Jia Tao

ENG 112-78
Connie Douglas
Round Table Essay
Oct. 27, 2014
Preschool education is very important in forming childrens characteristics; such as,
personality, social skills, and emotion. Teaching is one of the most stressful occupations.
Preschool teachers are more likely to be vulnerable to stress because their work is very
complicated, comprehensive, and stressful, and they experience lower job satisfaction levels
(Johnson, Cooper, Cartwright, Donald, Taylor, &Millet, 178). Burnout is a result of chronic
work stress and has negative impact in education of young children.
Burnout is individuals at the state of tired and exhausted under many stresses of work
that individuals cannot deal with tasks successfully or cannot give a positive reactions when
they are facing stresses. According to Salami, burnout is a professional hazard that has been
explored in professional literature for teachers since the mid-1970s (110). Steinberg
reported that preschool teachers are physically and emotionally challenged, it is difficult for
teachers to be creative on their own after they create all day for children (Steinberg).
Preschool children are the ages of three to five. Their physics and emotions are still
developing and are not complete. Therefore, preschool teachers need more support and help
to pay more attention to preschoolers. Some children still need a teachers assistant because
they cannot control their bowel or bladder. They need help from teachers. Additionally,
preschoolers fine motor still are developing. They have trouble to control their fingers.

Teachers need to provide as much help and support to preschoolers.

Preschoolers have trouble controlling their emotions. Preschool teachers have to focus
every child who feel sad. Preschool teachers need to help children separate from their
parents and engage those children in activities (School Sparks). Some children cannot
independently follow directions from teachers and need special attention from teachers.
Because of the development of preschoolers characteristics, preschool teachers not only
teach academic knowledge, but also spend a lot of time to take care of children daily.
Additionally, teachers really need support and understand from parents. According to
Clark, teachers want parents to know that teachers are educated professionals. Teachers
know children in different ways. Sometimes, teachers know more about the preschooler
than parents. When teachers provide advices to parents, they hope parents can listen and
accept them (Clark). Unfortunately, a lot of parents do not want to accept truth of their
children.
From the social view, most of the researchers have focus on supervisors of teachers
and parents of students. Teachers experience burnout because they need to sustain higher
expectation and pressure from society; such as, parents and supervisors. Just as Leupold
mentioned in her article, some parents just lack of interest and time to communicate with
teachers in the kindergarten. However, parents have very high expectations. Parents do not
only have standard about physical and emotional development, but also have various things;
such as, self-confidence, creativity, intellectual, and so on (113). However, because some
parents do not know they need to communicate with teachers as often as they can, they just
know their own high level standard, that makes teachers feel so stressful and not being

understood.
Besides that, supervisors or principals should always observe teachers carefully and
communicate with them nicely. Supervisors should concern about the consequence that
might happened when teachers are experiencing burnout (Kipps-Vaughan). Teacher burnout
is a very serious issue because it influences the quality of teaching. Teachers who feel
burnout may teach less and provide fewer commendations to students, as well as
communicate less with them (Salami 229). In order to help teachers relieve the stress,
supervisors have set up different programs, such as increase awareness and skills in promote
stress management (Kipps-Vanughan).
The government provides an example of the average based salary of teachers in the
United States. According to the website of United States Department of Labor (USDL),
preschool teachers median pay is 27,130 per year. Comparing to kindergarten and
elementary school teachers who are 53,090 per year, preschool teachers really get low
payment (2012). However, the nature of their work is really complicated and stressful.
According to the USDL, preschool teachers need to help children get ready for kindergarten.
They need to educate children in groups or one on one. They also need to organize activities
in the classroom and all different kinds of paperwork. Even most public preschool only take
ten-month school year, with two-month break a year. However, some private preschoolers
need to work whole twelve-month, except more than two weeks break.
When talking about teachers nature of work, Bousquet has mentioned that working44
hours a week will increase the risk of burnout (9). However, some teachers even need to
work more than fifty-three hours includes different kinds of paperwork, such as planning

and grading (Bousquet 9). He also revealed that teachers will get higher risk of burnout
when they need do extra role activities.
In conclusion, preschoolers are experiencing burnout. A lot of research have analyzed
from teachers view, and social view. However, government website is the only way to
know what the view is from government about teachers burnout. There is not a lot of
information about that preschool teachers experience burnout. But it is still obviously notice
when comparing with different grade levels teachers. Anyway, studying burnout among
preschool teachers would help improve understanding of job-stress enhance their career
lives.

Work cites
Bureau of Labor Statistics, U.S. Department of Labor. Occupational Outlook Handbook, Preschool
Teachers, web.15-2014.
Bousquet, Sarah. Teacher Burnout: Causes, Cures and Prevention. American international College.
07 Oct. 2012. Web.16 Oct. 2014
Clark, Ron. What Teachers Really Want to Tell Parents. CNN. (March): Web.16 Oct. 2014
Johnson, Sheena; Cooper, Cary; Cartwright, Sue; Donald, Ian; Taylor, Paul. The Experience of
Work-related Stress Across Occupations. Journal of Managerial Psychology 20.2 (2005):
178-187. Web.14 Oct. 2014
Kipps-Vaughan, Debi. "Supporting Teachers Through Stress Management." Education Digest 79.1
(2013): 43. MasterFILE Complete. Web. 16 Oct. 2014
Leupold, Eva Maria. "Demands From All Sides." European Education 26.1 (1994): 112. Academic
Search Complete. Web. 14 Oct. 2014.
Samami, O. Samuel. Job Stress and Burnout among Lecturers: Personality and Social Support as
Moderators. Asian Social Science 7.5 (2010): 110-121. Web.16 Oct. 2014
Steinberg, Jacques. Giving the Teachers Balm for Burnout. The New York Times (2001): Web.14 Oct.
2014