Breathing beneath the bell jar: mental health and ways of existing in contemporary teaching

Abstract

Teachers’ mental health is shaped by working conditions, care demands, and contemporary ways of living and working. This study aimed to map the mental health experiences of Early Childhood Education teachers, seeking to understand how everyday teaching practices shape their processes of subjectivation and possibilities of existence. Inspired by the image of the bell jar in Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar, the research was conducted from a cartographic perspective and followed ten teachers from the municipal public school system in southwestern Paraná, Brazil, over a two-year period. The narratives and field diary records revealed movements in which teaching life continues under multiple demands, the air becomes rarefied in the face of overload and feelings of insufficiency, and, through encounters, openings emerge that restore circulation to life. The cartography made visible an asymmetry of care: teachers who are daily called upon to welcome, protect, and care for others do not always find equivalent conditions in which to be cared for themselves. The findings show that teachers’ mental health is produced through the relationships among work, care, affects, and the concrete conditions of existence, challenging interpretations centered exclusively on the individual.