Scope of Guided Journaling Teacher Support Groups

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The goal of Guided Journaling Teacher Support Groups (GJTSG) is to provide a service for teachers that helps reduce job-related stress and burnout, increases retention, and improves teaching effectiveness through the use of best practices.
The program is designed to help teachers:
  • identify triggers as well as early signs of stress
  • learn coping mechanism to effectively deal with stress
  • understand students displaying challenging behavior
  • identify the function and purpose of teachers’ as well as students’ behavior
  • understand how context and environment contribute to teachers’ as well as students’ behavior
  • develop new skills and tools that can help teachers and students modify their behavior, thus enabling teachers to teach and students to learn more effectively (see also O’Rourke-Lohrman, Knosier & Llewellyn, 1999; Horner & Carr, 1997;  Carr et al., 1994).
  • Cited References

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Monthly Meeting Structure
Research suggests that social support is highly effective in lowering stress and the feeling of burnout in teachers (i.e. Greenglas, Fiksenbaum & Burke, 1996; Halbesleben, 2006; Larrivee, 2012; Luskin & Pelletier, 2005; Simbula 2010; Seligman, 2011a).

Support from colleagues has also been linked to retention (i.e. Houkes, Janssen, de Jonje & Nijhuis, 2001; Ingersoll & Strong, 2011, Leung & Lee 2006; Whitaker, 2000). In addition, there are significant benefits to meeting and sharing journals face-to-face as part of a support group.

Based on the research mentioned above, we thus incorporated monthly meetings as part of our Guided Journaling for Teachers Support Group (GJTSG).
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Research suggests that journaling can be a helpful learning tool (i.e. Bennet and Kingham 1993). Not only does the journal-writer benefit but also the reader or the audience the journal is shared with, for example, fellow teachers and teacher educators,(i.e. Halbach, 1999; Thomas, 1995b). For that reason teacher journals are often being used as part of teachers’ professional development (i.e. Rao et al. 2003).
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Journaling Techniques and Strategies to Reduce Stress and Burnout, and Increase Teacher Effectiveness

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Recording Observations
Teachers are instructed to document the factual details related to meaningful events using the following guidelines:
The date, time, location, participants or anything else such as unusual weather or fire drill etc.A description of the behavior of the person or people involved in the event, for example, what was said, body language, facial expressions etc. (before, during and after the event).The context, for example, environment, circumstances, surroundings, motive, mindset, frame of reference, conditionsIf applicable: The directions or activities given by the teacher (before, during and after the event)If applicable: The response of the person or people involved.
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