When Expectations Do Not Match Reality

By Author: Arsenalo
Total Articles: 115
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The analysis also reveals another recurring experience we identified among novice teachers in our study: Frustration results from the discrepancy between the teacher's expectations of the teaching experience and the realization of the actual experience. Stressful experiences, such as a phone call from an angry parent, a supervisor's highly critical assessment of a lesson, or disrespect from an unruly class, are generally unexpected by novice teachers. One Breitling Replica Watches novice teacher in our study, "Clara," reported that her encounter with a disruptive student was a "shocker." Clara described her frustration: "Just an overall general sense when I went into the room every day, it was an overall sense that I am not in control of this class whatsoever, none. Feeling like that can be particularly frightening" (McCann, Johannessen, and Ricca 21). Clara described the experience as being a "frightening" one, but her frustration came about because of the contrast between her initial belief that she knew how to manage the class and the subsequent ...
... discovery that she could not. She struggled with the difficult class for weeks, noting, "It took a long time because the things I thought would work, didn't work." Her difficult class was always on her mind. Even when she left school and was away from the troublesome class, she lamented: "I was thinking about it all the time.

Clara thought she was prepared to meet classroom management challenges. She had learned some classroom management strategies from education classes and from her mentor teacher, but the various strategies she had expected to produce results failed her. She felt confused because she expected reasonable interventions to solve the intolerable situation. When the strategies that promised Tag Heuer Replica Watches some success had little effect, Clara was left confused and frustrated. As a teacher, one can expect to encounter a challenging group of students at some point. However, it is difficult to enter the classroom every day feeling that the students are unmanageable and that nothing is effective in governing the unruly.