Stress Among Elementary School Teachers

Stress is a significant problem among teachers in the nation's public schools. Stress levels are particularly high among teachers in lower socioeconomic communities, which is a characteristic that applies to most Indian reservations. One public school district where teacher stress levels have been found to be particularly high is in the BIA schools operated on the Navajo Indian reservations in New Mexico. The problem facing the BIA school administration was two-faceted. It was necessary to first determine the causes of stress among the district's teachers, and secondly to develop a program to assist teachers in learning how to manage the stress in their lives.

The BIA schools implemented an EAP for their teachers. The EAP at the BIA schools achieved significant success in the assisting teachers to develop effective strategies to identify and manage stress. It was also found that teachers working under principals characterized as high in consideration experienced significantly lower levels of stress than did teachers working under principals characterized as high in their initiation of structure. In addition, it was found that i

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stress was recognized as a major contributor to the onset of significant physical and mental health problems. In the 1980s, stress began to be implicated in areas beyond the bounds of physical and mental health. In the organizational environment, stress has been implicated in the deterioration of performance efficiency. When performance efficiency suffers, the quality of the overall organizational output suffers. Stressors in organizational environments have been investigated within the context of occupational, or on-the-job, stress. Two primary sources of occupational stress have been identified. The first source of these stressors is the job itself. The specific characteristics of a job are the source of what are called task-related stressors. The second source of occupational stressors is the organizational environment itself. Stressors associated with the organizational environment are referred to as context-related. Context-related stressors are external to the tasks associated with a job. Context-related stressors typically develop as a result flawed organizational structures, ineffective organizational development, the inability of an individual to pursue successfully achievement goals within
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Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 2298
Approximate Pages = 9 (250 words per page)

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