Teachers suffer from Mental Stress

Arwin M. Santos

Teachers’stress and anxiety continuously increased and affected their physical and mental health during the pandemic. They spend most of their time at home doing a mountain of paper works online, attending trainings and webinars, meeting the learners online and conducting online classes as well. These are just some of the stressful activities teachers face in their everyday battle against corona virus.

Even before the pandemic, is most commonly experienced by the teachers because of the burden they have not only accomplishing rush reports but also dealing with children with different behavior. Not only that, there are also other factors that weakening the mental health of the teachers and those are their problems, failures, rejections, pressure and stress. In the new normal, mental health of teachers became worst because of the fear of getting COVID-19 virus that they could possibly get when reporting to school. That is why more teachers tend to resign from their work and tried opportunities abroad.

In order to improve the mental and physical condition of teachers, Deped should provide more activities that give attention to teachers’mental and emotional wellness, offering sessions on mindfulness, yoga, exercise, and healthy eating. Webinars on mental health awareness can also lessen the stress they experience in doing their routines. Teachers who have comorbidities should stay and work at home. And most of all, less paper works should be given to teachers even though they are submitted online.

Now is the right time our government should develop programs and projects that could really help the teaching in overcoming issues about mental health and physical condition. In this way, teachers can breathe easily and work well without minding a lot of rush reports to submit and they have more time to relax.

***** at San Isidro Elementary School.

The author is a Master Teacher