Job Discussion Forums

[dagi]

A couple of weeks ago I started teaching at a school in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. Suffering "burn-out" seems to be a common thing, at my school there are constantly a number of teachers on sick leave because they suffer from burn-out. One teacher told me, that every teacher will be affected by burn-out at least once in his/her teaching career.
Now teaching in Holland is a difficult job, especially in the major cities.
Is "burn-out" something that only occurs among teachers in the EU/US/AUS/NZ ?
I really do enjoy teaching but know for sure that I could not work full-time over here, it's just too hard!
How about other countries? Are EFL teachers less likely to suffer from burn-out? And if you do, where do you seek help, e.g. get help?

[Guest]

I will be interested to hear what all the seasoned teachers have to say to this one.

In my case, I think that even though the Chinese English Teachers do put in LONG HOURS, they have absolutely no concept of HARD WORK.

I had a very stressful job for 25 years - managing 1,000 tenants and their rental properties. I had to answer two phones at once, deal with constant complaints and problems and very rarely had a lunch hour. Even going to the W.C. was a luxury!

Most ESL Teachers here only work an average of 20 hours per week, so how could they possibly have burn out? I myself only teach 10 hours per week, but even 20 would be a "walk in the park" compared to my previous job.

I am going back to my previous job for 7 weeks while I am on my final visit to Australia (only 3 days a week) to earn some money as I will not be paid by the School for July and August.

[Roger]

If you don't know "midlife crisis" or "the burn-out syndrome", you are far less likely to fall victim to itsmental and physical manifestations.

Knowledge sometimes creates new problems...

[Teacher Lindsay]

Bugger it!

One of my penpals in Guangdong recently sent me an article on the matter, but I deleted it.

The article interviewed Chinese 3 business men who are currently suffering from "burn out". Each man was involved in high-pressure, international trade.

The article said "burn out" is a new phenomenon in the Chinese workplace, and is expected to increase dramatically during the next 20 years.

The article also referred to a Chinese idiom along the lines of:-

When you're young you sacrifice your health for money and when you're old you sacrifice your money for health.

Cheers

[shmooj]

I'd say that it would be quite easy to burn out working for the British Council at one of their larger centres such as I am. There is just so much going on that, unless you very firmly draw the line between your work life and social life you will overreach yourself. There's a lot of stressed people running around here.

I think, as you develop your teaching methodology and become more adaptable through experience, you are less likely to suffer burnout. I'd think it was more likely for people in the early stages of their career working in an environment with little or no support.

Sounds like most people here in Korea...

Need I say more?

[Afra]

Stress is a problem for teachers in vocational institutes in the Gulf. Although we may only teach 20 hours a week, we are on campus 45 hours and students have free access to teachers at all times. There is also committee work, materials development, exam writing, individual student meetings and tuition, value added activities, which are often done at weekends, examinations for external examining bodies, etc. Some colleges have two shifts of students per day; teachers may be required to teach a class at 8am and then have another class at the end of the day, possibly finishing at 8 or 9. As the 20 week semester progresses, teachers become more and more tired then start to get sick. It may be easier than teaching in a state system elsewhere, but it is not an easy life. In fact, teaching is not an easy option anywhere for a teacher who is committed to and serious about the job.
By the way, I haven�t always been a teacher.

[naturegirl321]

FOR what it's worth. Before graduating I did an intership in Washington DC and was told that the average time the average person spends working there, at any given job, is 2 years because it's so stressful.

[dmb]

I agree with Afra about teaching in the Gulf. I felt stressed the whole time as you were always having to watch your back

[denise]

Naturegirl--

I've heard the same thing about EFL--there is a two-year lifespan.

Yikes!!

d

[johnslat]

Regarding that "2 year lifespan", maybe not in Saudi Arabia. Reason: there's a pretty big incentive to last for at least 5 years and that's the fact that the "end-of-service bonus" escalates dramatically - from 1/2 a month's salary for each year there (beginning the second year) to a full month's salary for each year.
Regards,
John

[Ben Round de Bloc]

I think the same "2-year lifespan" is probably true for teaching in general in the States, although I haven't done any research to look for statistics on it.

The standard line is The first year of teaching is the hardest. I think many teachers who have a hard time of it their first year are willing to give it a second year to see if things improve. If the second year doesn't go much better for them -- and quite often, it doesn't -- they look for something else.

A difference, however, might be that most people who choose teaching as a career in the States do so with the idea of it being a long-term career, while it seems lots of people who head off to foreign countries to teach EFL think of it as short-term from the start.

Maybe it's my own perception of the term "burn-out," but I've always thought of it as something that takes more time than a year or two to develop. Then again, I suppose there could be short-term and long-term burn-out.

[desultude]

Here at the university where I teach in Korea, I notice that all of us "Foriegn faculty" are whinging because it is a month until the end of the semester. We are tired, bored, and ready to be out of here. The Koreans work twice as hard, and get maybe a couple of weeks off. I never hear them complain.

Boy am I spoiled. I get lots of vacation time, and I put in a lot less time than the typical Korean. But, man, I'm tired!

[khmerhit]

A country can burn you out, too.

You know when you've been in Phnom Penh too long when.....

*Rice seems quite an appetizing prospect.
*Your new girlfriend is over twenty.
*Doorways seem like the natural place to hang out.
*You think that condom is an abbreviation for condominium.
* Three a.m. is early.
*You bitch at the laundry if the bill is 500 riel too high.
*You get poked in the eye and have the offender put in jail two years later at a cost of several thousand dollars (German Andy--le rendezvous)
*Go out on a Saturday night, get pissed, pick up two girls from martini's and your biggest expense is moto taxi fees.
*You buy a bar, spend a load of cash doing it up. Insult all the customers and wonder why you're losing money.
*The way you take left-hand corners is no different to how a blind man would.
*When you're sitting in the living room you reach over to the fridge, touch the car and adjust the mat on the floor. Without having to move whilst watching your favourite Thai soap opera on TV.
*You think your dog is the second most intelligent being on your block.
*Playboy and other dirty mags are boring.
*A one way street is if more than 50% of the traffic is going one way.
*Rain is the best excuse for staying a bar all day.
*A brothel next door is normal.
*You get paid on Friday and you're skint on Saturday.
*You ask for a raise and your boss docks someone else's salary.
*You can't get someone to walk fifty meters and order food for you. So you drink more and worry about it later.
*When streetwalkers come up to you, guess you're a teacher and give you a bunch of bananas.
*Nothing surprises you even if you don't understand a thing.
*You enjoy meeting backpackers and scaring the shit out of them.
*You think you can outstare a local.
*When you have to reach over the car in the living room to get to the fridge and then complain the beer's too warm.
*You laugh at your own jokes before telling them and then forget what you were going to say.
*A shag is not a wading bird.
*You take a driving test to get a local license.
* Cyclos are your preferrred method of transport.
*Whatever you think won't happen does, and when it does, you're not that surprised.
*You have to write things like this to amuse yourself.

from Bayon Pearnik Magazine September 2003, p 9.

[dagi]

is the drop out rate in the Netherlands for new teachers. To be exact, in their first year of teaching, 50% of all new teachers quit.
Once you have worked here, you know why!

[Aramas]

I don't know what the specific figures are, but at any given time a significant proportion of Australian schoolteachers are on extended 'stress leave'.

It's not all that surprising since there's actually no such thing as 'teaching'. The best anyone can do is to help someone learn, and that's up to the student - it's completely beyond the teacher's control. Any job that involved handing control of outcomes entirely to others would be stressful. Imagine an orchestra conductor standing out there waving his baton when most of the orchestra is asleep or chatting, and the rest are ignoring him anyway.