a prickly process

I have been interested, in my recent reading, in the notion of there being ‘prickly aspects’ in the process of becoming a teacher. (Glass, 2011) What are these prickly aspects? How do student teachers find their way through them?

Glass observes that, to those outside of the teacher education sphere, it can appear that becoming a teacher is a seamless process, yet the reality is that “becoming a teacher is a struggle within the multiple contexts of an individual's life. The personal, the physical and the emotional need to be in balance (Alsup, 2006) and this struggle for balance can catch pre-service teachers unaware.”

I am drawn to this imagery. It feels fitting. It calls attention to the difficulty of the process, of feeling your way through the struggles and dilemmas. To add such an image helps understanding. It conveys a sense of a prickly object, something that can’t be grasped, something that offers an infuriating puzzle - how do I hold onto this?

It makes me think, also, of those times as a teacher when certain aspects of my own development, or of the job expectations themselves, felt ‘prickly.’ I will not dwell on these, there are many. Instead, I will share what I wrote about the highs and lows of the job, back in 2010,

“A good day can send you home in a swirl of enthusiasm …a truly bad day can feel so heavy and depressing that it is difficult to get back up. Every day you go into the classroom with a plan to make it a good day. Yet each day is still so riddled with uncertainties as to whether you will hit the right notes and manage to achieve that high. Every day is filled with risk.”

How do we prepare student teachers for those prickly aspects? How do we help them navigate their way through without getting prickled?

Or, maybe, it is with the help of the sting, the uncertainties of every day, the risk, the uncomfortableness, that we appreciate the value and the gravity of the role, and learn the craft of the teacher?

References

Alsup, J. (2006). Teacher identity discourses: Negotiating personal and professional spaces. LEA-NCTE: New Jersey and Illinois.

Glass C. (2011). There's not much room for anything to go amiss: Narrative and arts-based inquiry in teacher education. Issues in Educational Research, 21(2), 129–144.