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8 Managing Stress and Managing Time
This chapter explores the management of stress and time in a broader context to clarify how teaching relates to other work. Within the profession there is a new stronger focus on teacher workload issues but also increasingly there is concern about bullying of teachers. This difficult area is focused on first. An article about teachers in the Observer (Pollard, 2000) opens with ‘In the average school, nearly one in six (teachers) has been bullied in the last six months’. Cary Cooper, leading researcher on stress asserts: There are two types of bully. The psychopathic bully has low self-esteem and may not be particularly good at their job. He or she bullies to enhance their status. It’s a personality disjunction and the numbers are relatively small and stable. The other type is the overloaded bully who has too much to do themselves and dumps on others. This sort of bullying is increasing.
A survey by Cooper at the Manchester School of Management found that one in four workers had been bullied in the last five years, but in teaching the proportion was one in three. The significance of this for the number of teachers who intend to leave the profession may be underestimated because victims may be unwilling to talk about bullying. The bullying barometer used suggests you are being bullied when: ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ●
your presence or opinions are ignored; you are denied information about your performance; you are given an unmanageable workload; you are given unreasonable deadlines; you are humiliated or ridiculed; your work is excessively monitored; gossip and rumour are spread about you; faults are continually found with your work.
Is there bullying in your school? Of pupils? Of staff? EUROPEAN HEALTH AND SAFETY WEEK The Health and Safety Executive (2002) supported the European Safety and Health Week in October 2002, which had a special focus on stress. The supporting docu75
