A recent poll found teachers’ stress can have a trickle-down effect on their students, leading to disruptive behaviour that results in student suspensions.
One of those overburdened teachers is Jennifer Lloyd, a high school English teacher in Maryland and a graduate student at the University of Missouri. She has noticed how perceptive her students are to her mood and their ability to feed off of her energy, for better or worse.
“If I come into class from a rough meeting or a stressful morning and I bring those feelings into the classroom environment, the kids notice,” Lloyd said. “Sometimes they will give that negative energy right back to me, and we all end up having a bad day.”
To examine the impact of teacher burnout on student behaviour outcomes, Lloyd’s sister, Colleen Eddy, a doctoral student in the MU College of Education, and her colleagues with the…