I rather odd effect that I always experience is that the longer I am in one place or with one class, the more stressed I get. When I arrive somewhere, I have the excuse of not knowing the common errors and other peculiarities of that nationality yet, and I also have the buzz of being and working somewhere new. With a new class, it is bound to take a while to get to know them and what they like and dislike. In both cases, I’m also too busy to let any negative thoughts slip in: finding out what books are in the teachers’ room, getting them used to my favourite classroom activities, introducing them to the phonemic script, etc.
As time goes on, though, I come up against the fact that I don’t know 90% of what I need to know about how we best learn languages, and part of what I do know is based on variables that I will never be able to control. And so the stress slowly builds…
And TEFL, stress and you?
TEFLtastic 
Well, I just started a new job last week doing 3 hr intensive classes with 15 mixed-level teenagers in a cramped room with faulty air conditioning in July. That’s been enough to stress me out, I tell you what.
Plus, my precious “dicking-around-on-the-internet” time has been reduced to next to nil. Maybe that’s a good thing?
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I just started in a new school, I havn’t taught in a while but I can never remember being this stressed before. Students generally liked me and I got positive feedback about my teaching, but my first new class (upper intermediates aged 16 or so which I took over from another teacher) have been uncontrollable and unresponsive and gave me negative feedback and their old teacher the highest possible recommendation on the feedback forms they had to answer. I’ve caught them making fun of my appearance with drawings as well.
The layout of the classroom is terrible which doesn’t help, long and narrow, which means I often can’t see them all at once and the acoustics make it hard to be heard.
I’m meant to have more experience but I feel worse than I ever felt on my first ever day teaching. I used to quite enjoy it, but a week of this has left me too stressed to do anything except try sleep. Just a bad one off? What do you reckon?
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There is always the possibility of something like this – however experienced you are.
You have identified a number of the constraints that are making your job unduly difficult. 16 year olds are perhaps the most difficult age group. Upper Intermediate is a difficult level – the effort and focus needed to improve is enormous and that age range are mostly like spent salmon lying gasping in the shallows.
Sounds like a totally unsuitable room too.
I dunno – couldn’t you just quit? Maybe it’s ‘unprofessional’ but if it’s affecting your health to no avail then keep the option open.
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Sounds like the problem is that they loved their old teacher, in which case in the short term there is really nothing you can do as they are bound to be missed. To keep things in perspective, it’s worth remembering that:
– Being popular doesn’t necessarily mean that person was a great teacher
– It’s quite possible that they’ll miss you so much after a year that they’ll make their next teacher’s life hell
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