Abstract:

Research indicates that stress and burnout are growing and pervasive problems among employees, with teachers being especially vulnerable to feeling frequent stress from their jobs. Teachers usually think about their students and how they cope with difficulties but they rarely think about their own well-being whereas there is a close correlation between the effectiveness of teaching and the level of teachers’ stress. Research shows that many teachers are at crisis point. Most of them are under increasing pressure and they often say that their workload is “unmanageable". Research suggests that illnesses can be attributed to stress in some way because of the harmful effects of raised levels of toxic stress hormones which flood through your body as a result of the stress response or fight or flight reflex. Recently we have been talking a lot about personal resilience which is an ability to cope with stress and adversity, It is a “bouncing back” effect which is a very individual skill developed and correlated with many other factors. Research shows that resilience results among other factors from individual skills in communication and problem solving, ability to build positive relationships, strong self-esteem and self-efficiency and locus of control. Drama is a tool which promotes development of social and meta skills and can be effectively used to stimulate psychological hardness not only among pupils but also among teachers. Different drama techniques were used to develop teachers’ well-being and equip them with some strategies of stress management. The presentation will focus on discussing the findings of the empirical study taken this year and helps to understand the necessity of dealing with teachers emotional exhaustion

Keywords:

Drama, stress, resilience, well-being.