Internship in a Primary School: a Novice Teacher’s Emotions

Abstract

This paper deals with the effects of teacher emotions on their teaching and on the learning situation, therefore it addresses directly the existing literature on teacher emotions, emotion management and emotional display and how these factors might affect the teaching practice and how emotional display might affect learners. The study also addresses my specific emotions as a novice teacher during a 150-hour internship in a primary school as assistant to two English teachers, and part of the study involves my feelings of anxiety while teaching and how I overcame them, therefore further literature included in the study is the research into student teacher anxiety sources (Merç, 2011; Young, 1991), foreign language teacher anxiety (ibid.) and Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety (Horwitz, Horwitz and Cope, 1986).

The focus of my work is twofold and its scope addresses on one hand the teaching emotions and practices of two English teachers I assisted during my internship period, the first part of which was devoted to observation and field notes taking, and on the other hand a second part where I helped teachers with reading activities and here I focused on my emotions, how they affected me and learners and how they were related to the presence of the English teachers.

My research is a qualitative one and I gathered data through the collection of field notes in a diary during lessons and then through cognitive reframing back at home, a time during which I expanded on the notes taken, I gathered the main key-topics and deepened my knowledge about them through a bibliographical research in the existing literature. The diary served both for the emotions and emotional displays of the two English teachers I assisted, but also for my own emotions while engaging in reading activities with children. I also realized that my emotions changed and evolved through time and that I managed to overcome my anxiety with some strategies taken from the existing literature on teacher emotions and teacher anxiety sources research (Young, 1991).

The conclusions brought forth by my study refer to the research-topics of teacher emotions and emotional displays, teacher expectations and their effect on pupils, and how anxiety (in the forms of speaking anxiety, stage fright, Foreign Language Anxiety, fear of negative evaluation and fear of failure) can affect teaching and how it can be lessened and overcome applying some anxiety-reducing strategies found in the existing literature on novice teacher anxiety sources (Young 1991). My paper addresses these issues and stresses how and why there is a strong bond between the job of teaching, especially as regards novice teachers, and emotions, and how emotion management is of vital importance in the field of teaching, especially in primary schools where young learners are very sensitive to emotions, and I also argue how high teacher expectations bring forth the best results in pupils and learning, whereas less motivated and more frustrated teachers can impair the learning situation.