Collegial support an important buffer for burnout

Nikki Davies

By Nikki Davies
Community contribution / February 8, 2017

Teaching can be a surprisingly lonely occupation at times, despite the crowd of students in a classroom and the plethora of teaching and other staff comprising a school community, it is easy to become isolated, swept up in the worries associated with meeting your own and others’ expectations.

Notwithstanding the size of many school populations, in the end, teachers have sole responsibility for their class/es, for the ...

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By Nikki Davies

Community

Nikki has worked as a primary school teacher in NSW across ESL, EI, gifted and talented and general teaching classes. She has a background in psychology and is currently completing a Masters of Education in wellbeing and positive mental health.

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Being able to access our colleagues’ experiences and thoughts can help to normalise our own, can help to open up the kinds of conversations that bring the nuts and bolts of teaching out into the open.

— Nikki Davies

While having a yarn to colleagues might appear at first glance to be a no-brainer, opening up these channels can be difficult.

— Nikki Davies

A school full of fabulous teachers who work in isolation of each other is not going to be as effective as a school of interdependent colleagues who are willing and able to share themselves with each other.

— Nikki Davies

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