If youâve lived a day anything like my day of Juuls and subsequent respite on the hallway floor, you already know the impact of frustration. But if by some miracle youâve been unscathed by frustration, or youâre not in education and doubt the importance of our feelings, letâs look at some evidence together.
According to a 2015 Center on Education Policy survey of teachers, 60 percent of respondents indicated that theyâre less enthusiastic about their job than when they started, and almost half said they would leave the profession if they found a higher-paying job.1 These sentiments are echoed in other similar surveys and studies. Although the exact figure varies a bit year to year, recent data suggest that upward of 15 percent of teachers leave the profession each year and 58 percent selected the phrase ânot goodâ to describe their mental health in a 2017 American Federation of Teachers survey.2 Contributing factors like large class sizes, the weight of standardized testing, feeling unvalued by administration or educational policy makers, paperwork, unrealistic expectations, and even being bullied at work are often listed as reasons so many teachers have such negative outlooks on their jobs. While the reasons are myriad and complex, too much so to be distilled to one cause, the word often used to encompass the result is âburnout.â
The cost of this burnout and the resulting high teacher turnover in US public schools is estimated at 7.3 billion dollars a year! Yet the cost of this turnover and stress is far more than just financial. Studies indicate that students in schools with high teacher turnover score lower in English and math.3 In Gallupâs 2014 State of American Schools report, 45 percent of students reported feeling disengaged at school, a number that trends upward by grade level.4 On the other hand, students who reported having even just one teacher who made them feel excited were thirty times more likely to be engaged. Thirty times!
Thereâs also evidence to suggest that teachersâ stress can be passed on to their students. University of British Columbia researchers found that students had higher levels of cortisol in the morning if their teachers reported high levels of burnout.5 We can surmise from this that having a stressed-out teacher stresses kids out. Teachers reporting higher levels of stress also employed fewer effective teaching strategies, an interesting connection between teacher stress and efficacy.6 Another study indicated a correlation among teacher stress level, classroom management skills, and more disruptive behavior from students. Teachers who showed higher stress early in the school year displayed less effective classroom management and instruction strategies, which also affected their classroom climates.
So why are teachers so stressed out? Factors weâve mentioned, such as class size, standardized testing, and even the perceived demands of meeting the diverse needs of their students, are all things beyond teachersâ control. Loss of control is terrifying, and perhaps especially for teachers! We have an audience of individual, opinionated human beings under our care at any given time, many of whom are gifted at finding the chinks in our armor. Thatâs already tough. So when something threatens our control, when something leaves us feeling even a little powerless, thatâs a scary feeling. To dramatically oversimplify what happens in our brains when we feel frustration, the brain perceives threat and we enter the fight-or-flight response. This is not the brain state that makes rational decisions. So rather than thoughtfully responding to frustrating classroom interruptions, we react out of raw emotion. This is why frustration can lead to poor classroom management and statistically relevant academic losses.
The pressure is always on in education. Yes, there are plenty of high-impact factors that are within teacher control. But think of water on stone. Even a couple stressful encounters in a day can drip, drip, drip away at a teacherâs confidence, patience, and ability. And if stressed teachers lead to poor classroom management, academic losses, and stressed students, we need to be doing more to support those teachersâ mental and emotional well-being.
Why is frustration so powerful? Clinical psychologist Andrea Bonior says, âFrustration is likely to be the top layer of a feeling. It speaks to a sense of stagnation or helplessness, an inability to make things happen in the way that someone wants.â7 When we expect one thing but find it didnât turn out the way we thought it would, we get frustrated.
When Frustration Masks Other Feelings
Rather than a feeling itself, frustration may actually be a symptom of some other emotional response. Bonior also says that if you feel like someone or something thwarted you, what youâre perceiving as frustration may actually be anger. On my epic Juul fiasco day, I had planned an immersive escape room experience to deepen our understanding of the dayâs text. It was going to be awesome. It took so much time to create and prepare, testing every link and puzzle, carefully timing each challenge, making sure everything was organized and ready to go. When it was derailed by all the crying students, administrators coming in and out, and friends ratting friends out, I kid you not, it felt like a personal attack. It felt like they took that perfect lesson away from me. Now, I know thatâs not true. Even in the moment, I really did know that. But thatâs how it felt. And the worst part was that I took it personally. I believed I had a better relationship with those students than that, that they wouldnât hide a Juul in my room! They respected me too much for that! Ha, well, respect or not, they did hide a Juul in my room. They thwarted me. They made me mad.
Feeling frustrated about unknown outcomes, on the other hand, is likely really anxiety or fear. This is that loss-of-control premise. We fear what would happen if our control over our students were threatened. Thatâs why we donât like it when a student challenges our authority. Follow that scenario a bit further, we worry, and youâll find total anarchy. Itâs hard to love and enjoy our students if we feel threatened by them. That fear can lead us to lock down ourselvesâhow we discipline, how we teachâleaving us cold and rigid, all in the name of maintaining and enforcing control. Yâall, letâs be real. When my fiasco was unfolding, I had my normal class of twenty-eight students plus eight students from my colleagueâs class. I was trying to teach my class, catch up students who were returning late from testing, and supervise the independent work of my colleagueâs students. I was stressed. The room was a powder keg. I was sure any small step out of line would ignite it. Was I making sound instructional decisions? No! Yâall, I felt like I was in one of those gritty survivalist movies, like I was going to have to fend off a bear with nothing but my fingernails and tenacity, turn his hide into shelter, and fashion a spear out of his femur. I wasnât teaching. I was just surviving.
Hopelessness may also really be sadness masked as frustration. When we encounter these frustration scenarios again and again, day after day, and feel ineffective in our response, we wind up feeling hopeless. Itâs hard to love our job when we feel hopeless! We know what happens in our classroom is our responsibility, but we also feel like so many variables are out of our control. If we feel responsible for the problem, we might actually be feeling guilty. We feel guilty for not being able to successfully navigate all these problems and for the resulting impact on our students. Even though I didnât hide the Juul, I felt responsible for it. I felt like I should have known what was happening, even though I really was barely keeping my head above water with all the other variables in play. I felt like a failure. And the resulting low self-esteem might be shame instead of frustration. We tell ourselves that if we were a good teacher, we wouldnât feel thi...
