Beginner teachers enter the system underprepared to deal with the emotionally taxing and shock reality of the classroom.
This leaves many of them with high levels of stress during their first year of teaching, with some reporting that they can’t wait to get home and cry.
This is according to a study by two North-West University academics.
Carolina S Botha and Julialet Rens, from NWU’s School of Psycho-Social Education, which is based at the Potchefstroom campus, conducted their qualitative study among 100 beginner teachers. They interviewed the participants.
Titled “Are they really ‘ready, willing and able’? Exploring reality shock in beginner teachers in South Africa”, the study has been published in the latest edition of the acclaimed South African Journal of Education.
The stress that beginner teachers go through resulted in many of them doubting their readiness for the classroom, the study found.
“Some participants wondered whether this lack of readiness was a personal state, or merely indicated that they were not ready for the contextual realities of the school to which they were appointed.
“This lack of readiness placed strain on their vision as they started to doubt the compatibility of their own vision with that of the school,” said the study.
The “reality shock” came in the form of various dynamics in schools, including the heavy workload and the poverty experienced by some of their learners.
Stressed by the workload, one teacher said: “It is always an issue of quality versus quantity. And in my life, quantity is currently in the driving seat.
“Some nights I come home and just want to lie down and cry because I have so much that needs to be done in so little time. I don't like leaving things till the last minute. This makes the emotional part of teaching much harder.”
Another teacher said she found herself “simply thrown in the deep end”, referring to the workload.
Said another: “In less than a year I had to switch from being a creative English teacher to a rigid accounting teacher.”
The socio-economic position of the pupils also gets to the new teachers. “Somebody should have warned me that a teacher needs a strong heart,” said one.
“You are constantly being overwhelmed with emotion - a hungry child, a child without shoes, parents having difficulties, a child struggling to learn. Everything evokes emotion.”
Some felt their university had failed to teach them to handle learners. Teachers have for many years complained about lack of discipline.
Many teachers were confronted with overcrowded classrooms, which they soon realised they were not prepared for.
“University taught me the academic content. It did not teach me how to work with learners, how situations were going to affect me and how to handle these things without becoming negative about teaching,” a teacher said.
Botha and Rens recommended pre-graduate programmes that focused on emotional support. This should be “aimed at fostering emotional health and a pedagogy of self-care”.
“In this way they can become effective teachers who have been prepared for and learnt through the experience of reality shock, rather than be overwhelmed and disillusioned. Such teachers will then thrive, rather than just survive,” said the academics.