The teacher under stress

Empirical records consistently point to the fact that the phenomenon of stress is characteristic of service professions, especially of teacher’s. Although stress in teachers is a problem of public interest, it is still a relatively new field of empirical investigations. Data available show that stress in teachers can have negative effects on school as an organization teacher professional achievement, his/her and his/her family psychosocial status. The most frequent symptoms of a prolonged professional stress are anxiety, depression, frustration, unfriendly behavior towards students and colleagues, emotional weariness, and extreme tension. Health and psychological problems cause, most frequently, the reduction of self-esteem job dissatisfaction, job resignation, absenteeism, and wrong decision-making. In an attempt to call professional public attention to negative effects of stress on the outcomes of teacher work, we have analyzed four important aspects of stress teachers experience in their everyday work (a) definition and measurement of stress, (b) distribution and sources of stress (problem behaviors in students, poor working conditions, lack of time, poor school ethos), (c) teacher personality traits (sex, age, work experience, locus of control, job satisfaction, intention to resign absenteeism), (d) strategies for overcoming and reducing negative effects of stress (direct action techniques, palliative techniques)