Going through the dilemmas of the beginning years, both Lisa and Jessica were pleased to find the difficulties they encountered have been gradually overcome. This section presented the participants’ challenges and strategies after they became experienced teachers.
4.2.1 Experienced Teachers’ Challenges
At first both participants reported few challenges in their semi-structured interviews, but as the semester proceeded, more challenges were identified from their teaching journals and informal interviews: (a) managing the workload; (b) addressing the needs of special education students; (c) dealing with students with behavioral problems; (d) resolving teacher-parent conflicts.
Managing the workload
Both participants conveyed their challenge of managing teaching and non-teaching workload at the same time. For Jessica, she believed that attending workshops could benefit her teaching. However, if she wanted to attend the workshop she had an interest in, she needed to change her class schedule or find a substitute teacher to teach her class. It was difficult for Jessica to take the time off since her free periods had been occupied with many non-teaching related tasks, such as cooperating with school administrations (e.g. attending school meetings or workshops, collecting reply slips and tuition from students, preparing the class for the school contests), dealing with students’ problems (e.g. student discipline, cheating, arguing and fighting with classmates, making phone calls to parents), and handling paperwork (e.g. reading student contact books, submitting teaching reports and surveys, keeping student records). “I don’t think I have much energy or time to develop this idea <attending workshops to enrich my teaching>. Actually, the accumulation of experience made me teach with a simple textbook and chalk.” (SI-J-02, 11-30-2015)
On the other hand, Lisa indicated that certain policies or school activities had little effectiveness in educating students and could even deplete teachers’ energy and passion for teaching. Many activities were done superficially by both teachers and students thus they could not bring about fundamental changes. Lisa mentioned one of the examples:
A lot of things that we are doing do not have any educational value.…such as the Reading Passport4. I don’t think we do it seriously.
Every month there just needs to be three students on the stage, receiving the prizes and that’s it. No one really likes reading. …How many homeroom teachers do you think can really discuss the book with their students? Many activities existed with a good intention, but they ended up as red tape. Everyone was tired. (SI-L-02, 11-07-2015)
Addressing the needs of special education students
Jessica and Lisa both mentioned that dealing with special education students was their main challenge at school. It took them a lot of time and effort to understand the students’
needs, interact with them, assist them in getting along with classmates, and most importantly, dealing with the problems caused by their “specialty.” Jessica faced two special education students in her class – a girl whose mental age was diagnosed as being two to three years younger than peers and a boy with ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder). The girl would keep asking snacks or breakfast from her classmates, take away her classmates’ belongings without permission, or push others when climbing stairs. “She was a troublemaker,” said Jessica. The other boy, on the other hand, caused even more stress to Jessica. As the semester began, the boy insisted on eating
4 It’s an activity to promote reading at Star School. Every month, books selected by the school library would be distributed to each student along with a worksheet for students to write reflections. Students who handed in the worksheet on time would get a stamp on the Reading Passport and the stamps would be calculated at the end of the semester. Homeroom teachers were required to mark the worksheets and select three best works.
The best three students in each class would be rewarded during the school morning gathering. As there were fixed questions on the worksheet, students who did not finish reading the book would copy the answers from others to avoid receiving demerits as punishment.
instant noodles at school. After being reprimanded by school teachers, he poured the hot instant noodles down from the second floor and planned to skip school. Considering the conditions of these special students, Jessica chose to tolerate them, encourage them, and seldom considered punishment. However, when the ADHD student repeatedly made mistakes and could not accept Jessica’s guidance, Jessica was extremely worried and frustrated.
Besides the fact that both participants had the frustrating experience of dealing with the behavioral problems of some special education students, Lisa felt even more upset to know there were more special education students in class than notified because parents concealed their children’s conditions from the school. Lisa stated her experience as followed:
These kids must have caused problems in elementary school, but why couldn’t the government intervene? The government gave too much power to the parents, but parents were not experts. These kids have special needs, they deserve appropriate education. They could not be disciplined by their parents, and they did not receive appropriate education, that imposed an intolerable burden to teachers. …To do it
<arrange the placement of a special education student> requires a lot of paperwork. I needed to fill in a pile of applications and went through a series of evaluations. Like the ADHD kid, his condition was quite serious, but I was not notified by school. His parents chose not to tell, either. The whole application took three months. If it were not for the assistance from the administrator in the counseling office,…THREE months! He would finally started to receive appropriate education after a semester! (II-L-01, 09-22-2015)
Dealing with students’ behavioral problems
In Taiwan, homeroom teachers take the responsibility to gain students’ respect and compliance with regulations as they spend more time “getting to know” their students. This includes their personalities, personal needs, and individual differences. With sufficient experience, Jessica and Lisa both knew how to understand their students and to manage a
class. However, they both regarded handling students’ behavioral problems as an annoying and tiring process, even though they were equipped to handle the whole class. Lisa reported her conditions:
During the noon break, if I was in the classroom, the student would rest his head on the table. If I was not there, he would walk around the classroom. He did not listen in class, either… This is what I mentioned – lack of discipline. …These simple habits should be built during elementary school or kindergarten. But don’t you think we junior high school teachers are doing what elementary teachers should have done? I am very upset about the whole education system and the government. I only have two classes today, but I didn’t even have time to take a rest. I am always dealing with students’ behavioral problems.
(II-L-01, 09-22-2015)
Jessica still faced difficulties when governing students’ behavioral problems, and which was further confirmed by other school teachers. During the semester, Jessica’s student kept violating the school rules and had disturbed students from other classes, but Jessica could not effectively govern the student’s actions. A teacher who used to teach Jessica’s class few years ago said directly, “She could not copy the same pattern as her previous class again – doing nothing and letting other teachers to play the bad cop!
Jessica’s students liked her, but hated their class teachers.” (RJ-J, 12-01-2015) The teacher pointed out because Jessica was more flexible with enforcing rules, her students had more discipline problems.
Resolving teacher-parent conflicts
According to both participants, teacher-parent conflicts mostly came from different values on educating children. Especially when dealing with students’ behavioral problems, things became more complex as parents were unsupportive or even unreasonably intervened.
Teachers felt extremely distressed when parents could not understand their good attempts
to correct their child’s behavioral problems and took a rather unfriendly action to fight in defense of their child.
Jessica pointed out a typical case that she would feel quite uncomfortable when the students’ parents talked to her impolitely as a result of their child’s condition at school. On the day of School Fair in this semester, when a father saw her daughter crying because of being complained by her classmates about her unequal way of packing the French fries, the father yelled back at his daughter’s classmates and asked Jessica to deal with it loudly and impolitely on the spot. Jessica then responded calmly and politely, “They are just seventh graders. It is likely that they have disagreements. I will deal with the problem later.” Except for a few cases, Jessica thought that most parents were cooperative and friendly.
Compared with Jessica, Lisa encountered more conflicts with parents. During the data collection process, Lisa encountered two serious conflicts with parents. As Lisa pointed out one of them:
Something more serious was a student’s mother writing in the contact book. She rudely and unreasonably accused me of inflicting corporal punishment on her child and also demanded that her child should not be the cleaning crew leader. It was really obnoxious because her child was irresponsible, inefficient, and was always late for homework. She complained that her child came to school to “learn,” not to “be punished”. …When can we teachers be released from the untenable situation that we have too many students, and we are required to take full responsibilities for everything?” (PJ-L-05, 12-12-2015)
The effect of education could only be achieved best when there was a consistency of values shared by school, family, and the society. As an experienced English teacher, Lisa concluded, “Why do we find it so difficult to change a student? Sometimes what we teach them, and what he does at home are two completely different things. When you do not have his parents’ consensus, you are fighting with his habits. With a bit of luck, maybe
he’ll change. More likely, he will be just like that for the rest of his life.” (SI-L-02, 11-07-2015)
4.2.2 Experienced Teachers’ Strategies
According to the collected data, sometimes the unsupportive parents, misbehaved students, or the unpredictable behavior of special education students were a great blow for the participants. Nevertheless, most of the time, they still considered teaching as a rewarding career with two strategies to overcome their frustrations: (a) self-reflect and make adjustments to teaching practice; (b) elicit social support from family, friends, and colleagues.
Self-reflect and make adjustments to teaching practice
With sufficient experience, both participants had a range of solutions to reflect on, and after this reflection they could actively make changes instead of being forced to take actions which they were not even sure would be useful or not. They understood how to achieve the
“better” effect. For what could not be solved successfully, both participants could accept their imperfection and adjusted for “the next time” because for them, teaching is a lifetime career and it is always important to improve and to learn from any experience. As Lisa replied, “You will keep meeting new problems as you are moving forward.” (SI-L-02, 11-07-2015)
Also, both participants perceived themselves to be able to separate school and personal life well. This could be achieved from two perspectives. First, to prevent themselves from being bothered by school work, they tried not to take school work home as this was the source of their stress. Second, they enriched their personal lives by participating in activities. This could divert their attention from the stress at school and offer them a sense of fulfillment. Lisa further contended her goal of self-improvement by appreciating literary works and continuing her study of calligraphy:
I want to get away from the status – the status of being busy and
shallow. I think it was really awful to live like this – you don’t make any progress every day and then time flies. I want to think about something more abstract. For example, I want to read literary works to trigger contemplation. Except for calligraphy, I think I improved very little in every aspect. …There are many things I can do, like expanding my own life experiences and having different trials. We are busy at school all day. When we are busy, we get upset easily and the life controls us, instead of us controlling the pace of life. Now I want to do the opposite, which means, even when I am busy, I can still control my mental and physical conditions. Yeah, through constantly making changes and thinking. (SI-L-02, 11-07-2015)
Due to the more positive attitude toward dealing with difficulties and clearer understanding about one’s self, it was easier for both participants to recover from failures or negative emotions.
Elicit social support from family, friends, and colleagues
Both Jessica and Lisa did not view social support as their top strategy because they preferred to think of solutions by themselves first. However, they would still look for colleagues’ or family’s opinions when they needed different perspectives on the situation and when there were things which were difficult to solve. For instance, Lisa learned how to deal with teacher-parent conflicts more harmoniously from other senior colleagues. Jessica, with suggestions from her colleagues and husband, changed the way she engaged with her class, she learned how to speak with more authority and confidence when she dealt with classroom discipline issues.