“Workstration”

Teaching in high school is a tough job. Teachers face overwhelming demands and challenges in their classrooms. They are expected to know content and pedagogy, develop engaging lessons that meet the needs of diverse learners, and use a variety of instructional strategies that will boost student achievement while they simultaneously develop positive relationships each day with students who are experiencing the personal, social, and cognitive challenges and opportunities of early adolescence.

With the nature of the job, teachers experience work frustration when they’ve done their best and feel it isn’t working. Considering all the negative energy that’s associated with work frustration, giving up is the easy way out. But think it over. Since many of the things that frustrate workers tend to be things they have no control over, sometimes we have no choice but to accept. What about redirecting the energy associated with getting annoyed to improving myself instead? So if you get upset at work, maybe you can channel that force into a new project or a hobby rather than expend energy on something that is counterproductive.

It’s incredibly easy to pinpoint things to complain about. Truth however is, you can force yourself to keep the negativity in check by also noticing—and verbalizing —the positive in your workplace. If you challenge yourself to be a little more observant, you will notice plenty of good things that are happening around you: two or more out of your 50 students who finally discovered their “aha!” moments after you taught them the concept, your at-risk students who have turned at-promise, your co-worker who made an excellent demonstration teaching, or the training you attended that was actually really helpful—and not at all a waste of your time.

Notice good things, compliment people directly, and talk about these positive things among your co-workers. Well, you can still vent when necessary. But if you’re going to vent about the bad, frustrating, and annoying things in your workplace, you should also strive to be just as verbal about all the good around it, too. As a teacher dedicated to the job, don’t accept failure, but do ask for help. Do assess your obstacles in the classroom and find possible solutions. Dealing with work frustrations requires the right mental attitude. Changing perspective will probably make the difference in the way you feel about work amidst the myriad problems that confront it. Precila L. Mayanggao