Starting a new school year can come with a lot of stress.
Classroom
Relieve School Stress by Enacting these 8 Practices
Starting a new school year can come with a lot of stress.
Yes, a lot. Peruse these tips to reduce classroom stress or teacher burnout and make school awesome!
Education resources
1. Bell work
The increased intensity of many curricula means that instead of taking the first few minutes of class to take attendance and let students get settled, many teachers are now being asked by their administration to teach from bell to bell. Make the most of your student’s time by offering them fun and thought-provoking exercises instead of dull worksheets:
- Try joy journaling, having your students write down a list of things they’re thankful for and allowing them to share with the class.
- Use logic or lateral thinking puzzles to get your student’s brains revved.
- Writing prompts for short essays or poems can engage your students creatively.
2. Transition timers
Keeping track of time is a skill that grows with age and practice. Young children may become impatient or distracted if they don’t know how long it will be until the next activity, especially when it’s a fun break in the day, like recess or art class.
Help students learn to manage time and keep track of transitions between classes by using a classroom timer. Special time tracker tools can be fun for students, but setting a timer on your phone or using a kitchen timer can help engage kids in activities requiring time management.
3. Hand signals
It can be hard to hear a student try to get the teacher’s attention in a busy classroom. Make things easier on yourself and your students by introducing hand signals to the classroom. If students need to use the bathroom, have questions about the lesson, or have a medical emergency, they need to hold up the appropriate number of fingers for you to see.
For reference, create and print a chart depicting your hand signals and what they stand for. Introduce your students to the idea on the first day of school and have them practice until they get used to it.
4. Bathroom policy
Making students ask permission to go to the bathroom can backfire, causing accidents or resentment. Children need to be able to attend to their bodily functions. However, we’re all familiar with students who use a bathroom trip to cut class.
For younger students, having a bathroom pass that’s clearly marked and easily identifiable can cut down on bathroom-related absenteeism. You may wish to have students put their initials in an in-out book or use a bathroom pass placed on a student’s desk instead of carried around in the hallway. Many teachers in older grades prefer their students to go without asking permission, but whatever you decide will be your bathroom policy, state it clearly and keep it consistent.
5. Community Calendar
Many students may have personal daily planners, but getting young children to write things down and check those planners reliably can leave you with more missed assignments than anything. Set up a calendar somewhere conspicuous, and write due dates and other important events for the class. You may want to use a whiteboard or bulletin board to make editing easy.
Apps such as Google Calendar can greatly supplement students at home. Make sure your students know how to use your calendar app and have a link to the relevant calendar so they can check what’s due from home, the library, or on the go.
6. A home for wayward pencils
Pencils are a hot commodity in grade school because they are easily lost or broken. Having one’s pencil out of commission is also a procrastination tactic used by experts to avoid doing classwork, whether in sharpening or looking for a new writing utensil. Cut down on pencil emergencies that take up valuable classroom time by having a system to track and replace pencils easily.
Having a pencil rack for students with extra pencils can make it easy for a child to locate a replacement pencil. Tagging pencils with a student’s name, classroom number, or initials can help identify each student’s pencil and keep pencil theft or borrowing to a minimum.
7. Have a turn-in system
Keeping track of homework from multiple classes can be overwhelming. Instead of collecting homework from students individually, set up a turn-in tray for each subject or class you teach or for each student in your class. This way, students can drop off their completed homework even if they aren’t at their desks.
8. Names on papers
Asking students to highlight their names on their finished homework can help keep track of completed work and cut down on unclaimed or nameless papers. Put a sign up by your turn-in baskets reminding children to highlight their names, and keep a few highlighters there to make it easy for your students to sign their work properly.
