Between 2011 and 2014, the prevention and health promotion measure “Live better! Self-care for psychosocial professionals” was developed and evaluated at zepf. Due to the proven preventive effectiveness of the intervention, the seminar is also being adapted and evaluated for teachers as part of a BMBF project.

Stress factors affecting teachers

The project is justified by the fact that numerous studies document the many stress factors to which teachers are exposed in their working environment. In the German School Barometer 2022, 84% of teachers report high or very high stress levels for themselves, while 92% of teachers rate the stress levels of their colleagues as high or very high [1]. In addition to crowded classrooms and noise in schools, these stresses include dealing with disruptive students, conflicts among students, and conflicts with parents [2][3]. These stress factors can manifest themselves in various complaints among teachers of all school types [4]. According to the German School Portal 2022, teachers report frequently or very frequently experiencing the following health complaints: physical exhaustion, fatigue (62%), mental exhaustion (46%), inner restlessness, tension (45%), neck and back pain (43%), forgetfulness, lack of concentration (34%), sleep disorders (33%), increased irritability (33%), low mood (26%), headaches (25%), and anxiety (7%) [1].

Live better! Self-care for teachers

The Live better! seminar for teachers aims to strengthen self-care in everyday (school) life and thus prevent work-related stress and burnout. The results of the German School Barometer also confirm that, in addition to situational prevention approaches and organizational measures, behavioral prevention approaches can also be particularly useful, as 60% of teachers state that they are (very) often unable to recover properly in their free time. This can be exacerbated by few or too short recovery periods: almost half of teachers state that they (very) often do not comply with the statutory rest period of 11 hours, with just under a fifth (very) often working between 10 p.m. and 6 a.m. 79% of teachers (very) often work on weekends [1].

Seminar concept

The seminar combines theoretical content on the topics of self-care, mindfulness, stress, and burnout with practical activities to enable active transfer into everyday (school) life. Specifically, participants can expect:

• Short, scientifically based inputs
• Exchange of experiences among participants
• Practical exercises to bring the content to life
• Reflections on actively engaging with the seminar topics on a personal level

• Easy-to-implement ideas for everyday (school) life

   

The seminar takes place once a week for four weeks and then again three weeks later (see illustration). Each seminar unit lasts approximately four hours, bringing the total seminar time to 20 hours.

Evaluation study

In October 2021, an evaluation study was launched to examine the effectiveness of the seminar “Live better! Self-care for teachers.” You can find out how the project has progressed so far at the bottom of the page. A total of 329 teachers expressed interest in participating in the seminar. Taking into account the exclusion criteria, 198 teachers from general education schools were selected for the seminar, with some teachers from the waiting list moving up due to cancellations. The first seminar run (treatment group) started in October 2021, the second (waiting control group) in January 2022. During the seminar, participants in both groups were regularly asked about various aspects such as stress experience, mental well-being, well-being, and self-care.

As initial analyses show the effectiveness of the Besser leben! concept, there are plans to offer the seminar on a large scale in the future (see Publications). If you are interested in the seminar, please feel free to send us an email.