The Struggle to Define Their Teacher Persona
In one phase of the research we report in Supporting Beginning English Teachers: Research and Implications for Teacher Induction, we interviewed eleven early-career teachers.
The analyses of the interview transcripts suggest that a major difficulty that beginning teachers face is the challenge to Cartier Replica define for themselves their teacher persona. Before entering teaching, novice teachers have assumed many roles: son/ daughter, student, employee; but the role of teacher is a new one. They apparently struggle with questions such as the following: How am I supposed to act in this situation? How do real teachers do this? Am I aggressive enough in contending with management challenges? Am I overreacting? Am I insisting on unreasonable standards? Am I being too lax? These are the kinds of questions that must be answered over time and by means of comparing one’s behavior against a recognizable and legitimate standard. (McCann, Johannessen, and Ricca 17; italics in original)
For example, one first-year teacher from our study, “Joshua,” found it difficult to determine who he was as a teacher:
I’d stay up kind of late trying to get something that I thought was really good and have sleepless nights, but in the morning I was actually . . . I’d have an almost like dry-heaving anxiety. You have to understand how strange it is for me, because normally I am a very “type B” personality: no stress whatsoever, take one thing at a time. Just having those kinds of mornings was totally strange for me…. I kind of had to reinvent myself to do this that some of that happened, but it was just really going to school and not being 100 percent confident in what I was going to present to the students. (McCann, Johannessen, and Ricca 19)
Joshua had been a successful student throughout high school and college. His academic success sparked his confidence as a student. However, being on the other side of academics as a teacher, Joshua experienced doubts that made him physically ill. Joshua’s trouble in inventing his teacher persona was that he believed he had to support a curriculum in which he was not totally invested:
It’s still kind of a challenge; because I know a lot of the times that I’m not good faking excitement about certain content that I know a lot of effective teachers do. It’s just not part of my personality and I haven’t developed it yet, so if I have something that I’m not totally pumped about teaching, it shows. I kind of wear my heart on my sleeve as far as that goes. (McCann, Johannes-sen, and Ricca 19)
Although Joshua confessed he was unable to fake enthusiasm, he assumed other teachers were.
This excerpt from the inter-view with Joshua Breitling Replica illustrates one recurring experience among the novice teachers in our study: Negative episodes provide evidence to novice teachers that they are not doing what bona fide teachers do, leading to doubts about their qualifications as teachers. Novice teachers fail to recognize that other teachers also struggle from time to time with classroom management problems, curriculum conundrums, or other instructional challenges. Moreover, new teachers do not believe that difficulties will diminish to an accept-able level over time.
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