The Effects of Reviewing a School's Mission and Vision on Teacher Stress
The purpose of this study was to see what effect reviewing a school's mission and vision would have on teacher stress in an urban, public charter Montessori school located in the Midwest. Four teachers participated in this research over the course of three weeks. Teachers were given laminated notecards containing the school's mission and vision statements and were asked to read the notecards throughout their days and to log when they read these notecards. Teachers completed pre and post intervention attitude scales to gauge perceived stress levels. Teachers were invited to take notes throughout the intervention, and I wrote a narrative describing a typical morning. At the end of the three weeks, I conducted interviews with each participating teacher. Reviewing the school's mission and vision did not have a significant impact on teacher stress. Teachers expressed a high level of stress and had difficulty finding effective coping strategies for dealing with this stress. Highly stressed myself, I made the decision to leave my teaching position at the end of the academic year.