughts.
Article Statistics
| Understanding and Improving Classroom
(Article 1) |
Child Behavior Problems
(Article 2) |
| Substantial percentage of teachers encountered high demands as well as few resources and low control at work |
Average teachers who reported higher levels of child behavior problems = high levels of job stress |
| 30% reported feeling low levels of confidence with managing children’s behavior in the classroom. |
Teacher reported class child behavior problems and teacher stress remained statistically significant |
| Positive climate, teacher sensitivity, behavior management were all in the moderate range during testing using the ECERS-R. |
Larger class sizes were significantly with higher levels of teacher job stress |
| 2 of 5 indicators of class quality examined psycho-social stress emerged as significant predictors |
Higher levels of teacher’s perceptions of child behavior problems in classrooms = higher levels of teacher job stress |
| Classrooms with higher percent of less experienced teachers = lower rated |
20-40% of teachers report that teaching is a highly stressful profession |
| Teachers who have a lack of confidence in managing classroom behavior at the 75th percentile or higher attended more behavior management training |
29% of teachers say that stress is one of the top reasons for leaving the job. |
| 3 or 4 work-related stress were significantly related to the number of training sessions attended. |
Teachers who can implement planned, goal-directed teaching strategies often have less stress |
| Personal stress= lower rating on the scale |
Lower executive function skills often lead to more reactionary, bottom-up strategies to respond to similar stress. |
Reflection
Overall, I learned a lot about psycho-social stress and how that affects classroom management. I am glad I changed my question to something that I found more interesting. I feel this furthered my knowledge on the topic and will lead me to future research on the topic. I hope you connected with the information and found it helpful for your studies as future teachers. Based on the scholar’s research articles and the studies done, I feel this is a topic that should be assessed further to help reduce this stress for teachers and better prepare them for their classrooms. Following are some questions that I have after reading the articles and assessing the results.
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Further questions
-
- What strategies work best for classroom management when job stress is an issue?
- How can teachers and school districts prevent as much job stress?
- Should there be more training and experience in the field during college?
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After reading these articles I am wondering your thoughts and feelings about this topic. Below I have some questions I was wondering your thoughts on. Feel free to comment below with you answers and any other thoughts you have!
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Peer Questions
-
- How much job stress do you feel you have now as a student going into student teaching?
- Do you feel you are prepared with behavior management skills?
- What topics do you feel would be best for training sessions for teachers?
- How do you compare with the 20-40% that feel teaching is a highly stressful profession?
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I hope you enjoyed this post and come back next week for more information on early childhood education teaching! Have a blogtastic day and thanks for reading!
Reminder of the day: self care is most important for teachers health! Take time for yourself every once in a while.
References
Grining, C. L., Raver, C. C., Champion, K., Sardin, L., Metzger, M., & Jones, S. M. (2010). Understanding and Improving Classroom Emotional Climate and Behavior Management in the “Real World”: The Role of Head Start Teachers’ Psychosocial Stressors. Early Education & Development, 21(1), 65–94. https://doi.org/10.1080/10409280902783509
Friedman-Krauss, A. 1. ahf240@nyu. ed., Raver, C. C., Neuspiel, J. ., & Kinsel, J. (2014). Child Behavior Problems, Teacher Executive Functions, and Teacher Stress in Head Start Classrooms. Early Education & Development, 25(5), 681–702. https://doi.org/10.1080/10409289.2013.825190
flare to my personal blog. It became my mini me online. I grew so much from my first blog to my last one! I started with the bare bones and grew into adding pictures, introductions, videos, inspirational quotes at the end and trying to bring my readers back for the next post. My stress and nervousness went away with every post. I got more and more comfortable with letting myself shine through my words and thoughts.I fell in love! If I had more time I would for sure make my own personal blog and update it weekly but I just don’t have the time. 
Looking into the future I see myself utilizing everything I learned about the rhetorical triangle and the little tips and tricks I learned throughout each post within my own classroom. I love the idea of having something online that parents and even students can reference throughout the year with important information. I would like to have my own personal blog for the parents to have access to but I would also utilize what I learned from doing this project and having my students do a project like I did. I feel this would show their true colors and teach them more than I ever could about topics. 
