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Students can feel a teachers energy, even if they are trying to hide it..

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Author: Bethany Spencer

Posted: 30 Nov 2018

Estimated time to read: 2 mins

Looking after your teachers' wellbeing is one of the most important things you can do as a school leader. The success of your school is dependent on the quality of instruction delivered by your teachers to your students; their wellbeing is crucial to ensuring that their teaching skills are effective and of a high quality.

Impact of stress on teachers

If teachers are experiencing high levels of stress, their ability to control a classroom and provide a thought-provoking and challenging lesson to students is minimised. The effects of stress impact anyone's ability to perform to the best of their ability, yet when a teacher's role is to help others achieve their best, the consequences of stress at work are higher.

Symptoms of stress include but are not limited to:

Ways to counteract stress:

Regular physical activity

Keeping time for yourself and hobbies

Relaxation techniques such as meditation or yoga

Spending time with friends and family

Taking time off or a holiday

There are tactics teachers can undertake to combat stress, however if these aren't undertaken and teachers are continually being exposed to repeated high levels of stress, this can lead to sick days and prolonged periods of time off work in a bid to recover.
Download our effective wellbeing guide to discover ways in which you can encourage positive wellbeing and help counteract some of the symptoms of stress experienced by teachers:
Impact of sickness on learning

What can be done?

Conducting staff surveys with regard to wellbeing will help to paint a picture of the general feeling of the staff body and provide you with ideas on how you can improve their happiness and in turn promote a positive school culture. Furthermore, providing your staff with clear guidelines on how they can practice good wellbeing, and communicating to them what to do when they are struggling will assist in emphasising the importance of wellbeing.

The costs attributed to poor teacher wellbeing are huge - it impacts your budget, other members of staff, as well as your students. Implementing initiatives that focus on improving your school's culture and staff happiness will help to improve teacher wellbeing and as a result, you'll be able to reduce your spend on supply teachers, recruitment costs and your students' academic progression won't be compromised.

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Author: Bethany Spencer Posted: 30 Nov 2018 Estimated time to read: 2 mins Looking after your teachers' wellbeing is one of the most important things you can do as a school leader. The success of your school is dependent on the quality of instruction delivered by your teachers to your students; their wellbeing is crucial to ensuring that their teaching skills are effective and of a high quality.

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You clicked because you want the 7 most important reasons to have an employee well-being at work program. First, you should know that there is a high degree of skepticism of many claims being made in the well-being industry. So to get the truth, we have to go to information backed by decades of solid research.

Don't worry, this is not a graduate school discourse on the science of well-being but it is a brief overview of why having a well-being program can provide great benefits to any organization.

Well-being programs are more popular than ever. They started out as employee perks for large corporations; in fact, they used to be called corporate fitness programs. Today well-being programs are common among both medium and small-sized businesses. Well-being programs are now regularly part of a company benefits package.

When done correctly, well-being programs give employees incentives, tools, social support, privacy, and strategies to adopt and maintain healthy behaviors.

Most worksites do a pretty good job of helping employees improve health behaviors. In fact, both public and private worksites are the chronic disease prevention centers of the United States.

Worksites are doing more to prevent, arrest, and even reverse chronic diseases than any other group. Hospitals are great at treating disease and they are good at early detection of disease, but they don't do much in the way of disease prevention.

The total reach and impact of worksite well-being programs dwarfs all other efforts to improve the health of adults. Most worksites don't actively seek the role of "disease prevention expert" but most employers have been thrust into this position. They really don't want to do it.

They would prefer to make and sell products, provide services, deliver the goods and services that they are designed to produce. Yet worksites are doing more disease prevention and well-being than any other entity in society today.

They are more consistent about it and they are more effective than anybody else. And they do all this because they enjoy the benefits that come from having an active healthy workforce. Worksites all across the world are implementing employee well-being programs because they like the benefits of well-being.

Mountains of Evidence Show the Benefits of Well-being

Think of the different benefits employers typically offer. These could include a retirement or pension plan, healthcare, paid time off, or maternity leave. These are designed to help your organization recruit and maintain qualified employees.

Yet there is not a single published study that shows that offering these benefits as any measurable effect on it worksite's ability to recruit or maintain workers. We do them because we believe they are important.

These things are actually very hard to study and we have a feeling or sense that they do make a difference in our ability to attract good workers. But, there is no science to back any of this up.

Now consider your well-being program. Unlike all the other benefits your worksite offers, well-being programs have been studied for decades. There are hundreds and hundreds of rigorous scientific evaluations of the impact of well-being programs. There is more research on the impact of well-being programs than anything else your company does. Granted, the research is not perfect-no research ever is.

But after decades of scientists evaluating programs, we have an enormous amount of very solid data that show the benefits of having a well-being program. As one of the many scientists who have research on the impact of worksite well-being programs, it is not too difficult to support the 7 most popular reasons to have a well-being program.

7 Most Important Reasons to Offer Employee Well-being at Work

1) Well-being Programs Improve Employee Health Behaviors

The core of every good well-being program is behavior change. With the right education, skills, motivation, skills/tools, and social support, people change behaviors. Well-being programs are good at helping people adopt and maintain healthy behaviors. This is perhaps the biggest benefit of having a well-being program.

Healthy behaviors lead to lower health risks, and lower health risks lead to less chronic disease. With less chronic disease employees have fewer health care costs. It looks like this:

Many studies have evaluated the ability of well-being programs to improve health behaviors. Not every well-being program is able to show positive results. The ones that are well-organized and follow effective behavior change models show the best results.

Here are the results of a recently published evaluation. The 1,800 employees at this worksite reported their health behaviors at baseline, one year, and two years after the program began.

Source: Population Health Management article

Just about anybody can have healthy behaviors for a few days or weeks. The key is to maintain healthy behaviors for years. As soon as you stop having healthy behaviors you stop getting the benefits.

I like studies that go out for two years because the results are pretty conclusive by that time. If you can get your employees to participate in a good well-being program chances are they will adopt and maintain healthy behaviors for years to come.

Most well-being studies show the employees have better health behaviors. They eat healthier foods, they eat smaller portions, they exercise more often, they smoke less, they don't drink in excess, they wear seat belts more often, and they're pretty good at controlling their stress. Well-being programs can also help alleviate depression and the symptoms of depression as well as improve life satisfaction.

Even the American Heart Association has completed an extensive review of the ability of well-being programs to improve health and reduce cardiovascular risk.

Others have evaluated all of the research and reported that well-being programs, do in fact, have the ability to improve employee health. In 2013 researchers completed one of the most rigorous and comprehensive reviews of well-being programs. This study is called the Rand Report. Here is what the authors concluded:

We find that workplace well-being programs can help contain the current epidemic of lifestyle-related diseases, the main driver of premature morbidity and mortality as well as health care cost in the United States.

Soeren Mattke, Lead Author of the Rand Report

2) Well-being Programs Reduce Elevated Health Risks

The foundation of any good well-being program must be focused on helping employees adopt healthy behaviors. Elevated blood glucose, high blood cholesterol, and high blood pressure are almost all caused by unhealthy diets and lack of physical activity. Eating and exercising are behaviors.

A few years ago, a randomized clinical trial designed to help people improve their nutrition and physical activity resulted in improvements in health risks in as few as six weeks. Those who maintain healthy behaviors experience lower health risks for six weeks, six months, 12 months, and even out to 18 months after this program began.

When you change your diet, get active, and avoid tobacco, really good things happen. Boise School District is a WellSteps client and not long ago we published the results of their changes in health risks. After one year, a lot of employees who had elevated health risks at baseline, had reached healthy risk levels.

Source: JOEM

Reductions in elevated health risks are important. The New England Journal of Medicine reported that for every 1% drop in total cholesterol, the risk of having a heart attack dropped by 2 to 3%. For every one point drop in elevated diastolic blood pressure, there is another 2 to 3% drop in heart disease risk.

Low health risks are the foundation of good health, and well-being programs are a great way to help employees and their spouses avoid elevated health risks. There are hundreds of research papers that evaluated the ability of well-being programs to reduce elevated health risks. One particular study looking at almost 200,000 well-being participants and showed that 5 0f 7 health risks improved after one year.

Another researcher looked at all of the published studies to get a consensus. This review showed that comprehensive well-being programs will have a significant impact on elevated health risks.

A Weakness of Well-being Programs

There is one weakness that almost all well-being programs have. After 30 years of evaluating dozens and dozens of programs it has become clear that it is difficult to impossible to get large groups of employees to reach and maintain a healthy body weight. The obesity epidemic is caused by a variety of cultural factors and helping employees lose weight has proven to be exceptionally difficult.

While the research suggests that helping people improve blood cholesterol, blood pressure, and blood glucose is possible, helping people lose weight and keep the weight off has proven to be hard to do. Worksite well-being programs are not very effective at helping people lose weight.

Just take a look at the body mass index (BMI)data in the table above. Those who are obese do lose some weight after a few years but not very much.

There is some hope. Recently, the RAND study showed some promising results:

Source: Rand Report

If the focus of your well-being program is to help individuals reach and maintain a healthy body weight you should prepare yourself to be disappointed. The unhealthy culture that surrounds most of us makes it extremely difficult to lose weight, in fact, most people in the United States and in the industrialized world gain weight every year.

So there's a couple ways to look at this. Well-being programs are very effective at reducing elevated health risks like blood pressure, glucose, and cholesterol. But they are not very effective at helping people lose weight.

Without the impact of all the well-being programs in the world, obesity would be even worse than it currently is.

Well-being programs may not help your employees reach a healthy body weight but it looks like they are helping your employees to stop gaining weight.

3) Well-being Programs Reduce Health Care Costs

There are nearly 100 different studies that have looked at the financial impact of well-being programs. These studies are not easy to do, they require extremely complicated ROI calculations, and they take years to complete.

In 2001, the most comprehensive review ever completed on the financial impact of worksite well-being programs was published. That study alone are reviewed 100 different research papers. The ability of a well-being program to reduce healthcare costs depends upon how effective the program really is. Having an occasional lunch and learn about nutrition or just doing a biometric screening will not be enough to move the healthcare cost needle.

Comprehensive worksite well-being programs that improve employee behaviors will see a bending of the healthcare cost trend. Most often they will discover that the savings from program participation will be greater than the actual cost of the program. Almost everyone of these return on investment (ROI) studies show a positive return on investment. Researchers from Harvard recently published another summary of the well-being ROI research.

Here is what they found:

Source: Health Affairs

Among the 22 different studies that looked at well-being programs and healthcare costs, the average return on investment was 3.27. This means that for every dollar that was spent on the program the company saved $3.27 because of reduced healthcare costs.

Last year researchers evaluated the impact of the WellSteps well-being program at a large school district. Here is the actual healthcare cost trend for this worksite. After four years of well-being this worksite is actually spending less on healthcare costs than it did before the program began. For every dollar they spent on well-being they saved $3.3.

Source: Merrill et al. 2015

Anyone who still thinks well-being programs don't improve health is choosing to completely ignore hundreds of peer-reviewed scientific research papers that say otherwise.

4) Well-being Programs Improve Productivity

Poor employee productivity can be defined as physically being at work but not working. This type of poor productivity is called presenteeism. It is estimated that the cost associated with presenteeism due to poor employee health is at least 2 to 3 times greater than direct health care expenses.

While the estimated cost of presenteeism dwarfs the cost of health care, it does not receive the same level of scrutiny among employers preoccupied with controlling the direct costs of poor employee health.

There are a lot of reasons why employees have low productivity. They may not know how to use the equipment, they may be distracted by other employees, they may not know what they are doing, they may be tired, or they might be on Facebook. One of the main causes of presenteeism is poor health.

New understanding of presenteeism has been revealed in recent research published by the journal Population Health Management.

Smokers were 28% more likely to have high presenteeism than non-smokers. Employees with an unhealthy diet were 66% more likely to have high presenteeism than those who regularly ate whole grains, fruits, and vegetables.

Employees who didn't exercise very much were 50% more likely to have high presenteeism than employees who were regular exercisers. These findings demonstrate that poor health behaviors are strongly associated with high levels of presenteeism.

In short, unhealthy individual lifestyle choices may result in substantially higher levels of lost productive work time.

This figure displays increased rates of high presenteeism among employees who smoke, don't eat healthy, or don't exercise regularly. Poor health behaviors eventually lead to elevated health risks and chronic diseases.

The figure below shows how health risks such as excess body weight, elevated blood pressure, and high cholesterol increased the odds of having high presenteeism.

The other health conditions in this figure further paint the presenteeism picture-the presence of risk factors, pain, and chronic disease, especially chronic depression, dramatically increase the odds of having high presenteeism.

Looking at this graph, you can see that employees who suffer from neck/back pain are 79% more likely to have high presenteeism than employees who do not have neck/back pain.

These results confirm several ideas about the benefits of well-being. Presenteeism is associated with poor health behaviors as well as elevated health risks and the presence of chronic disease.

Well-being programs that focus on helping employees have good health behaviors will eventually have an impact on productivity. You can read about the connections between worksite well-being and productivity in a previous blog.

5) Well-being Programs Can Decrease Absenteeism

There are over 50 papers that have looked at the connections between worksite well-being programs and reduced absenteeism. Worksites with comprehensive well-being programs can experience reduced absenteeism for a variety of reasons:

1. Employees with good health behaviors have lower absenteeism

2. Employees who can control their stress have lower absenteeism

3. Employees with healthy blood pressure, cholesterol, and glucose have lower absenteeism.

4. Employees who are not overweight or obese have lower absenteeism

I summarized all of these studies in one monster paper that was published a few years ago. You can read the nitty-gritty details of all 46 papers if you 're really curious.

Any well-being program that can reduce absenteeism will experience cost savings. Harvard researchers looked at the ROI of well-being programs as they relate absenteeism and demonstrated that for every dollar well-being programs spend on well-being they can save $2.73 and reduce absenteeism.

Source: Health Affairs

Well-being programs have the ability to improve employee health and this can have an impact on whether or not individuals are absent from work. But there is another reason why well-being programs can have such a large impact on absenteeism. Employees who have high morale are significantly less likely to be absent from work.

6) Well-being Programs Can Help Improve Employee Recruitment and Retention

I confess there is no published scientific data that shows that well-being programs will make a significant impact on your ability to recruit and retain employees. There are a lot of factors that go into the decision to accept a job offer. It helps if you can offer a good salary and a rich benefits plan.

I had the privilege of visiting the VP of benefits at the Microsoft corporate office in Redmond Washington. If you are fortunate enough to land a job at Microsoft you will get an amazing Microsoft benefits package.

You'll get free well-being, free gym membership, onsite health clinics of every variety, and NO insurance premium-doesn't that sound great? All the large software/tech companies are offering well-being with their benefits plans. The do this because they are all fighting with each other to hire and retain the best workforce possible. A rich benefits package makes it easier to get the best employees.

I don't have any evidence that shows that having a well-being program will tip the scales when an employee is considering accepting a job. A Virgin HealthMiles/Workforce survey did find that about 87% of employees said they consider health and well-being offerings when choosing an employer. But compared to other defined benefits, well-being plans just don't have much sway in the employment decision process.

However, well-being programs do have a strong impact on retention. Retention is the ability a worksite has to retain its workforce. Rich benefits also have a powerful influence on retention, but a good well-being program can help keep employees loyal.

Personnel is the most important asset in every organization. When an employer offers a well-being program to its employees the company is saying, "We think you are an important part of this organization and we want you to be healthy, happy, and employed here for a long time". When you offer your employees a well-being program, you are showing them that you care about them.

You are letting them know you want to do everything you can to keep them in good health and optimal performance. Employees know when they are appreciated. They know when feel welcome and valued as important parts of the organization.

That knowledge can do a long way toward convincing employees to stick around: they can go find another job somewhere, but will they get treated and valued the same way?

7) Well-being Programs Build and Help Sustain High Employee Morale

I'm going to let you in on a little secret. The WellSteps Well-being solutions has a performance guarantee. After three years we guarantee that your well-being program will have a positive return on investment. The secret is that after three years almost nobody cares about the ROI.

That may have been a good reason to start their well-being program, but after employees start to engage, communicate with each other, feel valued and appreciated, the reasons for doing a well-being program change. After three years we have found that our clients like to do well-being because they like the way it has changed their worksite culture.

Employees are obviously healthier but more importantly they are happier. This is another reason that doesn't have scientific research to back it up. We are probably never going to have a good study that can evaluate that question.

What we do have, however, is experience with hundreds of clients that have migrated away from the ROI of well-being and have moved towards the value on investment (VOI) of well-being. You can read a previous blog here.

The academic approach to well-being programs has limitations when we start talking about employee morale. As an internal observer, it is easy to see how our own well-being program impacts employee - but it is still difficult to measure and evaluate. Employee morale is a huge factor in the success or failure of any business and a good well-being program helps employees be happy and healthy.

Many of you have probably studied Maslow's needs hierarchy. The pyramid shown below shows the different needs that we have as humans. The most important and life sustaining needs are the bottom of the pyramid, the base of the pyramid.

These include things like food, water, shelter, social interactions, etc. Without these basic needs being fulfilled we could die or just suffer through life. The top half of the hierarchy shows the kinds of things we'd like to have once our basic needs have been met. Not everyone gets to fulfill these higher needs, and their lives are not as rewarding as they could be.

When you offer your employees a well-being program you are telling them that you respect them, you trust them, and that you want to help them be successful in life. Employees have high employee morale when they are allowed to be creative, solve problems, feel safe and appreciated, develop self-esteem, and achieve personal goals and aspirations. Employees are happy when they have a sense of control over their lives and their health.

In my opinion. this is one of the most powerful reasons to have a well-being program. Realistically, your employees don't care about your healthcare cost problem, they care about their own happiness. Your employees don't share your concerns about productivity or absenteeism. They care about having a fulfilling, enjoyable job.

Your well-being program helps employees achieve all of their needs, both physical, social, and emotional. When it is all said and done, your employees want to feel loved and appreciated, and when they do really good things happen at work.

Productivity goes up, customer service is outstanding, problems get solved, and people get creative. They like coming to work, they appreciate their employer, they work better with others, and they have high employee morale.

What is the financial value of having employees with high morale? It's probably impossible to make this calculation but reverse the question and ask it again.

What does it cost your company when you have employees with poor morale? Complaints will go up, the quality of your product or service will suffer, and problems will multiply because poor employee morale can be contagious. Poor employee morale can be a company killer.

There is no question that high employee morale, while almost impossible to evaluate, is an extremely important benefit of well-being. Perhaps this is why many of the companies with outstanding well-being programs have dramatically better financial performance.

There is an enormous amount of research to support the benefits of well-being. A comprehensive well-being program is going to improve employee health and improve your organization's bottom line.

It is not going to make all your problems go away, but it is going to help you create a worksite culture of health. It will boost and maintain employee morale. With an effective well-being program you will improve the lives of your employees and help drive the success of your organization.

People Also Ask These Wellness Questions:

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7 Most Important Reasons to Offer Employee Well-being at Work

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You clicked because you want the 7 most important reasons to have an employee well-being at work program. First, you should know that there is a high degree of skepticism of many claims being made in the well-being industry. So to get the truth, we have to go to information backed by decades of solid research.

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Your employees want to be listened to! When your employees have grievances that are not addressed, they start feeling like their opinion does not matter. Moreover, listening to your employees and acting upon their recommendations can make them feel like a valued member of your co . It makes your employees' work more meaningful and therefore increases employee wellbeing.

That is why performing regular employee pulse checks is important. Take a look at sample of survey questions every employee should be asked.

5. Giving regular and timely feedback

Receiving regular feedback makes 68% of employees more satisfied with their jobs. When you give feedback to your employees continuously, they feel like their growth matters. In addition, your employees can find out how to work better, which allows them to advance their skills and continue learning. The feeling of satisfaction and happiness in a career is crucial for employee wellbeing.

👁️‍🗨️ Learn how to give feedback to your employees.

Showing empathy and having compassion for your employees' issues will create an emotional bond between you and your employees, humanize your workplace and make it a better place for everybody to work at.

What Companies Can Do to Improve Their Employees' Wellbeing

Take a look at our ideas for improving your employees' wellbeing.

1. Health screening

Providing health screening once per year is a great way for your employees to address some health issues they might have. Also, it significantly increases chances of preventi ng diseases as they might be caught at an early stage.

Besides, having multiple check-ups in a short time period will probably heighten the chances of your employees going to a doctor's office and taking care of their health.

2. Health insurance

Health insurance is a benefit that you should be providing to your employees. What matters most is offering multiple insurances to your so they can pick out the one that matches their specific needs the most.

3. Gym membership

Gym membership is a great employee wellbeing benefit that will make you an attractive employer, but that will also help your employees stay in shape. Going to gym can help your employees reduce stress as well, and it is a great way to keep your employees healthy.

4. Employee wellbeing solution

Introducing health initiatives like a company-wide competition in running or cycling is not only a great way to get your employees physically active, but also to develop their competitiveness and team spirit. Therefore, look at what modules we have built in in our employee wellbeing solution Healthain and find out how you can reap the benefits of providing high-quality employee wellbeing to your employees.

5. Providing healthy meals

Many employees' poor health stems from their diet. Since preparing meals takes a lot of time, many employees opt for fast food for lunch. If you start providing healthier meals in your cafeteria or negotiate discounts for restaurants with healthy food options, you will help your employees stay healthy and more focused in the workplace.

6. Mental wellbeing apps

There are several mindfulness and meditation apps you can look into and propose for your employees to use if you detect they could use it. Help your employees discover such apps and let them know how beneficial meditation and mindfulness can be in their daily lives and coping with stress.

7. Psychological counseling services

By offering psychological counseling services, you will also send a message to your employees that their mental health is your concern, too. The stigma of askin g for psychological help will be reduced, and your employees will have access to mental health experts that can help them deal with their issues.

8. Flexible work options

When you offer flexible working hours or remote work options, you are increasing work-life balance for your employees. According to research, only 8% of employees believe work-life balance is less important than compensation . Besides, knowing that remote work is increasingly popular, this is one of the easiest and most desired employee wellbeing benefits your company could offer .

9. Financial benefits

10. Employee wellbeing initiatives according to your employees

Every company is different - so maybe you can start by surveying your employees about employee wellbeing initiatives they would find most useful. Also, you can inspect your employees' state of mind when it comes to sources of stress in the workplace .

The Future of Employee Wellbeing

Employee wellbeing is important more than ever because companies finally realized the power it has to transform their employees' lives, reduce costs related to absenteeism and healthcare, and create a healthy company culture. The COVID-19 outbreak has surely put more emphasis on mental wellbein g than ever before, which will lead to more understanding and empathy in the period to come.

In the future, we will see more diversified employee wellbeing benefits. The costs of employee disengagement, absenteeism and healthcare are too high to be ignored. Therefore, employers will gradually realize the potential in employee wellbeing and start taking care of their employees' mental, physical and financial wellbeing.

How to Evaluate Your Employees' Wellbeing

Here is a list of questions we propose you ask your employees if you want to see the state of your employee wellbeing . Feel free to use them in a survey or adapt them according to yo ur company's standards.

If you are looking for a survey solution that will allow you to perform customized employee surveys and have real-time results, check out our Employee Survey Platform SurveyRocks .

1. Do you usually look forward to coming to work?

2. Do you feel like your job provides you with a sense of meaning and purpose?

3. Do you feel like your work is being recognized?

4. Do you feel like you have all the resources necessary to do your job well?

5. Do you feel connected to and respected by your coworkers?

6. H ow happy are you at work?

7. Are you happy with your work-life balance?

8. H ow often would you like to receive feedback?

9. Do you feel like you get enough feedback on your work?

10. Is the stress from work affecting your personal life?

11. Is employee wellness important to you?

12. Do you want our company to support your financial decision making (student loan repayment, pension planning, investments)?

13. Would you be interested in attending wellness programs at work?

14. What employee wellness activity would you be most likely to participate in?

15. What are your eating habits at work?

16. When have you last been on a physical examination?

17. H ow likely are you to recommend your friends or family to work with us?

18. W ould it be helpful if our company provided a healthy snacking option?

19. How do you propose we improve employee wellness in our company?

Employee Wellbeing Categories

Read what kinds of employee wellbeing are there.

1. Financial wellbeing

Moreover, employees are looking to find adequate pension benefits or student loan repayment benefits when considering a job. That is why employers provide services that help their employees make important financial decisions.

2. Mental wellbeing

Nowadays, stress is an overwhelmingly present factor in all our lives. A lot of it can come from the workplace, but even if it does not, it still affects your employees' performance. According to research, 84% of direct effects on productivity loss and 93% of indirect influences can be attributed to mental and physical health .

Mental wellbeing as a part of employee wellbeing takes into consideration stress, burnout or any other feeling of unease in employees. Mental health benefits or a company culture in which mental health is openly discussed can equip your employees with means to take care of their psychological soundness. In turn, employees will take less sick days and overall perform better on the job.

3. Physical wellbeing

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Employee Wellbeing in the Workplace: Importance and Future Predictions

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Your employees want to be listened to! When your employees have grievances that are not addressed, they start feeling like their opinion does not matter. Moreover, listening to your employees and acting upon their recommendations can make them feel like a valued member of your co .

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Why it's important to you and your organisation

Poor mental health costs employers in the UK between £33 billion and £42 billion a year ( Thriving at Work report, 2017). Mental health difficulties are also the biggest cause of sickness absence in this country (Health and Sickness Executive, 2018).

It really does pay to invest both time and resources in staff wellbeing and being positive about mental health at work.

There are many benefits to you in adopting a proactive and preventative approach to wellbeing in your workplace:

Increased staff commitment and productivity
Staff who feel valued and listened to are more likely to be engaged in the goals of the organisation, work together positively and perform to their optimal level.

Better staff retention
A workplace culture that fosters staff loyalty and high morale is likely to keep staff for longer and reduce recruitment costs.

Reduced sick leave and absenteeism
Staff who feel their wellbeing needs are being met are less likely to take sick leave and are more likely to return from leave taken in a timely and sustainable way.

A more resilient workforce
Building resilience can help people cope better with day-to-day stresses at work and problems at home. And putting the right mental health and wellbeing strategies in place can help to stop problems from escalating.

An enhanced reputation
Investing in wellbeing in the workplace sends a powerful message about your values and ethics and can help you attract a high quality workforce.

Why it's important to your employees

Work plays a crucial part in most people's lives and not just in providing a source of income. It can give us a sense of purpose and achievement and boost our self-esteem, as well as an opportunity to socialise and build friendships with our colleagues.

We often spend a substantial amount of our day working, so it's inevitable that:

A workplace with high levels of stress and presenteeism (when someone feels they have to be at work but are not being fully productive) can affect someone's mental health leading to burnout and exhaustion.

People experiencing mental ill health, or, major changes or challenges in their life, such as bereavement, relationship problems, having a baby, debt or a workplace restructure may struggle at work for periods of time.

People experiencing mental health difficulties lose their jobs every year at around double the rate of those without a mental health problem and at a much higher rate than those with a physical health condition ( Thriving at Work report, 2017).

Working can sometimes have a negative effect on someone's mental health but it can also have a very positive one as well. A supportive, inclusive workplace can help to prevent new mental health problems and support people struggling with their mental health to stay at work and thrive.

It's every employer's responsibility to provide a workplace where:

Staff wellbeing is a priority in all areas of business.

People experiencing mental health difficulties, major life events or juggling caring responsibilities can talk openly without fear of stigma.

There's good communication and an 'open door policy' - people know what support is available to them to help them stay well at work and how to access it.

Flexible working is offered where possible and having a work-life balance is encouraged.

People know what is expected of them and have an understanding of their job roles and areas of responsibilities.

A suitable organisational structure is in place and people feel their workloads are reasonable.

People are given space for growth and development, so they feel able to make a meaningful contribution.

The culture is inclusive and welcoming and people feel able to be themselves.

There is zero tolerance to bullying, harassment and other forms of discrimination.

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Poor mental health costs employers in the UK between £33 billion and £42 billion a year ( Thriving at Work report, 2017). Mental health difficulties are also the biggest cause of sickness absence in this country (Health and Sickness Executive, 2018).

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In order to cater to our students, we need to take care of ourselves.

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Your self confidence is your biggest strength

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You will always be motivated and happy

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Set your Goal

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How to create a daily routine you can actually stick to?

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Most of us know that we should be practicing self-care, but when it comes to implementing it into our daily lives we struggle.

While you may be juggling several priorities at once, it often leads to leaving your own needs at the bottom of your to-do list.

Sure, your once-in-a-blue-moon social outings, salon appointments, and gym sessions might be considered self-care, but at its core self-care is about regular activities that help you recharge and make you feel good.

If you're not making time for daily self-care, you're more likely to feel stressed, unfulfilled and overwhelmed.

Becoming the best version of yourself involves taking care of your mind, body, and soul. When you take care of yourself, you give yourself the fuel you need to show up as the best version of yourself in your everyday life.

To help you make self-care part of your daily routine and actually stick to it, here are 4 tips to get you started.

Don't do things you hate

If you're only doing something because everybody else is doing it but you absolutely hate it, the more likely it is that you won't commit to it.

The key in sticking to your self-care routine is finding activities that you love and that you look forward to at the end of a long day.

To create a daily self-care routine that works for you and your lifestyle, try experimenting with different things that light you up and make you happy.

Here are some ideas to get you started:

Try new things and find what works for you. Remember, your self-care routine should be tailored to you and you alone.

Plan ahead and schedule it

The truth is if we don't make time for self-care, we probably won't find the time for it. Make self-care a non-reschedulable appointment with yourself. Schedule it in your calendar and set reminders if you need to.

For example, block off 30 mins in the morning to do yoga and 30 mins at night to read. Tell your family or roommates what times you will be unavailable. Make it as official as possible.

It can even be something as simple as planning ahead and laying your clothes, bag, and lunch out the night before to alleviate some stress in the morning.

When you plan ahead and schedule self-care in, it becomes easier to fit it in your days.

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Keep your routine simple

One of my favorite (and maybe most important) ways that I have simplified self-care in my life is by adjusting my mindset around it.

I went from thinking it was just another thing on my plate to believing that it was a necessary part of my daily life. I went from feeling guilty about it to understanding that If I don't do it, it's a disservice to those around me.

Focus on the feeling practicing self-care gives you and let that dictate how you implement it into your days.

It's important to remember that it doesn't have to be lengthy, complicated or cost money.

The whole point of having a daily self-care routine is to help you recharge and relax, so make it as simple as you need it to be to fit into your lifestyle.

Remain flexible

Commit to implementing your self-care routine while allowing yourself to play around with how you implement it.

There are some days that will be easier to practice self-care and others that it might seem impossible. Things will get in the way and that's an inevitable part of life.

When this happens, it's important to let go of the reigns a bit. Don't be too hard on yourself and remember that every day is a fresh start to get back to it. Your self-care routine won't be perfect.

If your daily self-care goals are to get daily movement and nourish your mind give yourself permission to play around with how you will achieve those goals. Create a basic structure but stay flexible in your methods.

This is how I do it: I keep a list of my favorite self-care ideas. Some days, I have more time than others so I choose activities that I can take my time on. On days that I have limited time, I opt for quicker activities.

No two days are the same so I work with my schedule to figure out what works best for me at that moment.

Whether you're just starting out with self-care or you're struggling to get back into a routine, these tips will help guide you in sticking to a daily self-care routine that will bring joy, relaxation, and peace into your life.

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How To Create A Daily Self-Care Routine That You'll Actually Stick To

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Most of us know that we should be practicing self-care, but when it comes to implementing it into our daily lives we struggle. While you may be juggling several priorities at once, it often leads to leaving your own needs at the bottom of your to-do list.

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30 Daily Happiness Challenge for Staff members

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Thinking about starting a club? It's a great way to meet people with similar interests, do an activity you enjoy, learn more about an activity you're interested in, and gain leadership experience for your college application! But what are good clubs to start in high school? In this article, I'll give you a list of dozens of clubs you can start!

Why Would You Want to Start a Club?

There are many good reasons to want to start a club. I mentioned some reasons above such as meeting new people, doing an activity you enjoy, and gaining leadership experience.

However, another reason you may want to start a club is if you have no opportunity at your school to pursue an interest you have. For example, you may have a passion for film, but your school may not offer any film classes or have any film clubs. If that's the case, start a film club to pursue that passion!

Even if your school has a class or club in your general area of interest, you may want to focus your attention on a more specific topic. For example, perhaps your school offers an art course, but you're passionate about sculpture specifically. In that case, consider starting a sculpture club.

List of Clubs to Start at Your High School

Now that you know why you should start a club, what are some potential club ideas? I've sorted the clubs into ten main categories: eight subject area clubs, hobby clubs, and charity clubs.

Subject area clubs are clubs that come from an interest in a subject area taught in school. I've identified eight subject area club categories: Art, Drama, Film, Science, Math, Literature, History, and Language.

Hobby clubs are clubs that stem from an interest in a hobby that most likely wouldn't be taught in high school (such as chess, anime, video games, and skiing).

Charity clubs are clubs that are linked to a specific charity with the goal of raising awareness, working for that charity, or raising money for that charity (such as Operation Smile, Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer, and Becca's Closet)

NOTE: The category a particular club has been placed into is not important. I simply created these categories to organize this list. No one category is better than another. It's best to create a club you're passionate about no matter the category.

Below, I'll give you club name ideas along with a few ideas for activities the club could do. When you start your club, you don't have to do all of these activities. You may want to do the simpler, smaller activities first before trying to plan one of the bigger activities (such as an international trip).

Art Club Ideas

Sculpture Club

Analyze famous sculptures

Work on your own sculptures

Get feedback on your work from other club members

Plan a trip to a local museum

Plan a spring break trip to Florence, Italy to view sculptures in person

Photography Club

Art History Club

Art Review Magazine

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Drama Club Ideas

Shakespeare Club

Classics Club

Each semester read and perform a new classics play

Plan a club spring break trip to Italy and Greece to see where Classical writers lived

Monologue Club

Comedy Sportz Club

Host competitive improv games

Split into different improvteams and hold a competition at the end of the semester or year

Bring in judges who will score each team (similar to Whose Line Is It Anyway)

Improv Club

Film Club Ideas

Foreign Film Club

Screenwriting Club

Read a famous screenplay every week

Analyze why the screenplay was a success or failure

Read a book about screenwriting (such as Save the Cat)

Have each member pitch loglines and develop outlines for a screenplay

Give them feedback, then read the screenplay drafts to the club

Host a staged table reading of each member's screenplay

Directing Club

48-Hour Film Festival Club

Organize a 48-hour film festival (over a weekend or school break) where teams are given a topic for a short film and then have 48 hours to write, shoot, and edit the film

Screen the short films at a festival

Science Club Ideas

Future Scientists Club

Marine Biology Club

Bring in marine biologists to discuss their profession

Watch videos about interesting sea creatures

Plan a club trip to a marine biology center

Set up a volunteer beach clean-up (if you live near a beach)

Hold a letter writing campaign or get signatures for the Save the Whales Foundation

Future Medical Professionals Club

Math Club Ideas

Math Homework Club

Host a free tutoring service for students who need math help

Volunteer at middle schools to help kids with their math homework

Pi Club

Literature Club Ideas

Literature Magazine Club

Creative Writing Club

Book Club

Foreign Book Club

Enjoy reading books in translation? Consider starting a book club where each month the club reads a different translated book (try to read a book from a new country or continent each month)

Meet and discuss that book the following month

History Club Ideas

WWII Club

Ancient History Club

Language Club Ideas

French/Spanish/Chinese/Foreign Language Club

Speak only in that foreign language at club meetings

Host traditional cultural events for (i.e. Chinese New Year Party)

Offer free tutoring to students who need help with that foreign language

Plan a club trip to a country that speaks that foreign language

Read a book written in that language each semester

French/Spanish/Chinese/Foreign Cooking Club

Hobby Club Ideas

Anime Club

Chess Club

Video Games Club

Skiing Club

Democrats/Republicans/Independents Club

Discuss new political events

Volunteer for a campaign

Host a public viewing of a political debate

Plan a political rally

Gather signatures of support for a bill

Political Magazine

Religion Club

Adventure Club

Charity Club Ideas

Operation Smile Club

Host fundraisers to raise money for Operation Smile to provide free surgeries to children with a cleft lip

Organize a walk to raise awareness for cleft lips

Bring in (or Skype with) a child who received help from Operation Smile to talk about how the surgery changed their life

Breast Cancer Awareness Club

Children's Hospital Volunteer Club

Organize volunteer opportunities at a local children's hospital

Host a book donation drive to collect books to donate to the children's hospital

Host a bake sale to raise money to donate to St. Jude Children's Hospital

Soup Kitchen Volunteer Club

Save Endangered Species Club

Organize volunteer opportunities for club members at local animal shelters

Host a fundraiser to donate money to the WWF

Visit a wildlife rescue center

Plan a club spring break trip to see endangered species in another country

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We know what kinds of students colleges want to admit. We want to get you admitted to your dream schools.

Learn more about PrepScholar Admissions to maximize your chance of getting in.

Top 3 Tips for Starting a Club

Now that you have some ideas for clubs to start in high school, how do you go about actually getting one up and running? I'm going to give you my top three tips for starting a club, but for more details, including recommendations on brainstorming a club idea, registering the club with your school, running meetings, and more, check out our full explanation of how to start a club.

Tip #1: Make Sure You Have the Time and Effort to Dedicate to Your Club

When you start a club, you're not only going to have the duties of President of that club (organizing meetings, delegating tasks, etc.), but you're also going to be responsible for developing the club. You'll need to figure out the rules and purpose of the club, recruit members, plan events, etc. You need to put in a lot of work to start an effective club that will continue running after you graduate.

Tip #2: Start a Club That You're Passionate About

If you're going to be spending all of this time starting a club, make sure it focuses on something you enjoy! You need to be excited about the club in order to convince other people to join. If you don't like your club, why would other people join?

How can you decide what type of club you would be passionate about? First, think about what you enjoy doing. What is your favorite class? What are your hobbies? Do you have a new skill you'd like to explore further? Is there a topic you'd like to learn more about? Is there a cause you care about? It's likely that one or more of your answers can be developed into a club.

Tip #3: Follow Through on Your Club

Make sure to register your club with the school. Next, plan the first meeting, and post fliers with the meeting date around your school to spread the word about your club. At your first meeting, discuss the purpose of the club, what major events you'd like to plan, and then hold an election for board members (president, treasurer, secretary, vice president). You're now well on your way to running a successful and interesting new club!

What's Next?

Once you've decided on your club, how do you actually start it? Check out our step-by-step guide on the 8 steps to starting a club for everything you need to know!

Interested in learning more about other potential extracurricular activities? Learn about Model UN and how to join your high school newspaper.

Looking to get started on SAT/ACT preparation? Check out our ultimate SAT/ACT study guide schedule and plan!

Want to improve your SAT score by 160 points or your ACT score by 4 points? We've written a guide for each test about the top 5 strategies you must be using to have a shot at improving your score. Download it for free now:

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The 39 Best Clubs to Start in High School

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Looking for good clubs to start at your high school? We have dozens of suggestions, plus tips for getting your new club off the ground.

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Take 5 to 10 minutes per day to recharge yourself. Just as you recharge your phone or laptop everyday, you too need to recharge
Take a look at the below document for ideas on how to recharge:

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The importance of teacher wellbeing - THE EDUCATION HUB

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An introduction to the research on the factors that contribute to teacher wellbeing, and some practical tips and tools for supporting and promoting the wellbeing of teachers and students.

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Transactional Model of Stress and Coping

To understand how teacher-child relationships can influence teachers' daily experiences of stress, and consequently the wellbeing of teachers, we first consider the "Transactional Model of Stress and Coping" of Lazarus ( 1991) and Lazarus and Folkman ( 1987). According to this model, an individual's reaction to stress is guided by the subjective interpretation or appraisal of an external stressor which subsequently triggers an emotional response. The primary appraisal process involves subjective evaluations of whether the incident is relevant and goal congruent. Only incidents that are judged relevant to one's goals, values, or needs trigger emotions. Incidents that are appraised as goal incongruent trigger unpleasant emotions such as anger or fear. Conversely, an event or interpersonal demand leads to positive emotions when it facilitates the realization of a goal or motive. Secondary appraisal involves the subjective evaluation of one's ability to cope with the situation, which influences the intensity of emotions. Negative changes in wellbeing are caused by repeated daily experiences of discrete unpleasant emotions in response to chronic stressors, whereas prolonged experiences of pleasant emotions promote wellbeing.

Two prominent features of this model are of particular importance for the current review. First, the intensity of stress depends on the importance of the value or goal that is threatened. We, thus, need to understand the importance of teacher-student relationships for teachers. Second, the transactional model focuses on the prolonged experience of discrete emotions as a key predictor of wellbeing. These emotions are triggered by cognitive appraisals of an event or situation. We explore how teachers' mental representations of their relationships with students may affect their emotions in actual situations with students to explain the effects of teacher-student relationships on teacher wellbeing.

Figure 1 depicts the proposed theoretical model. It presents the effects of teachers' mental representations of teacher-student relationships on their wellbeing through their everyday emotional responses. Furthermore, the model proposes that teachers' relationship representations could mediate or moderate the well-studied effects of perceived student behavior on teacher wellbeing. A fairly similar model has been proposed in a recent review on teacher burnout, emotions, and student misbehavior by Chang ( 2009; see also Chang and Davis 2009). The current model, however, highlights the role of teachers' mental representations of relationships with individual students.

Hypothetical model: (1) MR mental representations, (2) subjective appraisal process between brackets, (3) reciprocal effects between variables are present but not depicted (except for the link between wellbeing and teacher-student interactions) as the theoretical model implies causality, and (4) the dotted lines represent a mediational model; an alternative possibility is moderation represented by the dashed lines

The psychological health and wellbeing of people is relatively stable. Yet, research on job stress and satisfaction demonstrates that prolonged exposure to chronic stressors and unsuccessful coping do impact the wellbeing of employees (e.g., Hakanen et al. 2006; Montgomery and Rupp 2005; Van den Broeck et al. 2008). In the current review, we consider the wellbeing of teachers as a long-term outcome influenced by mental representations of teacher-student relationships through everyday emotions and stress. However, though the model assumes causal effects of relationship perceptions on teacher wellbeing, it should be noted that wellbeing, in turn, most likely influences the ability to form personal relationships with children. Lazarus and Folkman ( 1987) also emphasize circularity and explain that, although the cognitive-affective process of stress implies a temporal sequence, variables can be both antecedents and outcomes. For instance, burnout among teachers has been found to inflate perceptions of antisocial and oppositional behaviors (Kokkinos et al. 2005).

Because most research on teacher wellbeing has examined occupational stress and burnout, similar (negative) indicators will receive attention in this literature review. Yet, it is important to note that the current review refers to wellbeing as an umbrella term for both positive and negative indicators of psychological and physical health. Theoretically relevant positive indicators to be discussed are job satisfaction, work motivation, self-efficacy, self-esteem, and positive self-view (Borg and Riding 1991; Brouwers and Tomic 2000; Hakanen et al. 2006; Shann 1998; Tsouloupas et al. 2010).

The influence of Teacher-Student Relationships on Teacher Wellbeing

It is widely believed that personal relationships with children afford teachers internal rewards and give meaning to their work. Teacher-student relationships are often mentioned as one of the core reasons for staying in the profession (Hargreaves 1998; O'Connor 2008). Is there empirical support for the widely assumed association between teacher-student relationships and teacher wellbeing? In this section, we review available research.

Hargreaves ( 2000) conducted in-depth interviews with 60 teachers and found that relationships with students were the most important source of enjoyment and motivation. This was found for both primary and secondary school teachers, although the findings indicated more emotionally intense relationships in elementary than in secondary schools. Elementary teachers experienced both more negative and positive emotions and referred more often to incidents of anger and frustration. Secondary teachers tended to describe personal relationships with students more in terms of acknowledgment and respect (Hargreaves 2000). The organizational structure of secondary education can make it somewhat more difficult for secondary teachers to feel personally connected with their students. Accordingly, secondary teachers experienced more alienation from students and more often felt unknown and stereotyped by their students, which was repeatedly mentioned as a source of negative emotion (Hargreaves 2000). These interviews highlight the value that teachers attach to personal relationships with students in their classroom, and illustrate how conflictual or alienated relationships exert a threat to not only teachers' professional but also their personal wellbeing. Other researchers have also drawn attention to the strong connection between the personal and professional wellbeing of teachers and have reasoned that there cannot be real professional development without personal development (Day and Leitch 2001; O'Connor 2008).

There is also some evidence from descriptive and correlational research that confirms the importance of healthy teacher-student relationships for the wellbeing of teachers. Shann ( 1998) used data from a 3-year project of school effectiveness in four large urban middle schools to examine teacher satisfaction. Both interview and questionnaire data revealed that teachers ranked teacher-student relationships as most important among 14 key variables including school curriculum, job security, teacher autonomy, recognition of teacher achievement, and relationships at work. Moreover, positive teacher-student relationships were also ranked as most satisfying. This fits with the high level of personal commitment that teachers feel toward their students. Correlational research based on teacher reports of conflict and closeness in relationships with individual students provides modest support for linkages with teacher wellbeing. Teacher reports of conflict, but not closeness, have been found to be modestly related to efficacy beliefs of teachers (Spilt 2010; Yeo et al. 2008), and to self-reported depression of preschool teachers when conflict was higher than expected based on teacher perceptions of child problem behavior (Hamre et al. 2008). These findings suggest that experiences of high teacher-student conflict could undermine teachers' efficacy beliefs and evoke feelings of helplessness. Similarly, the percentage of teacher-student relationships in the classroom judged as negative by the teacher has been found to be associated with teacher reports of stress and negative emotions (Yoon 2002). In contrast, Mashburn et al. ( 2006) found that it was closeness, and not conflict, that was positively related to teachers' efficacy beliefs regarding management of difficult child behavior in a sample of pre-kindergarten teachers. They did not find linkages between teacher-student relationship quality and teacher-reported depression.

In sum, both in-depth interviews with teachers and correlational research indicates that teachers get intrinsic rewards from close relationships with students and experience negative affect when relationships are characterized as disrespectful, conflictual, or distant. The results suggest that there are at least modest associations between dyadic teacher-student relationships and the wellbeing of teachers. However, there are hardly any empirical studies that have been explicitly designed to examine the effects of teacher-student relationships on the wellbeing of teachers and, to our knowledge, causal effects are yet unexplored.

Theoretical Perspectives on the Importance of Teacher-Student Relationships for Teachers

Stress is typically experienced when goals are threatened that are of high concern to individuals (Kyriacou 2001; Lazarus and Folkman 1987). Conversely, events that facilitate the realization of a highly valued goal tend to elicit pleasant emotions that contribute to positive wellbeing. Accordingly, relationships with students can only be harmful or beneficial to the wellbeing of teachers when teachers have a need or desire for personal relationships with students. Many researchers have called attention to the importance of strong personal attachments of teachers to their students (Day and Leitch 2001; Hargreaves 1998; Nias 1996; O'Connor 2008). In the previous section, we found support for this notion and discussed research that has provided some empirical evidence for the effects of teacher-student relationships on teacher wellbeing. Yet, these studies do not explain why teacher-student relationships appear to be of such a strong personal concern to teachers. What motives or desires are at stake when teachers experience poor relationships with one or multiple students in their class? In this section, we explore this question drawing from two main theoretical models on interpersonal relationships that have also been used to frame understanding of the influence of teacher-student relationships on children (for reviews see: Davis 2003; Koomen et al. 2006; Pianta et al. 2003). We discuss the self-determination theory of motivation (SDT; Deci and Ryan 2000) and the attachment paradigm (Bowlby 1969/1982) applied to teacher-child relationships. Although different conceptualizations are used, these theories emphasize a basic human need for relatedness that underlies and explains interpersonal behavior in social contexts.

Self-determination theory of motivation

The SDT (Deci and Ryan 2000) postulates three universal, innate psychological needs: for autonomy (ownership, responsibilities, and self-actualization), belongingness (close relationships, interpersonal regard, and support), and competence (feeling capable to bring out desired outcomes and effectively cope with challenges). Furthermore, SDT distinguishes between different types of motivation that reflect a continuum from low to high autonomous or self-determined motivation: external regulation (e.g., "When I devote time to individual talks with students, I do so because I want the parents to appreciate my knowledge and familiarity with their children"), introjected regulation (e.g., "... I do so because it makes me feel proud to do this"), identified regulation (e.g., "... I do so because I can learn from them what happens in the classroom"), and intrinsic regulation (e.g., "... I do so because I like being in touch with children and adolescents"; Roth et al. 2007). Fulfillment of the three basic needs contributes positively to intrinsic motivation where the job is primarily done for pure interest and its inherent enjoyment and satisfaction.

This theory has been widely applied both in the field of organizational psychology and educational psychology to study motivation and wellbeing. For students, satisfaction of the three basic needs through emotional involvement, provision of structure, and autonomy support from teachers has been shown to contribute to academic motivation and achievement (Bao and Lam 2008; Furrer and Skinner 2003; Skinner and Belmont 1993). Similarly, for employees, basic needs fulfillment was positively related to wellbeing, job satisfaction, and work motivation (Van den Broeck et al. 2008; Vansteenkiste et al. 2007). Though relatively little research has been conducted on teaching, several studies have pointed to the importance of choice and control in teaching as well as to support from supervisors and colleagues (Greenglass et al. 1997; Skaalvik and Skaalvik 2009; van Dick and Wagner 2001). These factors promote intrinsic motivation and a positive work attitude for teachers (Wagner and French 2010) and in turn may lead to self-determined learning in students (Roth et al. 2007).

Research within this tradition has almost exclusively focused on teachers' relationships with co-workers, whereas research on teachers' relationships with students is virtually absent. It could be argued that teachers spend most of their working time in the classroom, which makes teacher-student relationships the most likely source for fulfillment of the need for belongingness. Accordingly, in-depth interviews with teachers show that teachers feel strongly connected with "their" students and talk about love and respect and the internal rewards they gain from close relationships with students (Hargreaves 2000). The study of interpersonal relationships with students as a source of fulfillment of the need for belongingness could, thus, aid our understanding of teachers' work motivation and wellbeing.

Attachment theory

Within attachment theory (Bowlby 1969/1982; Cassidy and Shaver 1999), the motivation for belonging can be recognized in the attachment behavior of individuals. The psychological aim of affectional bonds between an individual and an attachment figure, seen in for example caregiver-child and adult romantic relationships, is to achieve or maintain emotional security. The experiences gained in attachment relationships become internalized into mental representations (i.e., "internal working models" or "mental schemas") of relationships that guide social information processing in a consistent and predictable manner (Bowlby 1969/1982). This has important consequences for future social relationships. According to attachment theory, internal working models of relationships contain generalized information about the self, others, and self-other relationships that shape the development of new relationships (Bretherton et al. 1989; Main et al. 1985). Research on the hierarchical structure of these models demonstrates that relationship experiences are internalized at different levels of generalization (Sibley and Overall 2008). Repeated interpersonal experiences across relationship contexts generate a global interpersonal orientation. People also construct domain-specific models for various types of relationships (e.g., romantic, familial, and work relationships) as well as relationship-specific models for relationships with specific others such as a parent, a spouse, or a colleague (Sibley and Overall 2008).

Analogous to parental caregivers, it is contended that teachers construct mental models of their relationships with students that represent teachers' views, feelings, and inner world regarding their teaching (Pianta et al. 2003). Teachers may hold domain-specific models of their relationships with students that contain generalized expectations and beliefs about themselves as a teacher, about their various roles (e.g., caregiver, disciplinarian, and instructor), self-efficacy beliefs, goals for interactions with students, and beliefs about how students should relate to teachers. In a similar vein, Chang and Davis ( 2009) assert that teachers hold implicit theories about the nature of classroom relationships. They, for instance, explain how teachers' destiny or growth beliefs about relationships with students can affect teachers' investment efforts in relationships with challenging students. Growth beliefs encompass the view that relationships are malleable and that relational difficulties can be overcome. Conversely, destiny beliefs endorse the view that possible relationship partners are either compatible or incompatible. Another internalized belief at the domain-specific level could be that teachers are obliged to equally care for all their students (cf. O'Connor 2008). Such beliefs may motivate teachers to give equal attention to their students. Furthermore, teachers may hold different views of their teaching roles. Teachers who primarily view themselves as parent surrogates or socializers tend to be more attentive to disruptive students, whereas teachers who view themselves predominantly as instructors tend to respond more strongly to underachievers (Brophy 1988).

Due to the physical proximity between teachers and students, teachers are also believed to form relationship-specific models for individual children in their class. These models contain a teacher's image of the child, a sense of her- or himself in interaction with the child as well as internalized feelings that color these images (Pianta et al. 2003). These relationship-specific models are considered to be nested within the domain-specific model about the teaching profession, which is nested in the global model that contains generalized beliefs about relationships and views of the self. The representations of personal relationships with students are related to and reciprocally influenced by teachers' professional and personal self-views. As such, relationships with individual students can bear a significant influence on teachers' self-esteem and wellbeing. It has even been suggested that teachers themselves are care- seekers who, in their turn, can gain considerable emotional security from relationships with students or even seek corrective emotional experiences from students that disconfirm and change initially insecure relational schemas (Golby 1996; Riley 2009). In a similar vein, Davis ( 2006) applies the concept of dual relationships when teachers use their relationships with students to meet their own psychological needs.

There is a fast growing body of research that has studied teacher-student relationships guided by notions from the attachment framework. Most researchers have relied on teacher-report questionnaires such as the widely used and well-validated Student-Teacher Relationship Scale, to measure teacher perceptions of conflict, closeness, and (sometimes) dependency in their relationships with specific children from preschool to upper elementary school (Ang 2005; Pianta 2001; Koomen et al. 2011). Conflict refers to negative and discordant interactions that are generally measured using items such as "Dealing with this child drains my energy" and "This child and I always seem to be struggling with each other." Conversely, closeness represents the degree of warmth and open communication, including items such as "My interactions with this child make me feel effective and confident" and "It is easy to be in tune with what this child is feeling." Many researchers also include the subscale dependency in their research containing items referring to interpretations of student behavior only, such as "This child is overly dependent on me" and "This child asks for my help when he/she really does not need help." With respect to the latter dimension, it is noteworthy that some researchers have questioned its validity and have argued that it may be a marker of child adjustment problems rather than a relational dimension (Doumen et al. 2009; Spilt 2010). Importantly, teachers' reports of relationship quality are unique predictors of children's school functioning above their direct reports of student behavior, which supports the validity of such reports to capture the nature of dyadic relationships between teachers and children (Hamre and Pianta 2001). Additionally, some researchers have employed the Teacher Relationship Interview (TRI; Pianta 1999a). The TRI is a semi-structured interview based on interviews that are used to tap into adults' mental models of attachment and parenting (Bretherton et al. 1989; Button et al. 2001; Main et al. 1985). First, tentative results suggest that the TRI captures mainly relationship-specific information, especially about internalized affect (Spilt and Koomen 2009; Stuhlman and Pianta 2002). In addition, it also seems to measure more domain-specific information regarding teacher roles as a caregiver and manager/disciplinarian, suggesting interconnectedness between the relationship-specific and domain-specific models (cf. Spilt and Koomen 2009).

Research on teachers' global attachment styles is relatively sparse. Teachers' generalized adult attachment styles and attachment history have been linked to motives for entering education (Horppu and Ikonen Varila 2004), preferences for behavior management strategies (Morris-Rothschild and Brassard 2006), sensitive caregiving behavior (Constantino and Olesh 1999), and evaluations of individual teacher-child relationships (Kesner 2000).

Just like self-determination theory, attachment theory assumes that affectional bonding between individuals is driven by an innate motivation of humans. Proximity between individuals triggers the development of specific mental relationship representations. The discussed studies offer tentative support for the interconnectedness between teachers' global relationship styles and both teachers' professional beliefs about teaching and their relationships with individual students. Yet, although there is good reason to assume that teachers construct relationship models at different levels of generalization, we are aware of no studies that have tested this.

The need for relatedness

Following the "Transactional Model of Stress and Coping" (Lazarus 1991), teacher-student relationships cannot be harmful or beneficial to teachers unless these relationships are important to their goals or motives. According to the theoretical perspectives on teacher-child relationships discussed in the previous sections, it is a basic psychological need for relatedness that can explain the importance of personal relationships within the classroom for teachers. Baumeister and Leary ( 1995) reviewed an extensive body of empirical literature on human interpersonal behavior and conceptualized the need to belong as a fundamental, pervasive human motivation. People have a basic desire for pleasant interactions with others in a personal caring context and readily develop social bonds when they are simply exposed to each other. For teachers, the time spent in the proximity of students probably triggers a desire for unity and togetherness with students in their classroom and motivates them to engage in personal relationships with pupils. Poor relationships go against this need for relatedness and make teachers vulnerable for personal failure and rejection by students. Both previously discussed theoretical perspectives imply that frustration of the need for relatedness undermines positive wellbeing. Following this reasoning, teachers' relational experiences with individual students is predictive of their wellbeing.

The notion of mental representations found in the attachment framework appears useful to understand how relationships with individual children affect teacher wellbeing. It was suggested that the physical proximity between teachers and students activates teachers' global attachment models and brings on the development of domain-specific and relationship-specific models. The interconnectedness between these models could explain how teacher-child relationships can affect teachers' professional and personal self-images and could elucidate the notion that teachers invest "themselves" in relationships with individual students (Nias 1996). It explicates that teachers are emotionally vulnerable and may experience not only professional but also personal failure when relationships with students are poor (Hargreaves 1998, 2000; Newberry and Davis 2008; O'Connor 2008).

Some annotations may be relevant. The desire for personal relationships does not imply that teachers develop strong relationships with all children in their classroom. For instance, Davis ( 2006) describes how middle school teachers were drawn to students who reflect some aspects of themselves or who validated their instruction. In-depth interviews with kindergarten teachers revealed that teachers may overlook specific children as they had little to say in the interviews and did express neither positive nor negative feelings for these children (Spilt and Koomen 2009).

Furthermore, although the desire for relatedness is considered a basic need, this does not mean that there are no differences between individuals in the strength of this need. For instance, dismissive-avoidant attachment is associated with a desire for independence and an inclination to devalue interpersonal relationships to protect the self from feeling vulnerable. Thus, teachers with more dismissive-avoidant relationship orientations may feel uncomfortable with emotionally close relationships with students and may overlook or reject attachment signals from students (Horppu and Ikonen Varila 2004).

It also seems that not all teachers feel equally responsible for developing close relationships with their students and that not all teachers have an understanding of the positive effects that good relationships can bring about in students. Though this may be different in elementary school, some of the middle school teachers interviewed by Davis ( 2006) felt that they were not obliged to meet students' needs for relationships. It could be that these teachers had more dismissive relationship orientations or were more likely to seek only (a few) relationships that are believed to return their investment or meet their own psychological needs.

Teachers may also have additional motives to pursue positive relationships with students. Healthy relationships with children are a precondition for effective teaching as it helps teachers to motivate and control children's behavior and learning attitudes (Pianta 2006). As such, positive teacher-child relationships may indirectly influence teachers' feelings of effectiveness, competence, and agency.

In sum, the basic desire for relatedness, recognized in various theoretical paradigms about interpersonal relationships, may elucidate teachers' desire for personal relationships with students and explain why individual teacher-student relationships can affect the professional and personal identities of teachers and in turn contribute to their wellbeing.

The Effects of Teachers' Mental Relationship Models on Emotions in Everyday Interactions

According to the "Transactional Model of Stress and Coping" of Lazarus ( 1991), negative emotions are the keys to understanding the effects of external stressors on wellbeing. It is the repeated or prolonged experience of pleasant or unpleasant emotions that evokes changes in wellbeing in the long run (see Fig. 1). Thus, to understand how teachers' relationships with students influence their wellbeing, it is worthwhile to consider how teachers' internalized relationship representations affect their emotions in everyday interactions with children.

Emotions play a key role in research on stress and burnout (Lazarus 2006; Montgomery and Rupp 2005). Kyriacou ( 2001) defines teacher stress as a negative emotional experience that is triggered by teachers' perception of an external situation as threat to their self-esteem or wellbeing. Emotions reveal what is important for individuals: only events that are judged relevant to one's values elicit emotions (Lazarus and Folkman 1987). Moreover, more than major life events, the recurrence of daily hassles and the prolonged experience of negative affect are considered key processes in the development of burnout (Chang 2009; Jennings and Greenberg 2009; Kyriacou 2001; Sutton and Wheatley 2003). Interactions with students are considered to be an important source of teacher emotion. Researchers have introduced the concept of emotional labor to describe the emotional demands inherent to the teaching profession (Glomb and Tews 2004; Nias 1996). Chang ( 2009) synthesizes literature on burnout and emotions to describe teachers' emotional experiences when dealing with disruptive students, thereby emphasizing the importance of teachers' discrete emotions for teachers' wellbeing (e.g., anger, frustration, anxiety, and guilt; for a discussion of discrete positive emotions, see Lazarus 2006). Chang and Davis ( 2009) further elaborate on this model by explaining how teachers' implicit theory of relationships (i.e., generalized beliefs about the nature of classroom relationships) are linked to habitual appraisals of problematic student behavior and, in turn, unproductive emotional labor, compassion fatigue, and burnout. Guided by the attachment perspective, we argue that it is important to consider how both relationship specific and more global mental representations of relationships shape teachers' emotional lives.

According to the self-determination theory of motivation, warm teacher-student relationships contribute to teachers' self-determined or autonomous motivation, which is primarily characterized by positive feelings (i.e., enjoyment). However, probably most informative to understand teachers' emotional responses in specific situations with students is the notion that teachers construct mental models of their relationships with individual students (e.g., Pianta et al. 2003). It is a basic quality of such models that they shape emotional and behavioral responses in concrete situations. Disobedient student behavior, for instance, is more likely to be appraised as challenging and threatening when the teacher has internalized negative feelings about the relationship with the student and holds unfavorable schema's of the relationship with the student. This, in turn, could amplify the teacher's stress response in encounters with the student. In addition, as mental representations become increasingly stable, daily interactions with a "difficult" student can become a chronic source of stress.

Research into mothers' representations of specific relationships with their children indicates that especially the internalization of negative affect predicts their parenting behavior (Button et al. 2001). Analogously, in a sample of kindergarten teachers, Stuhlman and Pianta ( 2002) demonstrated that teachers' internalized negative feelings for a child were significantly related to displays of negative affect in observed interactions with that child. This research provides tentative support for the idea that the nature and intensity of emotions that teachers experience in their daily interactions with students is shaped and defined by underlying mental models of their relationships with students.

One aspect of emotional labor is the need for teachers to invest their "selves" (Nias 1996). As noted earlier, the personal and professional identities of teachers appear closely interlinked with their relationships with individual children, as relationship-specific models are nested within domain-specific and global models of relationships. There is some evidence that global relationship orientations of teachers shape their daily emotional lives, which converges with notions from attachment scholars about the influence of attachment styles on emotion regulation (Cassidy 1994). Clinical experience and scientific research suggest that teachers with a history of avoidant attachment are more inclined to dismiss or neutralize emotional aspects in their interactions with students (Morris-Rothschild and Brassard 2006; Pianta 1999b). Dismissive teachers may be less hindered by poor teacher-student relationships because they are more inclined to distance themselves from others and to interact in a more controlling and task-focused way. Conversely, anxious-preoccupied attachment orientations are characterized by worries about being worthy of love and a strong dependency on approval, and responsiveness from partners. Preoccupied teachers may take relational conflict more personal because they tend to hold high, unrealistic expectations of relationships with students. This may cause more intense negative emotions in the context of a limited flexibility to cope with these emotions (Horppu and Ikonen Varila 2004; Morris-Rothschild and Brassard 2006). This suggests that the negative effects of poor teacher-student relationships on teacher wellbeing are dependent on teachers' relationship styles. In a similar vein, Schirmer and Lopez ( 2001) demonstrated in a sample of employees from a single university that employees with preoccupied and dismissive attachment styles perceived lower levels of supervisor support than secure employees. Only preoccupied workers, however, experienced heightened levels of stress under conditions of low perceived support.

In conclusion, there is tentative evidence that teachers' everyday emotional responses to interpersonal stressors are shaped by underlying relationship-specific as well as more global representational models of relationships. To date, however, there has been very limited research on this subject.

Can Teachers' Mental Relationship Models explain the Association Between Student Misbehavior and Teacher Stress?

Although little research has examined the effects of teachers' mental representations of teacher-student relationships on wellbeing, there is ample evidence that teacher perceptions of student behavior influence the wellbeing of teachers. In addition, student behavior is considered one of the most important correlates of teachers' representations of teacher-student relationships and of the conflict dimension especially (Birch and Ladd 1998; Hamre et al. 2008; Hughes et al. 1999; Spilt and Koomen 2009). This is consistent with the hypothesized effects of teacher-student relationships on teacher wellbeing. In this section, we examine how teachers' mental representations of relationships and perceptions of student behavior are interrelated as predictors of teacher wellbeing. More specifically, we explore the possibility that the effects of perceived student misbehavior on teacher wellbeing are mediated and/or moderated by mental representations of the dyadic relationship with students.

Student misbehavior and discipline problems have consistently been identified as key sources of teacher stress and burnout (Borg and Riding 1991; Brouwers and Tomic 2000; Evers et al. 2004; Gable et al. 2009; Hastings and Bham 2003; Kokkinos 2007; Kyriacou 2001; Lewis 1999; Sutton and Wheatley 2003; Tsouloupas et al. 2010). Teacher perceptions of student misbehavior are directly and positively associated with emotional exhaustion, which is a core dimension of burnout (Tsouloupas et al. 2010). Research further demonstrates that teachers spend a substantial amount of their time on behavior management and that the use of ineffective, reactive strategies causes heightened levels of stress (Clunies-Ross et al. 2008).

It should be noted that most stress research has measured teachers' overall perceptions of disruptive behavior and discipline issues within their classroom (Clunies-Ross et al. 2008; Evers et al. 2004; Tsouloupas et al. 2010). However, there may be just a few students with more severe behavior problems who have a relatively strong influence on discipline issues and levels of stress experienced by teachers. Accordingly, there is much differentiation within teachers in their perceptions of behavioral problems and relational conflict (e.g., Mashburn et al. 2006). Research into teaching stress indicates that problem behaviors do not necessarily lead to stress. For instance, different teachers have been found to report substantially different levels of stress in relation to similarly disruptive children, which emphasizes its highly individualized and dyadic nature (Abidin and Robinson 2002; Greene et al. 1997; Greene et al. 2002). Based on these findings, it seems important to examine teachers' perceptions of student behavior and relationships at the dyadic level. To date, however, this line of research on teaching stress has received limited attention, whereas, at the same time, attention for the interpersonal nature of individual teacher-child interactions has grown rapidly over the last two decades guided by the pioneering work of Pianta ( 1992) and Pianta et al. ( 2003).

In a discussion on classroom management, Pianta ( 2006) criticizes previous research for exclusively examining student (problem) behavior and classroom management in terms of concrete behaviors and practices. Current research, however, advocates a relationship-focused perspective to understand behaviors of children and teachers in light of the meaning for the interpersonal relationship (Nie and Lau 2009; Pianta 2006; Wentzel 2002). Relationships between teachers and students entail more than the sum of their behaviors and their individual characteristics (Pianta 2006; Pianta et al. 2003). Therefore, within this research tradition, teacher reports of relationship quality, mostly assessed using the Student-Teacher Relationship Scale, typically measure teachers' perceptions of the interpersonal relationship with a specific student, of the behaviors of that student towards the teacher, and their views about the student's feelings about the teacher (Pianta 2001). Such reports are considered to capture the internalized beliefs and feelings about the dyadic relationship (i.e., representational models), which, as noted earlier, are believed to guide teachers' behaviors and emotional responses to student behavior in actual situations (Pianta et al. 2003). Accordingly, these relationship reports (example item: "When this child is in a bad mood, I know we're in for a long and difficult day") may reflect cognitive and affective (appraisal) processes about the self and self-other relationship that are more proximal to teachers' stress responses in actual situations, and hence to their wellbeing, than teacher reports of simple student conduct problems (example item: "often has temper tantrums").

Moreover, there is some empirical evidence that perceptions of disruptive student behavior shape mental representations of the dyadic relationship. Longitudinal research over the course of a school year indicates that teachers' perceptions of externalizing student behavior are reciprocally related to representations of conflictual relationships, suggesting that perceptions of problem behavior exacerbate representations of conflict and vice versa (Doumen et al. 2008). The internalization of negative affect and beliefs about the relationship may cause perceptual biases (e.g., not noticing positive behavior from the student or being highly sensitive to relatively minor misconduct) and negative automatic thoughts about student behavior (e.g., "this student wants me to feel upset" or "this student does it on purpose"), which increases perceptions of disruptive behavior that in turn reinforce the internalization of negative beliefs and feelings about the relationship with the student. Importantly though, Doumen et al. found that this cyclical process was driven by perceptions of heightened levels of child problem behavior in the beginning, thereby indicating causality. Therefore, it seems conceivable that perceptions of misbehavior primarily influence mental representations of teacher-student relationships. These in turn may affect teachers' emotional responses in daily hassles with students. In line with this reasoning, representational models of teacher-student relationships could mediate, at least in part, the effects of perceived student misbehavior on teachers' emotional responses (see Fig. 1). Indeed, preliminary evidence suggests that the effects of perceived problem behavior on teaching stress are (fully) mediated by teachers' perceptions of conflict within the relationship with that student (Koomen and Spilt 2011).

An alternative possibility is that representations of teacher-student relationships moderate the effects of perceived student misbehavior on teachers' emotional responses in actual situations. In this case, representational models are viewed as a lens through which student misbehavior is interpreted (Pianta et al. 2003). Unfavorable representations (i.e., internalized negative cognitions and feelings about the self-other relationship) could then amplify the effects of perceived misbehavior on teachers' stress reactions (see Fig. 1). This could elucidate why different teachers may experience different levels of stress in interactions with equally disruptive students (cf. Greene et al. 2002; for parallel findings with regard to student outcomes, see e.g., Meehan et al. 2003).

In sum, it was discussed that not student misbehavior in general but the extent to which it undermines the teacher-student relationship may cause prolonged distress in teachers. More specifically, it could be reasoned that perceptions of behavior problems of individual students shape teachers' mental representations of the dyadic relationship, which in turn are believed to guide teachers' stress response in daily situations with students and in the long run can cause changes in teacher wellbeing. As such, mental representations of teacher-student relationships could perhaps be a more powerful predictor of teacher wellbeing than perceptions of problem behavior. In addition, it is also possible that unfavorable relationship representations amplify (i.e., moderate) the negative effects of perceived misbehavior.

Discussion and Directions for Future Research

In previous research, perceptions of student misbehavior and discipline issues have been considered among the primary sources of negative emotional experiences and stress for teachers. Chang ( 2009) contended that we need to understand teachers' interpretations and attributions of student misbehavior because habitual patterns in teachers' judgments underlie the everyday emotional experiences of teachers that contribute to stress and burnout (see also Chang and Davis 2009). In the current review, we reasoned that teacher perceptions of student behavior and daily emotional experiences of teachers need to be considered in light of the interpersonal relationships between teachers and students. We proposed that teachers' internalized representations of interpersonal difficulties could mediate or moderate the effects of perceived behavior problems on teacher wellbeing. Teachers' mental representations of relationships with disruptive children appear characterized by elevated levels of internalized negative affect, which in turn appear predictive of emotional displays in daily interactions (Spilt and Koomen 2009; Stuhlman and Pianta 2002).

Furthermore, we sought to understand why teacher-student relationships are important to teachers. According to theoretical models of relationships, teachers' emotional involvement with students in the classroom is driven by a basic psychological need for relatedness or communion. In fact, teachers may be drawn to the classroom in part, because here that need might be fulfilled. Frustration of the relationship motive evokes stress, and in the long run causes changes in the wellbeing of teachers. In addition, guided by attachment research, we discussed that teachers form representational models of teacher-student relationships on different levels of generalization, which could explain why both the professional and the personal wellbeing of teachers seem affected by individual teacher-student relationships. From a practical view, it's noteworthy that mental representational models are considered open models that can be modified by corrective experiences and through in-depth reflection (Bakermans-Kranenburg et al. 1998; Chang and Davis 2009; Pianta 1999b; Spilt et al. 2011). Teacher educators and school administrators need to understand the critical role of beliefs and feelings about classroom relationships in general and relationships with specific students in teachers' professional development, as well as how teachers can be equipped with interpretative frameworks that promote constructive responses to relational and behavioral difficulties with specific students to avoid escalating conflict and emotional exhaustion.

A closer understanding of teachers' relatedness to students in the classroom may not only provide new insights in teachers' wellbeing, ongoing professional development, and retention but also offers indirect yields for students' school success. Consideration of teacher-student relationships as a core aspect of the teaching profession and provision of adequate professional support for teachers to enhance their relational pedagogy will contribute to educational outcomes because good relationships between teachers and students are central to learning and instruction (Martin and Dowson 2009; Roorda et al. 2011).

It should be stressed that there is virtually no research that has directly tested the propositions of the conceptual model represented in Fig. 1 and considerable work remains to be done in the development of appropriate measures. We propose four issues that should be considered in future research. First, there is a need of more in-depth measures to understand teachers' interpersonal experiences with students. Research inspired by attachment theory has typically relied on teacher reports of closeness and conflict, which yield highly valuable information about teacher-student relationships. However, attachment research suggests that semi-structured interviews provide a more in-depth understanding of mental representations of caregiver-child relationships (Maier et al. 2004). Based on this premise, the TRI was developed and tested in kindergarten classes (Spilt and Koomen 2009; Stuhlman and Pianta 2002). Replication is needed in larger samples and clinical populations. In addition, research needs to be extended beyond early or elementary education.

When considering the measurement of teachers' interpersonal experiences with students, it is worthwhile to take the multidimensionality of teachers' relationship perceptions into account. Teacher perceptions of student-teacher relationship quality embody relatively independent dimensions referring to close and warm aspects of the relationships against discordant and negative aspects (e.g., Pianta 2001; Spilt and Koomen 2009). Baumeister et al. ( 2001) synthesized numerous studies and inferred that bad experiences are more powerful and have a more lasting effect on individual's wellbeing than good experiences. Following this reasoning, conflictual relationships with a few children in class may have stronger effects on teacher wellbeing than distant or even close relationships with the other children. In addition, research indicates that teachers can judge their relationships with disruptive children as simultaneously conflictual and close (e.g., Spilt and Koomen 2009). Perhaps, in the context of a warm and open relationship, relational conflict and discipline issues resulting from maladaptive child behavior may be experienced as stressful but do not necessarily contribute to burnout because the effort is believed to be meaningful and worthwhile. The psychodynamic existential perspective on burnout indeed states that the root cause of burnout lies in a loss of significance (Pines 2002). Research from this perspective has shown that chronically high levels of stress do not necessarily lead to burnout when the work is still believed to be important (Pines 2002; Pines and Keinan 2005). For these reasons, it is recommended that researchers examine both the unique and interactive effects of negative (conflict) and positive (closeness) relationship qualities.

Second, researchers agree that daily experiences of negative emotions triggered by chronic stressors are key processes in the development of burnout. In this context, it is important to examine both the emotion itself and the ability to regulate that emotion. Chang and Davis ( 2009) provided a thorough discussion of teacher emotions and regulation of emotions in challenging teacher-student relationships that offers a basis to examine linkages between teachers' mental representations of relationships with individual students, emotional experiences, and coping strategies. To examine teachers' daily emotional experiences, it is important to also adopt appropriate micro-analytic methods to study the emotional lives of teachers in the classroom (Chang 2009; Lazarus and Folkman 1987). Carson et al. ( 2010) introduces ecological momentary assessment to capture teachers' emotional states through repeated assessments in the field over an extended time period. Based on the current review, it could be instructive to use micro-analytic methods for the assessment of teacher emotions in interactions with individual students, and link these data to measures of teacher-student relationship quality and teacher wellbeing.

Third, researchers need to carefully select their outcome variables. Whereas much research has focused on teacher stress and burnout, there has been relatively little attention to positive indicators of wellbeing. The self-determination theory of motivation, for instance, specifically predicts that positive teacher-student relationships enhance autonomous work motivation and job commitment of teachers. Such factors may add to our understanding of the resilience of teachers under various stressful conditions (see also the work of Hakanen et al. 2006 about energetical versus motivational processes).

Fourth, there is a need for longitudinal data to support the proposed causal effects of teacher-student relationships on the wellbeing of teachers. As noted earlier, though reciprocal relationships are present, the model implies a causal process as corroborated by stress research (e.g., Lazarus and Folkman 1987). It was proposed that teachers' representational relationship models guide their emotional responses in daily interactions with students, which in turn can cause changes in teacher wellbeing. In addition, we argued that teachers' mental representations of relationships with individual students are a more powerful predictor of teacher wellbeing than perceived student misbehavior. For stringent tests of causality, however, experimental research is needed. As noted earlier, experimental efforts may be directed at the representational level. Alternatively, representational models can also be changed indirectly through behavioral change (e.g., Pianta 1999b). The effects of such intervention programs on teachers' emotional responses and wellbeing could be studied in order to provide evidence for causal effects.

Several qualifications of the review should be considered. First, it was largely confined to individual teacher-student relationships because these have received limited attention as a factor related to teacher wellbeing (Friedman 2000; Kyriacou 2001). It proposed that affective relationships with individual children can meet a basic need of teachers for relatedness. However, a teacher's sense of companionship and belonging is also related to the degree of social cohesion in the classroom and in the school (e.g., Martin and Dowson 2009).

Furthermore, this literature review was highly explorative. Multiple notions and conceptualizations about interpersonal relationships in general and student-teacher relationships in particular were explored from different perspectives and research traditions and the major propositions were organized in one, relatively simple conceptual model. The discussion of the major propositions was based on mostly limited empirical research and deduced from theoretical perspectives that have generally been applied to understand teacher-student relationships as a proximal factor of children's development.

Another qualification of the current review may be the reliance on the "Transactional Model of Stress and Coping" of Lazarus ( 1991) as a general organizing framework to conceptualize links between external stressors and wellbeing. Although this model is widely accepted, there are other theoretical approaches such as the job demand-resources model (Bakker et al. 2004) or the existential perspective (Pines 2002). In addition, two tenets of Lazarus' model remained largely unexplored because these were considered beyond the scope of the current review: First, the secondary appraisal process that involves the evaluation of the individual's ability to cope with the situation is believed to influence the intensity of discrete emotions. Chang and Davis, ( 2009) characterize teachers' emotional experiences in terms of (habitual) primary and secondary appraisals about student behavior and link these emotions to activating and de-activating coping strategies. Second, Lazarus' model emphasizes the subjective experience of stress and states that the identification of individual factors is crucial to understand why some individuals suffer more stress than others under similar environmental circumstances. The current review argues that individual differences in vulnerability to interpersonal stress could (partly) be explained by differences in relationship orientations or attachment styles (see also Pines 2004).

In spite of its explorative nature, this literature review yielded several important insights that could guide future research on teacher wellbeing. First, it suggests that teachers' relationships with specific students can be primary sources of teachers' everyday emotional experiences and wellbeing because teacher-student relationships contribute to a basic need for relatedness. In addition, the notion that teachers internalize interpersonal experiences with students into representational models of teacher-student relationships could explain the frequently stated view that professional and personal identities of teachers are closely interrelated and shaped by relationships with individual students. Lastly, representational models of relationships are believed to shape and define discrete emotional experiences in everyday interactions with students and as such could further elucidate the well-studied effects of misbehavior on teacher wellbeing.

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Teacher Wellbeing: The Importance of Teacher-Student Relationships - Educational Psychology Review

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Many studies have examined the importance of teacher-student relationships for the development of children. Much less is known, however, about how these relationships impact the professional and personal lives of teachers. This review considers the importance of teacher-student relationships for the wellbeing of teachers starting from the Transactional Model of Stress and Coping of Lazarus (1991).

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They provide you a productive break from study

They can help you to improve academic performance

They can help you to build  skills outside of the classroom

They can open your mind to new interests (and views)

They look good on a résumé

They develop your time management skills

They provide social opportunities

They help develop a sense of commitment and responsibility.

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Dear Parents,

Your wellbeing matters

Let’s take some time out to talk about your wellbeing and how to keep it on track.

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Take small steps to improve your wellbeing

Looking after yourself doesn't need to take up a lot of time or involve big changes. You can:

Don't be hard on yourself

Remember that tough phases pass

Build supportive relationships

Do things that you enjoy or find relaxing

Avoid expecting too much of yourself

Take any opportunity to get some rest

Don't compare yourself to other parents

Socialise - join a parenting support group

Say 'yes' when someone offers you support

Ask for help - you don't have to do it alone

Go for a short walk everyday with your child

Reward yourself and plan things to look forward to

Talk about how you feel with family and friends

Eat regular, healthy meals and exercise regularly

Enjoy time with your child - notice what's special about them

Value yourself and the job you are doing as a parent

These might interest you also:

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Help us by rating this page:

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Looking after yourself doesn't need to take up a lot of time or involve big changes.

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Children’s wellbeing is closely bound to their parents’ wellbeing. Find out how to improve parents’ wellbeing and, consequently, their children’s.

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Every school and college has a whole raft of school-home contact tools. Information evenings and courses, the school/college website, newsletters and social media are opportunities to present ideas and tips for improving parents' wellbeing.
How you can support family life

In your communications to parents, emphasise the importance of quality time together and shared experiences, such as family mealtimes - preparing meals and setting the table together, turning off technology and talking to each other about your days or shared activities.

Encourage a healthy approach to consumerism

Tips you can share with parents include:

offering opportunities to earn pocket money and encouraging children to save some of it

avoiding adverts for consumer goods

helping children identify what really matters in their lives

Acknowledge parents' stress - parents of children at your school will certainly be affected by stress to a greater or lesser extent. Stress is not necessarily a bad thing, as it motivates us and helps us perform and achieve. Too much stress can lead to many problems including anxiety, irritability, tendency to drink or smoke more, temper outbursts and much more. These can all affect family life and they will appreciate it when schools let them know they understand these pressures.

Offer opportunities and information about positivity and get parents involved in fundraising, school productions, reading support.

Host a Mindfulness evening for parents - this is a scientifically-proven meditation technique that combats stress. Involve parents in workshops on mental health issues. Have a mental health bulletin board for parents.

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Every school and college has a whole raft of school-home contact tools. Information evenings and courses, the school/college website, newsletters and social media are opportunities to present ideas and tips for improving parents' wellbeing.

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9 TESTED TIPS TO IMPROVE YOUR WELLBEING AND QUALITY OF LIFE
https://wellbeing-project.org/improve-wellbeing/

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Keeping in touch with your students virtually

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Keeping in touch with your students virtually

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implementing a school-approved messaging platform that does not require internet connection. Take a look at the below mentioned recommendation!

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Adoption and usage

Simple, effective, and surprisingly easy to use

With nearly 30 million users in 80% of US schools, the numbers speak for themselves: students, families, and educators love using Remind.

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Remind | Communication Platform for Education

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Remind is a communication platform that reaches students and families where they are and supports learning wherever it happens. Millions of educators, students, and parents use Remind to connect with the people and resources that help them teach and learn.

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There are many ways to answer this question: Why is wellbeing important in schools? We could focus on impacts of wellbeing on test scores or classroom management. We could illustrate the advantages relating to productivity, classroom communities, or teacher relationships. While we will touch on many of these benefits, the most important reason to care about wellbeing is that we, as leaders, have been trusted with the world's most valuable resource: children. Each student who frustrates us, confuses us, delights us, and impresses us has intrinsic worth and potential. It is a sobering and significant stewardship to be a part of the classroom/school community life that prepares children to "[inherit] resources of the race, and to use [their] own powers for social ends" (Dewey, 1897, p. 78). Thus we should focus first and foremost on wellbeing because we truly care about the students entrusted to us, recognize our moral obligation to nurture those within our stewardship, and want the best for them both now and in the future.

Traditionally schools have focused on students' current needs or short-term victories (e.g., mastery by the end of a unit or term, likelihood of graduation, etc.). However, these short-term items fall short in benefiting students compared with the life-long advantages of wellbeing. Ed Diener (2011) wrote,

[Happiness] is emotional capital we can spend in the pursuit of other attractive outcomes. Research shows that happy people live longer, succumb to fewer illnesses, stay married longer, commit fewer crimes, produce more creative ideas, work harder and better on the job, make more money, and help others more. (p. 20)

Fostering and teaching wellbeing is a way to show students and educators we care about them and want to support them by enabling them with short- and long-term benefits. It means depositing knowledge and dispositions into an account that may someday fund their future marriage, health, profession, creativity, and success. Isn't that what we really want for each student?

But why does wellbeing need to be specifically prioritized in schools? Schools touch nearly everyone from faculty and students to parents and community leaders. Schools have the potential to share humanity's resources while enabling youth; including wellbeing in our students' educational experiences can naturally extend established purposes of schooling. Overall wellbeing enhances intrinsic motivation, decreases disciplinary problems, increases academic achievement, improves school satisfaction and leads to flourishing of individuals, communities, and nations (Buecker et al., 2018). Simply put, those who feel better can learn better. Research has found that "inducing positive emotions (such as joyfulness, love, or appreciation) enlarges cognitive perspectives and enhances the ability of individuals to attend to more information, make richer interpretations, and experience higher levels of creativity and productivity" (Cameron, 2012, p. 26). Our best learners and teachers are those who have the skills, resources, and environments necessary for them to experience wellbeing and reap the benefits of feeling good and learning more. Even more benefits are connected to individual aspects of wellbeing.

Facets of wellbeing, such as gratitude, hope, and emotional regulation, have been found to improve academic performance across several areas. For example, students with high levels of hope can make adaptive attributions and overcome failure by making corrections. Thus failure ceases to be a long-term detriment to their self-worth. Similarly, gratitude increases students' satisfaction with school and propels them in making and pursuing intrinsic goals. Gratitude is positively correlated with "higher GPAs, greater absorption in meaningful activities, more life satisfaction, and more social integration." In addition, emotional regulation helps students get along with peers and teachers, exhibit prosocial behaviors, and adjust to new classrooms (Furlong, Gilman, & Huebner, 2014). Thus both generally and specifically, wellbeing gives our students a happy though competitive advantage both inside and outside the classroom.

Students are not the only ones who benefit from wellbeing on the agenda. Teachers who persist with low levels of personal wellbeing are more exhausted, more cynical, and more distant from their students. They question their own self-efficacy, limit their own achievements, are demotivated when faced with challenges, and are more likely to experience burn-out. In contrast, teachers who enjoy wellbeing are better able to interact, teach, and achieve (Bentea, 2017). In some cases, prioritizing wellbeing may only require a few changes to classrooms, procedures, and priorities, but these changes can lead to long-lasting positive impacts for both students and teachers.

Wellbeing does not spontaneously grow in the sidewalk cracks of time between class assignments and teacher meetings. If we are not deliberate about teaching and fostering wellbeing, students will grow up without knowing wellbeing is within their internal locus of control. Shawn Achor (2010) observed,

What was going on here [at Harvard] was that like so many people in contemporary society, along the way to gaining their superb educations, and their shiny opportunities, they had absorbed the wrong lessons. They had mastered formulas in calculus and chemistry. They had read great books and learned world history and become fluent in foreign languages. But they had never formally been taught how to maximize their brains' potential or how to find meaning and happiness. (p.14).

We have the opportunity to formally teach our students to maximize their potential, and prioritizing their wellbeing is a good place to start. Your first step in enabling your students and educators with the power of wellbeing is to assess it. Then respond to the assessment in ways informed by research and adapted to your context. The resources that follow will help you start or continue your efforts to optimize your school's potential as a place of learning and flourishing.

Section Summary

Prioritizing wellbeing is one way to nurture the whole child.

Wellbeing provides life-long advantages in health, work, relationships, and creativity.

The far-reaching influence of schools can be more easily adapted to foster wellbeing throughout the entire community.

Wellbeing improves students' academic performance, behavior, social integration, and satisfaction.

Wellbeing improves teachers' ability to interact with students, teach concepts, face challenges, and avoid burnout.

Suggestions for Further Research

Achor, S. (2010). The happiness advantage: The seven principles of positive psychology that fuel success and performance at work. Corwin.

Bentea, C. (2017). Teacher self-efficacy, teacher burnout and psychological well-being. The European Proceedings of Social & Behavioural Sciences, 1128-1136. https://edtechbooks.org/-PGj

Boren, D. M. (2019). Teacher well-Being: Principals supporting a smooth ride. Leader
Magazine, Winter, 5-9.
Buecker, S., Nuraydin, S., Simonsmeier, B., Schneider, M. & Luhmann, M. (2018). Subjective well-being and academic achievement: A meta-analysis. Journal of Research in Personality 74. https://edtechbooks.org/-PHzN

Cameron, K. (2012). Positive leadership: Strategies for extraordinary performance (2nd ed.). Berrett-Koehler.

CASEL. (n.d.). Home Page. https://edtechbooks.org/-PGj

Dewey, J. (1987). My pedagogic creed. The School Journal, 54(3), 77-80.

Diener, E., & Biswas-Diener, R. (2011). Happiness: Unlocking the mysteries of psychological wealth. Blackwell.

Furlong, M. J., Gilman, R., & Huebner, E. S. (2014). Handbook of positive psychology in schools (2nd ed.). Routledge.

IPEN. (n.d.). Home page. https://edtechbooks.org/-PGj

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There are many ways to answer this question: Why is wellbeing important in schools? We could focus on impacts of wellbeing on test scores or classroom management. We could illustrate the advantages relating to productivity, classroom communities, or teacher relationships.