The Teaching ELA Podcast

As you may recall, Stress is a normal human reaction that happens to everyone. In fact, the human body is designed to experience stress and react to it. When you experience changes or challenges (stressors), your body produces physical and mental responses. That’s stress.

Stress responses help your body adjust to new situations. Stress can be positive, keeping us alert, motivated and ready to avoid danger. For example, if your students have an important test coming up, a stress response might help their mind work harder and stay awake longer.

Today we’ll discuss practical actions to reduce stress.

ELA Teacher Links

• Teaching Emotional Intelligence: Short Stories for Teaching Empathy
• Short Story Catalog at ELACOMMONCORELESSONPLANS.com
• Poetry Collections at ELACommonCoreLessonPlans.com

We’re going to focus mainly today on the signs of stress. We know that teaching can be stressful, especially when we add to it life circumstances.

Takeaways

1. Stress is the only way we grow.
2. Too much stress will kill you.
3. Instead of hiding from the emotions through unhealthy behaviors, give yourself permission to feel the emotions.

Our next Teacher Mental Health Month Episode will focus on healthy behaviors for coping with stress.

ELA Teacher Links

• Teaching Emotional Intelligence: Short Stories for Teaching Empathy
• Short Story Catalog at ELACOMMONCORELESSONPLANS.com
• Poetry Collections at ELACommonCoreLessonPlans.com

It’s 2026 and everyone is dead. All that’s left are four silhouettes on the outside wall. Oh, that and an automated house that carries on as if nothing has happened. The house performs its functions wonderfully until a tree crashes through a window, starts a fire, and destroys the house.

 Not a ton of action, is there? This is one of those stories where the brilliance of it exists outside of what happens.

• Science Fiction Short Story Lesson Plans
• There Will Come Soft Rains Lesson Plan on setting and conflict.
• “There Will Come Soft Rains” Blog Post
• Short Story Teaching Guide Central

How to change annoyance?

1. The first thing you want to do is just notice it and allow it. You’re not a bad person for being annoyed. It doesn’t mean you’re mentally weak.
2. If you’re not feeling annoyed right now, think back on a time you’ve felt annoyed or things that annoy you frequently.
3. Once you feel the emotion of annoyance, ask yourself what thought is causing it?
4. Don’t resist the emotion. Feel it. Accept it. Analyze it. When you resist is when you lash out.
5. Don’t attribute the emotion to the circumstance. Your emotions are caused by your thoughts. 
6. Once you let the emotion pass, take care of the situation or just let it go.

ELA Teacher Links

• Teaching Emotional Intelligence: Short Stories for Teaching Empathy
• Short Story Catalog at ELACOMMONCORELESSONPLANS.com
• Poetry Collections at ELACommonCoreLessonPlans.com

“The Sniper” is set in the early days of the Irish Civil War during the Battle of Dublin. The action focuses on an unnamed sniper stationed on a rooftop. The story begins with the sniper eating a sandwich and smoking a cigarette. The latter action nearly kills him as the light attracts sniper fire from another rooftop.

Resources

• Short Stories for Teaching Point of View Lesson Plans
• Realism in Literature.
• “The Sniper” Blog Post
• Short Story Teaching Guide Central

Part of being a teenager is testing boundaries. It means developing social skills. It means acting without thinking. And when you put a whole lot of them in a confined space and ask them to do things they don’t want to do, that means they will probably test your boundaries, gain social status by going against you, and act impulsively. 

That can be annoying.

Let’s start with some basics about being annoyed. Annoyed means slightly angry or irritated. The opposite of annoyed is delighted. There is no positive benefit to being annoyed. Remember our emotions lead to actions, which create our results.

ELA Teacher Links

• Teaching Emotional Intelligence: Short Stories for Teaching Empathy
• Short Story Catalog at ELACOMMONCORELESSONPLANS.com
• Poetry Collections at ELACommonCoreLessonPlans.com

It’s May, a glorious month. A stressful month for some, but the glorious anticipation for summer vacation outshines all the negative that occurs at the end of a school year.

Takeaways

1. Now is not the time to relax.
2. Now is the time to prepare for August.
3. Following these suggestions will remove a lot of the stress we feel over the summer.

ELA Teacher Links

• Teaching Emotional Intelligence: Short Stories for Teaching Empathy
• Short Story Catalog at ELACOMMONCORELESSONPLANS.com
• Poetry Collections at ELACommonCoreLessonPlans.com
• High Interest Short Stories for High School and Middle School

A long time ago in a kingdom far, far away, a semi-barbaric king discovers his daughter is having an unlawful affair. The male suitor is arrested and forced to go to trial, a trial that consists of an arena with two doors. Behind one door is a tiger, set to maul the unlucky criminal; behind the other is a beautiful bride, set to euphemistically maul the lucky criminal.

 Links

• Short Story Lesson Plans for Teaching Conflict
• Making-Predictions-Chart
•  “The Lady or the Tiger” Teaching Guide
•  Short Story Teaching Guide Central
• “The Lady or the Tiger” Blog Post

To start National Teacher Mental Health Month, we need to lay the foundation for making ourselves mentally and emotionally stronger. This is not a quick fix solution. It’s a foundation.

The foundational belief is that you are in control. I’m not referring to being in control of your class. I’m talking about being in control of your thoughts because, ultimately, it’s your thoughts that create your reality.

Takeaways

1. You are in control
2. Your thoughts lead to emotions. Your emotions lead to actions. Your actions create your thoughts. You control your thoughts.
3. Make sure your thoughts are believable

ELA Teacher Links

• Teaching Emotional Intelligence: Short Stories for Teaching Empathy
• Short Story Catalog at ELACOMMONCORELESSONPLANS.com
• Poetry Collections at ELACommonCoreLessonPlans.com

I felt great. I had just taught an amazing lesson on annotating a poem. Finally, my students could write intelligent analysis in their poetry essays. My joy turned to horror as I read “this poem is awesome” 4,211 times. I whimpered as students mocked. Seconds before peppering the class with rusty finger nail clippers, I had an idea: maybe I should teach students how to actually analyze a poem using Emily Dickinson.

I put the nail clippers to their proper use, called my manicurist, and canceled my appointment. I had work to do. I had to create a list of teaching ideas for Emily Dickinson poems. Here’s what I came up with.

Links

• Dickinson Poems Post
• Poetry Collections at ELACommonCoreLessonPlans.com
• Figurative Language in Poetry Lesson Plan
• Theme in Poetry Lesson Pla