SINGAPORE: As Betty* lay curled into a ball on the floor — in tears, hyperventilating, heart beating rapidly — the secondary school teacher hoped the panic attack would fade soon. Because she knew she could not afford to spend time away from work.Her panic attacks typically happen once a fortnight. A heavy workload, dealing with parents’ expectations and large class sizes are perennial stressors, for her and some other teachers.
Apart from the workload, some teachers feel that their mental health has been overlooked or not prioritised. While it sounded “noble”, it felt “quite invalidating”, Susan said. “It’s a failure to recognise that you need to take care of the caregiver.” A primary school teacher who’s been teaching for four years shared: “When we expressed our stress and mental exhaustion, we were simply told, ‘Teachers should learn how to manage their own stress.’ I contemplated quitting every week for my well-being.”In an interview with CNA Insider, Mrs Chua-Lim Yen Ching, the deputy director-general of education from the Ministry of Education said the ministry “can’t deny that COVID-19 has affected us”.
“All of us will have stress, the most important is that we must be able to cope. It’s only when you’re stressed and you can’t cope, we get worried.” “Older teachers were like, ‘How to log in here, how to log in there?’ There was a lot of stress put on them,” said the secondary school teacher. Whenever there is a spike in COVID-19 cases, David* must also “stand by” with online lesson packages in the event that schools revert to full home-based learning.
All this additional work has put teachers in a state of “heightened alert”, said Singapore Teachers’ Union general secretary Mike Thiruman. “There’s this feature in the SLS: It’s called the community gallery. And those resources are developed by the master teacher together with the teachers.”Teachers have also noticed students getting more anxious about their subjects owing to less time spent in school with home-based learning and blended learning in place — especially so for graduating students with upcoming major examinations, said secondary school teacher Melissa.
Anne*, a teacher at an institute of higher learning, agreed that the boundaries between work and rest are increasingly blurred. Given that students are more anxious, there is “an expectation” of teachers replying “immediately”, she wrote in an Instagram message.
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