Middle School Teachers’ Lived Experiences With Stress Post the COVID-19 Pandemic

The purpose of this phenomenological study was to describe middle school teachers’ lived experiences with stress and coping post the COVID-19 pandemic. The theory guiding this study was Lazarus and Folkman’s transactional model of stress as it was developed to examine stress and coping factors in occupational environments, including educational settings. This theoretical approach helped to contextualize and bring developmental understanding to middle school teacher stress resulting from the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic. Participants for the study were recruited through researcher sharing of study information via Facebook utilizing criterion and snowball sampling. Semi-structured interviews were utilized to collect data for the study. Thematic analysis guided by was utilized to identify codes in the dataset which were clustered to develop overall themes presented in the data. Five themes were developed from the finding of the study: social-emotional skills and behavior, increased workload, lack of parental collaboration, leadership, and coping variety. The results of this study confirm prior research on teacher occupational stress and coping. The findings extend and contribute to the literature on post COVID-19 middle school teacher stress, giving insight to teachers, educational leaders, and stakeholders, and communities at-large.