Teacher Burnout

Last month I submitted my very first English seminar paper. I choose a very interesting subject to write and learn about- "Teacher Burnout". I started this paper last year in the middle of my third year , and I finished it in December. At first I was concerned; I thought that there wouldn't be enough material on it ,but to my surprise there was a LOT of material on this subject. Apparently it’s a known worldwide problem. Many studies have been conducted on this subject , its causes and its effects, and more important its solutions. Any way I wanted to share with you my introduction, because I'm so proud of it. I recommend all of you rocky teachers to read a little about it on-line. It's extremely important for all of us who are just starting to be aware of. So here it is:

 According to one research 20-30% of teachers will leave the profession within their first 3 years. Another research found that 4 out of 10 teachers will leave before reaching retirement age. The combination of many factors will result in nearly 50% of teachers leaving the profession before they reach their sixth year of teaching. (Fisher, 2011), (Coulter & Abney, 2008).

Teachers, during their work, are exposed to a lot of stress, and as a young teacher who is about to spread my wings and start my first job as a teacher I began to wonder. How hard could it be? What can happen when I will be on my own? But the main question is was what can happen when it becomes too hard to bear. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to examine what are the repercussions of burnout on a teachers' classroom work. I choose to research teachers who are in the system for several years now because, as future teachers I started thinking and become aware to the problem of teacher burnout; its causes and the consequences. 

Just a little somthing for you to think about.. and now a penny for your thoughts..

Lital.

To be or not to be

Staj year is one of the most important years in our teaching career. During our staj year we struggle with many things: class room management, lesson plans, tests, grades and the list can go on and on.

Each time I have to face one of these issues I can't stop asking myself: How to handle with the pressure?  Will I be able to provide for my family with a teacher salary? (2000 shekels a month) Am I a good teacher?  And the most important question is do I really want to become a teacher?

GET READY! - IT’S COMING!

This time it was chillingly WHITE. The population of Jerusalem and surrounding areas braced themselves for the arrival of an unforgiving blanket of SNOW.

Last year we were totally unprepared - many of us suffered electricity cuts and worse. Our cousins flew in from abroad in the middle of last year’s snow storm.  They managed to get a taxi at Ben Gurion which took seven hours to drive towards Jerusalem, but then when the driver was about 4 kilometers from the city he stopped and said he could go no further. It was now 4am. My cousins had to take their luggage and walk for two hours to try to get closer to Jerusalem and home. Needless to say they were traumatized.

This year however the papers have been full of the extra care that the authorities are taking.  So much so that on Wednesday morning, three days before even one flake of snow had fallen, the two main highways into Jerusalem were closed to traffic.

Residents were exhorted to take emergency measures. First: buy a shovel. Second: stockpile food and water supplies for at least three days. Third: because of expected strong winds we were urged to secure and tie down anything, or presumably anyone, that might take flight and injure passersby such as plant pots on balconies.

All educational establishments were closed - nursery schools, training colleges and universities. The Justice Ministry shut down the courts for the interim and there was little or no public transport. The place became a ghost town.

Drivers were requested politely not to abandon their cars on the Light Railway Line in the city.  City Pass, who runs the rail line, said that that there would be no services once the snow reached 5cms.  I imagined a small army of men with tape measures at the ready trying to determine when that level was reached.

City Pass said that the rail service would only be resumed once the offending 5cms was removed. But no one needed to worry, customers were reassured that all conductors would be specially trained to evacuate the passengers from the carriages under such circumstances.

But it was not all gloom and doom. One enterprising hotel in the city offered accommodation for three nights “ A first of its kind initiative’ - come and experience the snow first hand, and if there is no snow there is no charge." I would like to know what their criteria were for ‘snow’.  Mostly what we saw was grey, wet slush, with perhaps a dusting of grey/white on some roof tiles.  Did that constitute snow - and would I have had to pay the room charge on that basis? 

I would have felt very cheated if I had been offered anything less than half a meter of the sparkly white stuff, the sun shining, snowmen and snowballs at the ready.

So this year we saw the local authority taking measures to ensure that there was no repetition of what happened last year.  The only difference this year is that in spite of all the predictions there was virtually no snow on Wednesday, Thursday or Friday - it only started to fall on l and then had cleared completely by noon the next day. This was a great disappointment for all the children of the city, but one thing they can take satisfaction in was the storms that we heard.  I have never before experienced snow falling at the same time as massive thunder and lightning.  It could only be described as being of truly biblical proportions, which I guess is a suitable description for something that happens in our city.

Boys vs. Girls in Classroom

I have just finished writing my seminar paper. My topic was "Gender Differences in Foreign Language Acquisition". Don’t worry I am NOT going to write about the paper itself, but I thought it could be helpful to write in our blog about few insights that I had while writing it. These can be used as "Tips"  from me to you, teacher to teacher. I must say, I have never thought I would learn so much from writing this paper, and even more, to implement in class what I have studied from it.

Before sharing with you my insights,I will just summarize the content of the paper  so you will get the whole picture . I know it might sound boring but I will try to write it in an interesting way. The aim of the paper was to examine the differences between boy and girls when it comes with learning a language. Have you ever thought about it before? Have you ever got the chance to stop for a second, and think of the possibility that there are differences the way boys and girls learn? If not, I hope reading this blog will change your mind.

So, yes, there are differences, but what was most important is the fact that there are 

differences the way teachers treat boys and girls in class. As a teacher…. Did you know that teachers paid more attention to boys than girls? Did you know that teachers give boys more time to answer questions in class?  Did you know that teachers give boys more positive feedbacks? All of these come from a belief that girls are better language learner and they are expected to be good language learners. My results were that girls are better learners, but I have chosen to put, here in my blog, attention for those who are not including in the statistics and they are different! If it is true, and teachers treat differently boys and girls we must do something about it, even if we do it unconsciously. We can't "lose" some of our pupils because we believe they are "better learners".

Teachers should check and do a reflection about themselves, like they do after each lesson about the way they taught or how they spoke in class, and check how they treat each student in class.  If they are treat differently the first step is to be aware of it, than you can think what to do with it.( If for some teacher it is difficult to reflect about themselves, the reflection can be done by some other teacher who observes the other one.)

I hope I made you think about yourselves like I did.

Shirley