The Depressed Language Teacher

Terri Edwards Okazaki and Mario Rinvolucri

In this article two writers look at depression in the context of native speaking EFL teachers. Terri Edwards Ozaki describes how expatriate Teflers, working in cultures that are strange to them, experience depression, while the troughs Mario Rinvolucri outlines have been lived in UK. This article, therefore is about that tiny minority of Teflers who happen to be native speakers of English, probably less than an eighth of one percent of the 6 million teachers of English as foreign language around the globe. This article does not attempt to deal with depression as experienced by the nearly one million teachers of English in China, for instance,people who are living in their own homeland

Terri writes:

"Teacher burn-out" is a fairly well-documented phenomenon in main stream education but precious little has been researched or written about it related to ELT. When mentioned at all in relation to ELT the reference tends to be a short article on the web or in the kind of teaching magazine that many expatriate teachers abroad do not have access to, such as the Times Educational Supplement or the Guardian Educational Supplement.
ELT can be stressful enough in one's own country ( all those manic summer courses spring to mind!) but for teachers working abroad there are particular stresses and strains that that may cause or factor into depression, and there may be precious few resources to help the sufferer.

Here are some possible causes of stress:

Culture shock
The language barrier
Home-sickness
Heavy workloads
Split-shift schedules
Pressure on personal relationships, particularly with spouse
The person may not be working,
They may be caring for children
They may have been left behind in another country
They may have been opposed to moving,
They may be forced to give up career and friends etc….

( I have witnessed such a situation: a colleague of mine who split up with his steady, long-standing girl-friend shortly after joining the teaching staff at British Council, Tokyo, actually took his own life.)

People may experience loneliness and difficulty making new friends They may live in cramped and noisy accommodation

( I have a colleague who has moved from one ghastly flat to escape noisy neighbours, only to find that her new flat has an insomniac player of loud music next door. The woman is on the verge of a nervous breakdown)

A person may be trying to adjust to the written and unwritten rules of a new school
They may have had inadequate training and the situation can be made worse by busy colleagues who are unable to find time to help out newcomers.

What is Depression, Medically speaking?

The World Health Organisation gives this outline list of symptoms that come under the umbrella term depression.

Markedly lowered mood
Loss of interest and enjoyment
Reduced self-esteem and self-confidence
Feelings of guilt and worthlessness
Bleak and pessimistic views of the future
Ideas or acts of self-harm or suicide
Disturbed sleep
Decreased libido
Reduced energy leading to fatigue and diminished energy
Lowered concentration and attention.

Depression as felt and seen by its sufferers

If you wish to approach an understanding of depression from a literary or musical angle, you may find these sources useful:

Darkness Visible, by William Styron, Vintage Classics. On Page 5 he writes:
Depression is a disorder of mood, so mysteriously painful and elusive in the way it becomes known to the self - to the mediating intellect - as to verge close to being beyond description.

Pink Moon, an album of songs by Nick Drake, a chronic depression sufferer who over-dosed and killed himself with anti-depression medicines.

Prozac Nation by Elisabeth Wurtzel. This turned out to be such a depressive read that I gave my copy away!

I am 65 as Terri and I write these lines and, until I was 52, I had no idea what clinical depression, as described above, can be like.

I had known plenty of ups and downs in mood. I had been through a period of deep sadness subsequent to my father's death: I wept and sobbed many tears in the gaping emptiness he left. I searched out substitute fathers, and one was brilliant .

But 50 years of life passed without my knowing what sufferers mean when they use the term "depression."

However, all this changed with my mother's death. My reaction to this second parental death was extremely strange as I simply could not mourn: I could not find or feel anger or sadness. A Void. ( avoid)

Three months after lowering her coffin into its trench, I plunged into a full scale clinical depression which left me with:
- inability to sleep
-loss of appetite ( indeed of urgent greed)
-disappearance of sex drive
-fluctuating concentration
-terrifying inability to be with people, to receive their warmth, to give warmth back, to achieve any other than watery, forced, artificial rapport
-withdrawal
-hopeless loss of my feeling of self-worth, of doing things well
-a disgusting ability to stand outside myself and become a sneering observer of myself.

And yet I went on with my language teaching in an EFL school in Cambridge, UK (Cambridge Academy) This seemed the right, tenacious, combative thing to do.. In the small class of foreign EFL students I taught, I gradually became aware that my foul inner state touched and affected two out of the six students. Although I knew I was psychologically damaging these two people I soldiered on, bracing myself to weather and survive each next hour in the classroom. To survive, somehow, till the bell, was my only aim.
I went through the motions, carried by long experience and a sort of hollow
"professionalism".
And I hurt, disturbed and damaged those two students ( people in their late teens) by sub-consciously communicating my black bile to them in ways neither I nor they understood. Without quite knowing it, they read me brilliantly and absorbed a part of my mood: this did them no good. Their mood was visibly worse after a morning in my company.

This period submerged in the waters of depression lasted six months and I suddenly came to the surface over a period of three days and three nights. It was a like a re-birth. It was a dramatic, positive re-framing of all I perceived both within myself and outside.

I was back in full energy for a period of around 18 months and then succumbed to another bout of six months in the same state of inner self-annihilation.
I experienced the same difficulties with and feelings of guilt towards my language students as before. Again, it was six months before I surfaced.

I lived for another 18 months in the clear.
Then the black tide came in again, a third time. Right at the start of this period of madness I was scheduled to teach a Creative Teacher methodology course at Pilgrims, in Canterbury. I had a group of 16 trainees. Three or four of them, with strongly extrovert personalities, managed to make some sort of rapport with me. Most of the rest I could not reach emotionally.
On this methodology course I plodded through classroom techniques of brilliant design, which my inwardly corrosive mood robbed of their juice and meaning. On the last day of the course the majority of the trainees' questionnaires were starkly negative.
I was devastated, as I knew that everything the trainees said was accurate. These people had had a lousy course. Most Pilgrims training courses attract 90% glowing feedback, mine included. Here, instead, there were some "averages" and many "well below averages".

I was very concerned, as was my administration. This failed course took place in July and in October one of my colleagues rang the participants. Six of them said that they were still suffering the negative emotional aftermath of that course. To have caused damage that went on hurting so long after the course left me with a grim feeling, but also, usefully, with feedback I could act on.

In late February of 2004, I had a small heart attack from which I fast recovered, physically.
I stayed in a state of energy and happiness until early April.
Suddenly, over Easter, I found myself withdrawing, hiding and losing my ability to interact normally and warmly with people round me. I was sunk in an even worse depression than those three back in the 90's, in my fifties. And the Pilgrims Summer teacher training work was looming.
Having learnt from Depression 3 that my illness can be seriously contagious for some people in a group I am in charge of, my colleagues and I agreed that I would avoid leading any intensive, two week groups, and would only do 90 minute workshops on the optional afternoon and evening programs.

THIS WAS A BRILLIANTLY CORRECT DECISION. I am almost certain that I managed not to drag down and suck in any participant in those short sessions.

Hurray for something learnt, even if the hard way for others and for me.

( This 4th post-heart attack bout of suicidal glumness lasted 5 months- I came out of it in early September 2004)

Terri and I both feel that EFL literature is perhaps unrealistically suffused with sunshine and laughter: how often do people report in the magazines, websites and journals on their failures and mess-ups? And yet we all have some of these.

We feel that the "hidden" topic of depression in EFL needs opening up, putting on the table, and discussing openly. The tendency to conceal it is as natural as it is unhealthy and counter-productive. A problem shared…….

We wonder if other people out there may be willing to tell colleagues about how they have coped with seriously negative states of heart and mind. ………. HLT is keen to host article that deal with the downsides of our profession, as well as the up-beat sunny sides.

Terri and Mario