Stressors and Coping Strategies of ESL Teachers.

The first objective of this primarily interview-based, qualitative study was to provide an account of the stressors that ESL teachers experience in the workplace. The second objective was to examine the kinds of strategies that ESL teachers use to cope with stressful, job-related situations. As part of the data collection process, the researcher interviewed 12 teacher informants concerning their job-related stressors and coping strategies. I also formally observed the participants' classrooms before and after the interviews. The findings revealed that all 12 teacher informants thought it was stressful to work with LEP students who were not only struggling with English, but were also almost universally behind grade level expectations in the subject matter areas. Similarly, they all considered it to be stressful to teach LEP students with distinctly different levels of English proficiency in the same classrooms. Other frequently mentioned stressors were: attempting to serve too many LEP students; addressing LEP student adjustment problems; perceiving that other non-ESL faculty and non-ESL administrators were not supportive enough of their efforts; and not having adequate opportunity to coordinate with other non-ESL teachers and non-ESL administrators. On the whole, the observation data strongly supported the interview data. However, it should be noted that two of the teachers clearly experienced less stress on the job overall than the other ten participants. Concerning the teachers' coping strategies, most favored sharing their feelings with others and asking for support, or taking some form of direct action. The teachers rarely used mental or behavioral disengagement coping strategies to manage a difficult situation.

Teacher stress has been documented by a number of researchers over the years. For example, researchers have identified teachers stressors existing in the school setting such as relationships with students, colleagues, parents, and administrators; time pressures; workload; excessive societal expectations; and feelings of isolation in the classroom. (Boyle, Borg, Falzon, and Baglioni, 1995). In addition, there are professional issues that impact teacher stress such as low salary concerns, departmental or school policy problems, demands for continuing education or training for recertification, and lack of opportunities for part-time employment (Tuettemann & Punch, 1992).

A reasonable amount of attention has also been devoted to coping strategies. For instance, Carver, Scheier, and Weintraub (1989) identifed a variety of action coping approaches including: planning, suppression of competing activities, positive reinterpretation and growth, restraint, and acceptance. Additionally, these researchers describe other coping strategies such as socio-emotional coping which involves expressing feelings to others and seeking support, and seeking an outlet through increased religious involvement. Another, less productive, coping strategy might also be chosen in the form of denial and disengagement. This strategy includes the use of alcohol or other drugs, mental disengagement, and various forms of behavioral disengagement.

Second language researchers have studied various affective student variables such as anxiety, inhibition, self esteem, and motivation (Brodkey & Shore, 1976; Guiora, Acton, & Strickland, 1980; Gardner & MacIntyre, 1991; Ganschow & Sparks, 1996); however, not much effort has been devoted to examining the role of affective teacher variables in second language classrooms. Unfortunately, we know relatively little about second language teacher affective variables precisely because of the paucity of research that has been devoted to this topic (Tedick & Walker, 1994; Markham, Green, & Ross, 1996).

Survey research conducted by Markham, Green, & Ross (1996) established that ESL/bilingual education teacher's reported stressors that were similar to those experienced by regular education (elementary and secondary) teachers in many ways. However, in particular, the commonalities between the stressful workplace experiences of the second language and special education teachers were most illuminating. These similarities, for the most part, revolved around preparing their students for full inclusion in the school context. Both of these specialist teacher groups experienced stress related to their multiple-level job functions which require a high degree of interaction with several other professionals in the school setting in order to prepare their students for a successful transition into the regular education programs. All three teacher groups employed basically similar coping strategies, but the second language and special education teachers were more likey to cope with stressful situations by sharing them with others. Clearly, the Markham, Green, & Ross (1996) study yielded many useful insights about ESL/bilingual education teacher stress and coping strategies; however, it was not able to provide a detailed account of why teachers felt so stressed by their workplace experiences, in part because of the nature of the highly structured survey research format. The teacher participants indicated strong reactions to various stressors, but they were unable to elaborate their understanding of the forces behind the reported high stress levels connected with their work environment because of the space and time restrictions of the Likert Scale instrument itself.

The Study: Purpose, Questions, and Methodology

The first objective of this primarily interview-based qualitative study was to provide a rich, detailed description of the stressors that ESL teachers experience in the workplace. The second objective was to examine the kinds of strategies that ESL teachers use to cope with stressful job-related situations. Participants were not informed about the objectives of the study in advance in order to avoid the possibility of introducing a response bias into their interviews and observed classroom behavior. Each participant was told that the researcher was interested in learning more about the daily experiences of ESL teachers in the work setting. The following research questions provided a broad framework guiding the research process.

1) What do ESL teachers find stressful about their work?

2) How do ESL teachers cope with job-related stress?

The 12 teacher informants in the interview portion of this study consisted of ESL teachers from three cooperating school districts. Three of the teachers (two elementary and one secondary) were working in self-designated transitional, subtractive bilingual programs in which Spanish was used to provide occasional support for the content area language acquisition of their Hispanic students. In all three cases, some of the LEP students in their classrooms also spoke different home languages which required the teachers to present virtually all of the material in English augmented by occasional small group tutoring in Spanish. Thus, I decided to categorize all of the participants in this particular study as being ESL teachers rather than trying to arrive at generalizations about bilingual teacher stress based on the very restricted bilingual job functions of three of the teachers.

All of the teachers had taught LEP students professionally for a minimum of four years. The years of experience requirement removed the obvious complication introduced by trying to include novice teachers during their initial, typically stressful period of adjustment. All of the teachers had also participated earlier in an ESL/bilingual education teacher training grant program which afforded me many opportunities to develop a familiarity and trust with them before initiating this study.

Among possible participants meeting the criteria listed above, volunteers were solicited according to specific LEP student age-group and setting characteristics. In order to facilitate a diverse perspective, two urban elementary teachers (grades 1 to 6) and two urban secondary teachers (grades 7 to 12) elected to participate in the study. To represent the rural setting, two elementary and two secondary teachers also participated. Finally, two suburban secondary teachers and two suburban elementary teachers chose to participate in the study. I assured the teacher informants that whatever they said would be confidential and that neither their identities nor the names of their school districts would be revealed in the research report.

The interview format was unstructured (Fontana & Frey, 1994; Mishler, 1986) and consisted of three, open-ended (guiding) questions or directives designed to generate many oportunities for divergent follow-up questions and responses. The interview questions (directives) were as follows:

1) Tell me about your typical day on the job in your school(s).

2) Tell me about some events in your teaching experience that you find stressful.

3) What do you generally do to cope with job situations that you consider to be stressful?

The first question was designed to gather information about the informants' perspectives concerning their daily work requirements. Follow-up questions based on the first directive were designed to elicit more detail about the actual events that transpired during the teachers' school day. For example, I frequently asked follow-up questions (directives) such as: 1) Tell me more about your activities to prepare your ESL students for the mainstream, regular academic environment. 2) Which other professionals in the school do you normally converse with during your average day? 3) How long is your preparation period? 4) What is the distance between the two schools in which you work?

The second guiding question served to stimulate the informants to think about perceived stressful events within the framework of their own domain, the school. The researcher never asked this question directly of any of the twelve informants because they volunteered considerable information about stressors in their workplace as a natural consequence of discussing their typical instructional day. Thus, the participants were not led into a negative direction by the questions posed by the researcher. As was the case with the first guiding question, the follow-up questions about stressors focused on details not provided in the informants' initial response.

Finally, the purpose of the third question was to identify the informants' coping strategies and to determine if different informants utilized similar strategies for coping with job-related stress. The researcher posed direct questions about the participants' coping strategies if the participants did not address this issue in the process of enumerating their work-related stressors. For example, I frequently asked a question such as the following: What do you usually prefer to do when you feel that you are under too much stress?

Each interview lasted approximately 90 minutes and was generally conducted in my university office (closed door) in order to provide a comfortable setting away from the informants' work context in which the informants would likely feel free to share their thoughts and feelings. On two occasions, the interviews were conducted in the teachers' lounge when no other school personnel were around to disturb the process. The interviews were audiotaped and transcribed so that they could be analyzed later. In addition, I completed field notes during the interview sessions. As each interview was audiotaped, the field notes were used primarily to capture impressions concerning the teacher informants' nonverbal responses to questions, particularly if the nonverbals seemed to contradict the verbal informal ion supplied by the informants (Mishler, 1986). In addition, I wrote down details concerning any unanticipated interruptions that might have influenced the interview process. Many informal follow-up interviews arose naturally in conjunction with the second phase of the research (the classroom observations) and the informants' responses were carefully recorded as field notes before leaving the school site. Particularly if the participants' responses were pertinent to answering the research questions, this information was considered as additional evidence underlying the formal interview results.

The second element of the data collection process consisted of observing the participants' classrooms before and after the interviews. The on-site observations were easily facilitated because of continuing grant work with the participants which allowed me to establish a solid trusting relationship based on several previous encounters with them. I formally observed each participant's classroom once before and twice after the interview. As audiotaping of the classroom interaction was not permitted by the school districts, I tried to take copious notes. During the first classroom visit, I wrote down details about the basic elements of the participants' workplace experience. For example, I noted the various classroom locations, the number of students served by the teacher, and the physical properties of the workplace setting itself (i.e.; size and condition of the room, lighting, and the general noise level of the building). During each visit, I tried to take notes somewhat discreetly because I did not want to miss seeing any of the available observation data, and I didn't want to give the teacher or the students the impression that I was overly concerned about what I was observing; thereby, sensitizing them even more to my presence and causing them to alter their normal classroom interactions to a greater extent (Adler & Adler, 1994). I focused on the observed interactions between the teacher and the students, and the interactions between the teacher and other faculty or staff if they were in the classroom. I noted detail about the room locations and the physical properties of the workplace during the second and third visits only if deviations occurred from the previous observations. Immediately after each session I reviewed my notes to increase their completeness and legibility, and the resultant body of field notes was then available for analysis. This sequence of observations allowed for comparative analysis of my observation data with the interview data in order to locate patterns of consistency or discrepancy (Adler & Adler, 1994).

Data Analysis

In order to make sense of the data, I noted patterns and themes in the interview, observation, and document data that appeared consistently over time. As I wanted to make certain that I was reporting the findings in a fair and representative manner, I decided to count recurring patterns or themes in the interview data because the interviews yielded the most complex, detailed information (Miles & Huberman, 1994). Recurring patterns were identified by analyzing each teacher utterance from the interview data in terms of its potential relevance to the research questions. Data that clearly seemed unrelated to the purpose of the study were collected, but not further examined or categorized until after more easily identified themes were analyzed. The process of labeling categories was undertaken with great care. The first consideration for identifying emerging categories was relatedness to the research questions and guiding questions. The second was semantic homogeneity based on conceptual similarities between utterances. For instance, an utterance such as: "My ESL students can't possibly keep up with their native English speaking peers in all their subjects because of already existing gaps in their prior educational experiences" (urban elementary ESL teacher), was considered to be semantically equivalent to: "I think it's fair to say that most of my students (ESL) are already at least two years behind grade level in every academic area before I get them" (rural elementary ESL teacher).

The counting technique was combined with making constant comparisons and contrasts to locate points of conflict that did not fit the emerging patterns or tentative theory base across the three sources of information (Strauss & Corbin, 1994). Although the constant comparison (grounded theory) procedure prolonged the data reduction and data display phases of the study, it prevented me from reaching premature closure on the representativeness of the emerging patterns. All transcripts and field notes were examined by an independent judge and discrepancies were revisited and discussed.

Context

The settings of the participating schools are briefly described in order to provide a framework for understanding the findings recorded in this particular research effort. In the interest of exploring diverse settings, I included urban, rural, and suburban school locations in this study. Considering that the age of the students might also influence teacher stress, I included one elementary and one secondary school in each of the three locations. All of the participating schools were selected, in part, because they had ESL programs and a reasonable number of LEP students. The urban schools contained the largest percentage of LEP students with 24% in the elementary setting and 20% in the high school, whereas the suburban schools had the fewest LEP students (9% elementary, 5% secondary). The rural elementary school was composed of 21% LEP students and the rural high school included 15% LEP students.

Findings

In order to reduce and display the interview data, I first organized the responses of all 12 teacher informants to each of the three questions (directives) into categories reflecting the three questions. After having accomplished this task, I reported the emergent themes or patterns in the data sets. (Table 1 summarizes the response patterns based on the interview data). The informants provided many useful insights about their work, but a few particularly strong trends emerged from the interview data. Regarding the teachers' daily life, all 12 teachers experienced the disruption of changing rooms at least once during the day. Almost all of the informants also reported having extra school duties before, during, and after the school day. Four of the teachers had no official office planning period during the day, and seven of the teachers worked in more than one building. Interestingly enough, although virtually all of the teachers described what seemed to be a very hectic daily schedule (Question 1), only four of them mentioned this aspect of their work experience as being particularly stressful.

Table 1 Identification of Stressors

Summary of Interview Responses   Informants
(mentioned by minimum of 6 of    (I1 to I12)
the 12 teacher informants)

Question (Directive) I - Tell
me about your typical day on
the job in your school(s).

A. bus duty before or            I1, I2, I3, I4, I6, I7
   after school                  I9, I11

B. cafeteria or hall duty        I1, I4, I5, I7, I8, I10
                                 I11, I12

C. room change during day        All

D. building change during day    I2, I3, I4, I6, I7, I8,
                                 I9

E. official planning period      I1, I3, I5, I7, I8, I0,
                                 I11, I12

Question (Directive) 2 - Tell
me about some aspects of your
work experience that you find
stressful.

A. students behind where they    All
   should be in subject
   matter

B. multiple student language     All
   levels in one class

C. large number of students      I1, I2, I4, I5, I6, I8
   that I serve                  I10, I11, I12

D. student adjustment problems   I2, I3, I7, I8, I9, I10
   in new setting                I12

E. inadequate support from       I2, I3, I4, I6, I7, I8
   non-ESL faculty or non-ESL    I9, I11
   administrators

F. inadequate opportunity to     I1, I2, I4, I5, I7, I8
   coordinate with non-ESL       I9, I11
   teachers or non-ESL
   administrators

G. adapting or creating          I1, I3, I4, I5, I6, I7
   materials                     I8, I9, I10, I12

All 12 informants thought it was stressful to work with LEP students who were not only struggling with English, but were also almost universally behind grade level in the subject matter areas. Similarly, all informants considered it to be stressful to teach LEP students with very different levels of English proficiency in the same classrooms (Table 1). Other frequently mentioned stressors were: attempting to serve too many LEP students, addressing LEP student adjustment problems, perceiving that other non-ESL faculty and administrators were not very supportive of their efforts, and not having the opportunity to coordinate with other non-ESL teachers and administrators. The following quote illustrates two of the most commonly mentioned themes.

   My ESL students are mainstreamed into classes which are too difficult for
   them because they sometimes have had only a few years of prior education in
   their own countries. They all need intense one-on-one tutoring in these
   subjects, and there are too many of them at one time with only one teacher
   to tutor them (urban high school ESL teacher).

Seven of the eight ESL teachers who mentioned that some of their fellow non-ESL colleagues or administrators didn't support them well enough, also mentioned not being able to coordinate with other professionals to the extent that they felt was needed. This insight indicates that more opportunities for staff interaction are necessary and desirable. The following quote is typical of informant concerns about the perceived lack of support.

   It seems like I spend my whole day on the move going from place to place
   working with small groups of ESL kids. Most teachers are friendly and are
   more than happy to refer their ESL kids to me for extra help, but I think
   that they are somewhat frustrated with the relatively slow progress that
   ESL students make. I think maybe they (the teachers) believe that since the
   ESL kids tend to be able to communicate orally fairly well after a few
   months that they should also be able to do as well as the native English
   speaking kids on all their assignments (suburban elementary ESL teacher).

As indicated in Table 1, seven of the teachers also found that helping LEP students adjust to life in the new setting was at times quite stressful. This response doesn't come as a surprise, but the extent of the trauma experienced by some students is very much a concern for various teachers in this study. Many LEP students have also experienced various economic and political problems prior to moving to the United States that aggrevate an already difficult adjustment process. The following quote is representative of teacher comments about student adjustment problems.

   Children who have experienced a lot of disruption in the recent past are
   brought to the U.S. and immediately enrolled in my classes. Many times it
   takes months to recover from the culture shock in order for them to feel
   ready to learn. They might also be educationally, emotionally, and socially
   deprived. It takes a very long time for them to be ready to learn.
   Sometimes I wonder if the gap will ever be narrow enough for them to be
   completely accepted socially and educationally (rural elementary ESL
   teacher).

A total of ten of the teachers mentioned that the lack of instructional resources constituted a challenge for them. Both elementary and secondary ESL teachers in this study frequently adapt existing materials or create new ones to meet the needs of their students. This is an ongoing problem because the textbooks, workbooks, and handouts that are used in the mainstream classes are intended for native English speaking students. Overall, these ESL teachers considered themselves to be successful only when their LEP students were ready to move into mainstream classes full-time and were able to function reasonably well in thai setting.

Regarding the teachers' coping strategies, most teachers favored sharing their feelings with others and asking for support, or taking some form of direct action. The teachers rarely used avoidant coping strategies to manage a difficult situation (Table 2). This finding is very consistent with previous survey research on ESL teacher coping strategies (Markham, Green, & Ross, 1996). However, it is somewhat disturbing that all the teachers were willing to share their problems with a friend or spouse, and ten of them shared with an ESL teacher or ESL administrator, but only six of them mentioned speaking with a non-ESL teacher or non-ESL administrator. For the purpose of finding the best possible solution for what is often a mainstreaming problem, a non-ESL professional colleague should be better able to recommend solutions that would be based on experience in the regular school context.

Table 2 Identification of Coping Strategies

Summary of Interview Responses   Informants
(mentioned by minimum of 6 of    (I1 to I12)
the 12 teacher informants)

Question 3 - What do you
generally do to cope with job
situations that you consider
to be stressful?

A. talk to a friend or spouse    All

B. talk to another ESL teacher   I1, I2, I3, I4, I5, I7,
   or ESL administrator          I8, I10, I11, I12

C. talk to another non-ESL       I2, I3, I4, I5, I7, I10
   teacher or non-ESL
   administrator

D. develop my own direct plan    I1, I2, I3, I4, I6, I7,
   of action to address the      I9, I10, I11, I12
   problem

E. try to inform myself about    I1, I3, I4, 15, I6, I7,
   the problem                   I9, I12

The observation data strongly supported the interview findings concerning the stressful nature of the ESL teachers' complicated daily teaching experiences and their use of coping strategies. As a result of this congruence, no additional numerical analysis of the observation and document data is reported here in order to substantiate the plausibility of trends already established in the interview data. The agreement between the three data sources demonstrates a consistency that lends credibility to the findings.

The classroom observations corroborated the interview findings that the teachers functioned in many different rooms (small and large) and sometimes in more than one building during the day. Similarly, all the teachers worked with LEP students with mixed ability levels at least part of every day. The observed LEP classrooms were mixed not only in terms of their English proficiency, but also in terms of their subject matter knowledge. Different ability levels required the teachers to prepare varied lesson plans to address obvious differences in the LEP students' language and academic skills. The teachers frequently clustered their students in small groups or pairs and worked with one group, while assigning the other group(s) to complete written tasks or other desk work. This strategy seemed to be fairly effective as long as the students were very compliant or if there was also a paraprofessional in the room. Otherwise, it was sometimes a challenge to keep the students on task. The off-task behavior exhibited by the grouped LEP students was generally not such that it totally disrupted the entire class; however the constant pressure of moving back and forth between groups was definitely stressful for some of the teachers. Four of the teachers worked in a classroom containing only one group of homogeneous language ability LEP students during at least one class period daily. This desirable arrangement temporarily alleviated the divided teacher attention problem.

The observed interactions between the ESL teachers and other professionals in the building also connected nicely with the interview data. In general, the ESL teachers spent considerable time running around from place to place with very little opportunity to talk with other teachers and administrators. I wouldn't characterize the other non-ESL building professionals as being unwilling to coordinate with the ESL teachers; it was simply extremely difficult for ESL teachers to have sufficient opportunity to meet with other professionals during the normal school hours given the hectic nature of their daily schedule. Therefore, it isn't surprising that the ESL teachers reported that they were more likely to talk over an instructional problem with a friend or a spouse as opposed to talking it over with another building professional. In the event that there was another ESL teacher in the building at the end of the instructional day, there was some occasional interaction mostly in the form of brief discussions about preparing for upcoming events or meeting short-term educational objectives. Observed ESL teacher interactions with regular, mainstream teachers and building administrators about professional issues were rarely reported and, in fact, rarely took place based on my time spent with the ESL teachers.

The observation data also strongly supported another interview-identified stressor, adapting existing materials or creating new ones. Materials adaptation and development necessarily involve a close relationship with the mainstream teachers because the regular classroom instructional materials often must be modified to meet LEP student needs. This required closer relationship with the regular classroom teachers simply wasn't being facilitated often enough based on the observations. Not knowing exactly what the cooperating mainstream teachers want to accomplish with their lessons, adds to the ESL teachers' considerable burden of making the instructional materials more accessible to LEP students.

Discussion

The ESL teachers were very much commited to helping their LEP students and they found many aspects of their work to be very gratifying; however, they also experienced a considerable amount of stress in their job setting. Perhaps the most important conclusion concerning this reported and observed stress is that many of these teachers were placed in working conditions that were, to say the least, very challenging. Therefore, their stress level can be, at least in part, attributed to inappropriate program design and lack of support from other building professionals. This would suggest that the cooperating school districts themselves need to be more aware of what the ESL teachers are experiencing. For instance, according to well established research (Collier, 1987), it takes a considerable period of time (often 4 to 7 yrs.) for ESL students to reach grade level norms across subject matter areas. Perhaps non-ESL teachers and administrators are not very familiar with this commonly identified finding and, therefore, do not understand why ESL student progress is sometimes slow. The school districts need to be willing to expand their level of support for the ESL teachers, and to modify the program design, if necessary, to reduce the stress level in the ESL setting.

In this study, I identified several frequently mentioned and observed teacher stressors such as: attempting to serve LEP students with multiple levels of ability in the same classroom; striving to help students who are already far below grade level upon arrival; helping LEP students adjust to the new setting; adapting lesson materials; and perceiving that some administrators or other teachers were generally not very supportive.

The interview data revealed that the connection between Question (Directive) 1 responses and Question (Directive) 2 responses was not very strong suggesting that, generally speaking, the informants perceived themselves as being very busy and that their demanding schedules alone did not always contribute greatly to their reported level of job-related stress. The Question (Directive) 3 findings indicated that the informants utilized very similar kinds of coping strategies overall. The level of congruence across the data sources (interviews and observations) underlines the consistently reported and observed breadth and depth of the challenges facing the cooperating ESL teachers in this investigation.

As predicted by Folkman & Lazarus (1985), different individuals responded differently to the same stressors, and the relationship between the individual and the environmental influences was clearly dynamic. There were, in fact, two of the twelve teachers whose general stress level did not conform to the overall pattern. As an example of this, one of the two individuals self-reported feeling quite content and comfortable with her circumstances despite having a work schedule and teaching load that seemed to be quite taxing. She also genuinely appeared to enjoy virtually every aspect of her work based on direct classroom observations. Interestingly enough, she believed that one of the secrets to her success was using a natural, herbal product called KavaKava which reputedly has the capacity to help reduce the body's stress reaction without drowsiness.

The other relatively stress-free teacher reported that in comparison to being a regular high school freshman English teacher, he considered the ESL position to be "a piece of angel food cake." He claimed that he would rather do anything than grade thirty poorly written freshman essays, and that his ESL classes were much smaller and better disciplined. However, although both teachers seemed to be somewhat less stressed by their job functions than their peers, both also reported being irritated by their job in various minor ways.

Somewhat contrary to my expectations, there were no major differences between the urban, suburban, and rural teachers concerning the kinds of stressors they mentioned, or that I observed in the classrooms. Similarly, the patterns of stressors were also quite stable for both elementary and secondary teachers. I had expected that the secondary teachers would feel somewhat more stressed because of the challenging adolescent age of the students, but that was not consistently the case based on the available evidence. One of the explanations for the apparent lack of differences across student age levels was that the elementary ESL teachers generally revealed that they had to serve more ESL students (approximately 30% more) than the secondary ESL teachers across urban, suburban, and rural settings. In addition, the contextual circumstances (urban, suburban, and rural) were clearly different, but the ESL program support systems in all three settings were not dramatically different. For the most part, teachers felt somewhat isolated and over-worked in their efforts to deliver services to their LEP students in all three settings.

The teachers' coping strategies primarily consisted of seeking help from others or using self-directed action coping strategies. Very few coping strategies based on denial and disengagement were mentioned by any of the participants. This finding indicates that most of the teachers have adopted a healthy, productive approach to coping with stressors in their workplace. Overall, the urban, suburban, and rural teachers utilized remarkably similar coping strategies. Moreover, the elementary and secondary teachers exhibited very comparable profiles of coping stategies. However, a comment made by a suburban secondary teacher demonstrates that even a rational, self-directed action coping strategy could ultimately lead to devastating consequences for the profession if actually adopted by a large number of teachers.

   I can't believe how many things I'm supposed to do for my ESL students
   because other people (professionals) in this building don't want to deal
   with them. I'm expected to be a teacher; and unofficially a social worker,
   and a guidance counselor for this kind of pay! I made as much money working
   in a warehouse as I do now as a teacher. Maybe going back to that kind of
   job would uncomplicate my life (suburban high school ESL teacher).

Policy Recommendations

Given the combined interview and observation findings generated by this study, I will enumerate a few possible policy recommendations for administrators and support personnel who work with ESL teachers. First, eight of the twelve participants specifically mentioned that they felt like they were not supported well enough by other non-ESL faculty or non-ESL administrators in the schools. This finding indicates that two-thirds of the ESL teachers in this study need more contact time with other non-ESL faculty and non-ESL administrators in a supportive setting in order to address the underlying causes of this kind of ESL teacher reaction and to propose possible remedies. Furthermore, most of the ESL teachers also need more consistent, direct planning/coordination time with the mainstream classroom teachers, because that would allow the ESL teachers to better anticipate what is required of the LEP students as they prepare for full-time mainstreaming.

Regarding other policy recommendations, all of the teachers reported experiencing stress because they served LEP students with multiple language and subject matter ability levels in the same classroom. A tentative solution to this problem would be to divide some of the larger classes into smaller classes with more homogeneous LEP student ability levels or, at the very least, to provide more paraprofessionals or parent volunteers in the classroom to facilitate better supervised small group work. These proposed solutions would also allow teachers more time to help individual LEP students with adjustment problems, and it would make it easier for the teachers to find time to adapt the lesson material to meet the needs of their LEP students.

In an age when teachers in general are coming under a great deal of critical scrutiny, it is crucial that the teaching profession take proactive steps to identify what is particularly stressful to teachers and to attempt to alleviate some of the underlying causes of the stress. Otherwise, more and more of the strong, multi-talented teachers will choose to pursue less stressful occupations and the net result will be weaker school systems. In addition to the change of employment option, the ESL teachers in this study are all required to possess other types of elementary or secondary certifications prior to completing ESL endorsements. Many of these teachers clearly have the choice of returning to their original areas of certification if their ESL teaching responsibilities become too taxing.

Relatively little research concerning ESL teacher stress and coping strategies has been completed previously in second language education. Based on this study, ESL teachers are certainly not immune from stress, and the kinds of stressors that they experience are somewhat unique to their complex teaching assignments. If we are to gain a better understanding of the challenges facing teachers in the second language setting, further research of this kind is sorely needed.

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Paul L. Markham, Department of Teaching & Leadership, University of Kansas.

Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Dr. Paul Markham, Department of Teaching & Leadership, 202 Bailey Hall, Lawrence, KS 66045. E-mail: [e-mail]