2. About Calmer Schools:
● Our Mission: Help educators apply trauma-informed
practices to cultivate calmer classrooms
● Our Team: Educators, researchers, designers, and
community members
● Our Community: 50+ schools serving educators,
families, and students in the United States each year
3. The study, conducted by the University of British Columbia and
published in June in the journal Social Science & Medicine, found a
possible connection between teachers’ burnout levels and students’
cortisol levels, a hormone that indicates stress.
For the study, researchers surveyed 17 teachers in grades 4 to 7 on
their potential burnout, and then tested over 400 students in those
teachers’ classrooms for stress levels by collecting saliva samples three
times in one day. Researchers found that in classrooms where teachers
were feeling more burned out or exhausted, students’ cortisol levels
were higher, especially in the morning. This suggests that stress
contagion might be taking place in the classroom among students and
their teachers.
Raise your hand if you think
stress is contagious.
4. ➢ Nearly three-fourths of teachers and 85 percent of
principals are experiencing frequent job-related
stress, compared to just a third of working adults.
➢ Fifty-nine percent of teachers and 48 percent of
principals say they’re burned out, compared to 44
percent of other workers.
➢ Teachers of color were more likely to say they
intended to leave than white teachers—41
percent compared to 31 percent.
Educators and Stress
5. What is the most
important
school-based
factor
influencing
student
achievement
and well-being?
6. Teacher Well-Being Student Well-Being
Class average of
students’ grades
Standardized
achievement
test scores
School satisfaction
Results of a study published in the Journal of Educational
Psychology (380 teachers and 7,899 students) demonstrates the direct
relationship between teachers’ emotional exhaustion and…
Perceptions of
teacher support
7. Today’s Outcomes:
Define mental health and
describe its importance
to well-being.
Explain the beneficial and
harmful effects of stress
and anxiety.
Explore personal coping
strategies and reflect on those
that are working and those that
need development to
reduce stress.
Identify 1-2 new
research-based coping skills
that can be incorporated daily
to enhance
personal resilience
01 02
03 04
8. Mental health
● It affects how we think, feel, and act.
Why is it important?
● Helps determine how we handle stress, relate to
others, and make healthy choices.
● Good mental health is the foundation for better life-long
physical health and well-being.
9. What do stress and anxiety have to
do with mental health?
“The basic idea is that the brain
is shunting its resources
because it’s in survival mode,
not memory mode”.
- Dr. Kerry Ressler, Harvard Medical School
10. Why do we experience
feelings of stress and anxiety?
The main job of our brain is to keep us safe. A part of our
brain called the amygdala is like a guard dog, constantly
scanning for threats to protect us.
Here’s what happens when a threat is detected:
● The amygdala sends a signal to our nervous system and
our body is put on high alert.
● Our body gets ready to react to the threat with fight, fly, or
freeze response as a form of protection.
● Our awareness heightens, our breathing quickens, our
muscles tense up, and we take action.
11. Why do we experience
feelings of stress and anxiety?
In general, the ‘threats” we encounter in the modern world
are much different from the threats that our ancestors
faced when our threat protection system developed. (For
example, a saber-toothed tiger vs someone cutting you off
in traffic.)
Unfortunately, our amygdala can’t really tell the difference
and so we are pushed into survival mode when we don’t
actually need it. Modern humans call this feeling stress
and/or anxiety.
12. Most people
experience stress or
anxiety at some
point in their lives.
But what’s the
difference and how
can we manage
them?
13. Stress vs Anxiety
How are they similar?
❏ Emotional Response
❏ Physical symptoms: headache,
difficulty concentrating, digestive
issues, trouble sleeping, muscle
tension
❏ Not necessarily a bad thing–can
be a motivator.
Anxiety
❏ Emotional Response
❏ Physical symptoms: headache,
difficulty concentrating, digestive
issues, trouble sleeping, muscle
tension
❏ Not necessarily a bad thing–can
be a motivator.
Stress
14. Stress vs Anxiety
How are they different?
❏ Response to external cause
❏ Goes away once the problem is
resolved.
❏ It can be positive or negative,
depending on the situation.
Anxiety
❏ Response is internal–your
reaction to stress.
❏ Persistent feelings of
uneasiness and dread that are
long lasting and interferes with
how you live your life.
❏ Is constant, even though there
is no immediate threat.
Stress
15. Stress vs Anxiety
Similar but Different!
❏ Stress is a normal bodily response and is usually
triggered by an event or situation.
❏ Anxiety can develop when the stress response occurs
too often, lasts too long, and is disproportionate to the
situation.
❏ Because stress and anxiety are so similar, the same
coping skills and strategies are often helpful in
reducing both.
16. CREDITS: This presentation template was created by Slidesgo, and
includes icons by Flaticon, and infographics & images by Freepik
Levels of Stress vs
Levels of Performance
sustress
eustress
distress
17. CREDITS: This presentation template was created by Slidesgo, and
includes icons by Flaticon, and infographics & images by Freepik
Levels of Stress vs
Levels of Performance
18. Coping describes how
we consciously deal with
stress. It’s the
strategies we employ to
deal with the cause of
our stress or discomfort.
21. Methods of Coping
Minimize the significance
and assess the situation
Make strategic efforts to
change the stressful situation
Reach out to network of
friends/family
Establish sense of
internal resilience
Distancing
remove yourself
Seeking Support
connect
Confrontation
engage directly
Self-Controlling
control feelings
22. Methods of Coping
Understand your role in
contributing to the stress
Evaluate the situation and
develop a plan to resolve it
Reframe stressful experience to
generate positive emotions
Change behavior to evade stressors
rather than deal with them
Accepting Responsibility
be mindful
Positive Reappraisal
change feelings
Problem Solving
analyze and plan
Escape/Avoidance
control feelings
24. Tell us about a coping skill
that is working for you or
share with us a new method
of coping that you will
incorporate daily to enhance
your personal resilience.
