The self-fulfilling prophecy concept is a useful one in many educational contexts. It can teach us the importance of high pupil expectations, as if we expect them to fail, they will. In a mental health context, if I expect to have a bad day, then a bad day is highly likely. However, we as educationalists are also our own worst enemies in expecting to live up to our own self-fulfilling prophecies, which we have imposed on ourselves by simply aspiring to be great teachers. We are perfectionists. We love to ignore the five excellent feedback points and focus on the one ‘even better if’. Many are finding that they cannot keep up with the high output that both they themselves and the profession has expected of them. Furthermore, because they have previously worked at 125% capacity, it seems to become the norm. This cycle is seemingly endless.
Now would be a good time to impose our own personal ‘circuit breaker’, and consider what output is sustainable moving forward. This may go some way to protect the retention of the current workforce.
I blogged before Christmas about the trials and tribulations of being a SENCO (click to view). Whilst writing, this Pygmalion Effect concept, in a teaching workload context was born. The teacher I am referring to may display some of these traits:
- Starts a new job with much enthusiasm and wants to be seen to be doing the best job possible by putting in lots of extra hours.
- Works and emails late into the night.
- Follows the unwritten rule in teaching that this level of workload is expected.
- Gets to school early and/or leaves late.
- Tends to end up doing school work as opposed to spending time with family and friends.
- May be constantly stressed.
- Hates being off sick because they don’t have time.
- Is a ‘yes’ person and struggles to say no.
- Pretends they are ‘fine’.
- Writes off high workload by suggesting that, ‘it’s just what we do’.
- Is kind hearted and wants to do the very best for their pupils.
The list goes on. In reality the teacher I am describing, accounts for the vast majority of the teaching profession, who go above and beyond all of the time. They want to do the best they can and keep up with the unwritten expectation of their workplace productivity.
The issue with this pace of work is that it is not sustainable. Eventually burnout will happen. I have heard of people who move schools regularly for this reason and their narrative looks like this:
1. New school, honeymoon period, happy to work all hours under the sun because I’m very keen and want to impress.
2. Everything is ticking along nicely. Workload high but managing.
3. Burnout manifesting as apathy/stress/illness/boredom – time to look for another job.
4. Back to point 1.
If you want to stay in teaching this is not a bad plan and of course if you find yourself in a school with a great work-life balance or at least sensible parameters to it, then stick with it if you are enjoying your work. Post pandemic (almost), I feel that there has never been as much dissatisfaction among the ranks. Teachers are leaving left, right and centre and cover teachers are more scarce.
The pressure that our school leaders are under, is increasingly enabling them to justify (in their minds), poor choices regarding staff wellbeing and work-life balance. If the profession keeps jumping through the hoops then change will not occur quickly. If we keep being that self – fulfilling prophecy, then we are suggesting that all is well.
When people tell me that they want to train to be a teacher, I’m not exactly happy for them. I don’t know many teachers who would recommend it as a career choice which is a huge shame. I make all the right noises to sound encouraging whilst dropping in a couple of reality checks – I hope my kids will want to do something else. The bare bones of the job is still fantastic and if you stripped it back to ‘just good teaching’ without all the other stuff*, then imagine what the role would look like.
So this January, I urge you to not be a self-fulfilling prophecy and to challenge those unwritten rules and unnecessary tasks. Can you put up some healthy boundaries and reduce your workload by 10%? It doesn’t sound like much but it will be a marginal gain for your work-life balance. You could start by:
- Leaving 10 minutes earlier each day.
- Writing down your week on a timetable so you (and SLT) are clear about how many hours you are putting in a week. You might get a surprise when you add it up.
- Find out your union’s stance on workload and if you agree, support them more actively.
- Politely challenge workload that’s is not required (e.g. entering the same data twice because someone wants it in another format).
Imagine a world where you could fit all your work into your working week. Crazy. This is of course what some of the population does all of the time (and a lot of them suffer with workload stress as well!). If the whole profession gradually reduced their workload in this way and were able to discuss workload more openly, then I would hope that there would be less burn out, more retention and more people recommending teaching as a career choice. Can this change start with you?
* feel free to replace the word ‘stuff’ with a word of your choosing.
Thanks for reading, you may also be interested in: