According to " Ofsted chief Sir Michael Wilshaw: Teachers not stressed " from BBC News, ¶ The outspoken head of Ofsted has hit out at teachers who complain their jobs are "too stressful" and make excuses for poor performance. ¶ Because his viewpoints to what Stress is are different which is particular for one who lacks of sufficient resources, such as unsatisfactory workers, skills, budge, especially lack of opportunities, he thinks now teachers who are in privileged position are not stressed. But Dr Mary Bousted, general secretary of the Association of Teachers and Lecturers does not identified with him, that 's where they differ.
I agree to what Dr Mary said that it is no use criticizing teachers. Also, criticizing is a main cause of stress. Only when people release their stress, can they stop complaining. However, everyone puts the most pressure on teachers is helping students to pass exams to win good reputation for the school. It seem as the score decides everything. It is unfair to the teachers who devote themselves to teaching but without outstanding performance results because it may involve with many reasons. For example, a teacher has a different teaching concept to the school so that he/she never meet the standard of the school. Or a student who come from an incomplete family usually skips classes and has rebellious personality. Even though the teacher already put all the effort and patience, the result effects slightly so often.
There is no doubt, cultivating one to be a pillar of a country so as to serve our country in the future has much to do with education. A successful education needs supports and efforts among school, teacher and family which is the most important factor from my personal point of view but, in fact, most people think that teacher play the most important role in educating. I firmly believe that teachers now facing more stress than before, coming from their supervisors for creating innovative teaching methods all the time and parents with higher and higher educational degree. So now, do you still think teacher is an easy, envious job ?
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References
Ofsted chief Sir Michael Wilshaw: Teachers not stressed. (2012, May 10) BBC News. Retrieved May, 11 2012 from http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-18025202
Ofsted chief Sir Michael Wilshaw: Teachers not stressed. (2012, May 10) BBC News. Retrieved May, 11 2012 from http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-18025202
Thank you Rainbow Gaga for this thought provoking post on a topic to which I am sure we can all relate, whether as teachers or as students who care about their teaching.
ReplyDeleteI have a few opinions that came to mind as I read both Rainbow Gaga's summary of her source and her response to it, but I would like to wait and let others have their say first. It's a topic on which everyone has relevant personal experience and highly relevant concerns, so I am sure that we all have something to contribute to the discussion here.
Dear all,
ReplyDelete()= Alt+0182 I tried it several times but still fail. I'll correct it later on when I know how to solve the problem, sorry about that.
Rainbow Gaga,
ReplyDeleteTry using the numeric keypad on the right, not the numbers at the top of the key board.
Another alternative is to write (para. XX)
DeleteThank you, Peter!! That's why it didn't work is there is no numeric keypad on the right on my laptop. Now, I am in AUA library to join the conversation class and use the computer here because I can't access to Internet at my flat again.
DeleteI agree with you that teacher facing stress more that before. My close friend is teacher too, she has to prepare every time before class and after class, what will she have to do next. She always concern with her students and she has to think how much her students get some knowledge from her.
ReplyDeleteBut I jealous her one thing 'her holiday', she has many holiday and day off because she is a teacher. She has holiday every end of semester ,and she took her holiday around 1 month - 2.5 month. So she can go wherever she want to go and whatever she want to do, but for other who doesn't work in teacher position, they can't do that.
Since I'm a teacher, my personal experience might be relevant here. Like Ploy's close friend, I spend a considerable amount of time preparing before and after class, and I do worry when things don't go well. But I think that's just hard work, and not in itself stressful.
DeleteIf I were in a public school, where students have to go even if they do not want to, I think I would feel a lot more stress, even I worked less hard. In this situation, I would be trying to teach people who might have no interest in actually learning, whatever I did, and who might be resentful of being forced to do something that bores or annoys them. Happily, I can reasonably assume that my students are AUA, especially in AEP, are there by free choice because they do want to learn. As a result, helping that learning along is rewarding, which more than makes up for the hard work, even though the actual class almost never follows my lesson plan. This flexibility is hard work - I have to be aware all the time of what is going on in the class, and how best to use it, but then, since I expect and assume that the students are making the same effort, that's OK.
And I agree wholly with Ploy's comments on holidays. One of great things I like about AUA is that there is a vacation of at least one week after every six week term. And most terms I only teach 2.5 hours most days, starting at 10:00 AM and finishing at 12:30 PN. This term is a little more stressful because the high student numbers mean I have two classes every day. And I'm also trying out some new things with my regular program students, so I'm working very hard, but even if trying out new things is a bit stressful, it's also rewarding and unlike some of my "brilliant" ideas, the current one actually seems to be working. Some of my "great" ideas turn out in practice to be not so great. But again, an advantage of working at AUA is that my bosses are willing to let me try something that seems promising, and they accept that my report afterwards might be a recommendation to drop it.
So, is teaching stressful? I think it has elements that could be stressful, but I personally find the rewards greatly outweigh those elements. And is a bit of stress a bad thing anyway?
I kind of hope that the course is challenging enough that most of my students feel at least a little stress. You shouldn't be losing sleep over your AEP course, but neither should it be easy or something that you can forget about when you leave AUA.
And as you already know, I don't think teachers in schools, especially public schools, should be expected to do more than teach their subject. It's not the teachers job to worry about idiotic things like hair length, student dress and the like, or whether the students might be having sex together. Those things are all parents' responsibilities, and if the parents don't want such responsibility, then they should have used birth control or had an abortion instead of irresponsibly and immorally giving birth to a human being that they are not prepared to properly care for, and who is more likely to go on to a criminal or similar career to the harm of herself and society. Unfortunately, Thailand's unjust abortion laws cause a great deal of suffering for individuals, both mothers and their unwanted children, and for society.
ReplyDeleteI think Thailand abortion law is affected by buddhist believe that baby is "a person" inspite of being unborn. So, making abotion legal is unacceptable issue among most Thai people.
DeleteIs a foetus, an unborn baby, a person?
DeleteI think that although the foetus is a human being from late in pregnancy (around 7 months), it is cannot be a person until after birth so that it is wrong to think that abortion is unacceptable because it is the killing of a person.
But if anyone can present a good reason to show that I'm wrong, I will change my mind. (I haven't supported my idea yet, I've only stated it, but if there is no argument, I will assume that everyone agrees with me and Buddhism seems to be wrong if it really does say that a one month foetus is a person.)
And I don't think laws are just because they are what people want. People often want very unjust things. For example, men not so long ago tended to think and want that women were their property to control and use. That was always wrong, however popular it might have been. Nor was slavery ever right simply because it was widely accepted: we make moral progress, as we do in physics and medicine, by learning from and correcting our mistaken beliefs, and that means that the old believes really were mistaken, not just different.
DeleteIn my opinion, every occupation is stressful. No occupation is really relax and free. It varies on what kind of stress does it has, for example, doctors are very stressful occupation because they have to be responsible for patients' lives, every decision must be made carefully. I think the best way to reduce stressful is to do the occupation that you really love. Different occupations have different pros and cons. I like your 3rd paragraph and I always admire teachers who devote themselves preparing everything for their student.
ReplyDeleteI totally agree with Pam. Everybody has to be responsible with one's duty and do the occupation that one loves. Although I know being a teacher is quite stressful, I still want to do this job. I believe no matter how it is hard, if you love it you can do:)
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