4.7. Student/Teacher Voice
As a teacher – This is new for all of us. It's okay to be struggling; Know that I am struggling, too. Hang in there. As a teacher – I … don't know, to be honest, The world is forever changed, We can't ignore that fact. I'm not sure. Even if we don't have the answers, The most we can do is: Make them feel safe, And less alone: Facetime friends, Slow down, Read books, Enjoy family time, Watch TV, Find a hobby, self-care, self-reflect. We are alone together. As a teacher – Give the students hope; keep up a relationship; Make sense of something that doesn't make a lot of sense; Emphasize staying kind and calm. Feelings are valid – I'm there for you; Take a deep breath – I am proud of all of you; Look at the positives – I am there for you; Ask me questions – it's okay. These are uncertain times for all of us, School might not look like it usually does – Take 1 day at a time, One accomplishment at a time. As a teacher – Discuss the importance of others, Ourselves, and Our health. Encourage students: Stay active. Stay positive, Be honest … even though the world is in a weird place. This is really difficult. Keep your head up, Keep working hard – No matter what – We will all get back on track! As a teacher – Read a book, learn a new sport, Make a new game, your own memories, Push through and finish strong. Stay safe, Stay active and creative, Stay in a routine – Stay busy. As a teacher– I would encourage them. Walking in nature isn't cancelled, Calling your friends isn't cancelled, Practicing gratitude isn't cancelled And staying optimistic isn't cancelled I am here for you.
5. Discussion
This study provides insight into how 74 preservice teachers coped with an abrupt shift to online courses, their workload during the transition, as well as stay-at-home orders, living adjustments, and their resulting emotions during a turbulent six-week conclusion to their semester during the initial COVID-19 shutdown. As social distancing, work from home, and safety protocols are likely to change the field of teaching more than many other careers, it is imperative to understand the emotional well-being of preservice teachers while in their education courses learning and adapting to change. Using the new CT-TEP model, analyzing interactions of stressors and coping strategies – through the lens of present and/or possible selves – allows for a deeper perspective of preservice teachers' emotional health and well-being, vital to the sustainability of teacher education programs.
5.1. Coping with stressors
Throughout participant responses, preservice teachers articulated their stressors: "moving back home," "online schooling," fear of "contracting the coronavirus," "voting day," "mental health," "the new normal," as well as if they will "have a job," cancelled "plans," and "letting down" their professors. Additionally, participants provided glimpses into their in/abilities to cope with those stressful situations. Moos and Holahan (2007) offer eight categories of coping skills, as shown in Fig. 2, in which these preservice teachers expressed their successes and/or shortcomings throughout the poems.
Throughout the poetry, expanding over a six-week period, these preservice teachers used both approach and avoidance coping skills. The tone of present-oriented weekly poems is notably full of negative emotions: despair, frustration, anger, and confusion; whereas, the poem from the perspective of possible selves – despite deriving from survey questions asked at the same time as the present-oriented questions – showcases more positive, less avoidance coping responses. Thus, when thinking as their possible selves, these students instinctively focused on approach coping skills, but deferred more to avoidance skills with present-self positionality.
As shown in the poem, "Student/Teacher Voice," there is a sharp difference in emotional tone between participants positioning themselves as current students and their possible selves. In the opening stanza, a participant acknowledges their own struggle but reassures their possible student(s), "it's okay to be struggling" – a sentiment lacking in previous, present selves poems. As a participant admits personally, "this is really difficult," the overarching sentiment shared for future students is to "keep your head up, keep working hard – no matter what – we will all get back on track!" Furthermore, when addressing the challenges they faced as present selves, they did not thoroughly discuss what supports were needed from their own teachers. When asked to focus on possible selves, preservice teachers provided supports such as encouragement, a plan of action, and healthy alternatives to keep students busy, contrary to the negative emotional state articulated in present selves responses.
5.2. Connections with/in the classroom
These results provide insight for teacher educators. The first six poems, which chronicle the perspectives of preservice teachers studying in a pandemic, are useful for teacher educators who: 1) strive to understand realities preservice teachers face outside the classroom/virtual class space; as well as, 2) offer opportunities for making connections as a means of coping with stressors of the pandemic. By understanding how preservice teachers cope with stressors, teacher educators can support their students by utilizing those same coping skills to improve the education class experience. For example, if teacher educators know their students are coping through alternative rewards, such as TikTok or Netflix, can educators use those forms of media with their students to bridge personal and professional positionalities together? Changing reading assignments to streaming online videos or converting writing responses to short-form video creations allows the teacher educator to directly connect with their students' present selves – which could lead to better focus and much-needed relief to their sense of being overwhelmed, as participants articulated. Tapping into their perceptions of their present selves may offer teacher educators insight into what supports preservice teachers need to move forward as well as provide a springboard into their students' possible selves.
Using prospective reflection offers preservice teachers the opportunity to focus on results and/or outcomes, rather than present selves mired in the current emotional state of crisis. In other words, for teacher educators to glean a better sense of their students, they should utilize prospective reflection (through alternative assignments as suggested above) to gauge preservice teachers' emotional well-being. Instead of reflecting on the present crisis, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, redirecting reflection in a prospective frame allows teacher educators to comprehend students' individual "goals, dreams, and anxieties for the future" (Gaines et al., 2018, p. 209), a better indicator of the long-term well-being of the preservice teacher and, thus, the teacher education program.
If the trauma of the current crisis becomes too much for a preservice teacher to see themselves as a teacher moving forward, this may be a sign that a preservice teacher is considering a career change or unable to reconcile current stressors with appropriate coping strategies. Prospective reflection acts as an early warning signal for dangerous emotionality of preservice teachers. This struggle, if observed early on by the teacher educator, may be mediated with counseling or trauma-informed pedagogical practices. If not, preservice teachers may leave the field due to external crises.
5.3. Trauma-informed practices
Much has been written about the need for trauma-informed practices integrating into education programs (Cummings et al., 2017; Wiest-Stevenson & Lee, 2016), teaching trauma as curriculum (Carello & Butler, 2014), as well as needs of those pedagogical practices in the wake of disasters in Indonesia (Seyle et al., 2013), Taiwan (Chen et al., 2012), Italy (Vaccarelli, 2018), Armenia and Japan (Shiwaku, 2014) and Louisiana, United States (Graham et al., 2017). However, previous research has typically framed itself as instructing in-service and preservice teachers how to connect with students after a traumatic event has occurred, not always how to handle a real-time, ongoing, widespread crisis. As seen from the emotions of preservice teachers in this study, teacher preparation programs must consider the need to employ and teach trauma-informed practices contemporaneously with actual events to help students cope with stressors of the COVID-19 pandemic and other crises they may face.
Furthermore, current research on trauma-informed teaching practices provides opportunities for prospective reflection. Cummings et al. (2017) elaborate on approaches for responding to trauma: be attuned, convey positive regard, collaborate with others, and engage in proper reactions. Considering who we are as teachers in those moments: mentor, support, guide, listener, and touchstone makes possible selves inherent in teaching trauma-informed practices. Therefore, learning about these approaches and how to create supportive environments for students and family alike puts preservice teachers directly into the realm of prospective reflection, dealing with a role they may one day find themselves performing. This is the benefit of possible selves – pushing preservice teachers to reflect on their future actions and identities as an educator. Framing preservice teachers' views towards their possible selves, teacher educators provide future-oriented talk, turning the focus to "planning and prediction" (Urzúa & Vá, p. 1944), which aligns with trauma-informed practices.
5.4. Our new reality
Researching an ongoing pandemic is difficult. By the time research makes it to publication, realities of the world could drastically change; therefore, it is crucial to remember, as Austin (2020) points out, "quality research of any kind takes time" (p. 9). Issues currently unbeknownst to us as practitioners and researchers in teacher education will likely skew conversations regarding upcoming challenges in equity (Glenn et al., 2020; Kier & Clark, 2020), accountability (Buber & Helm, 2020), safety (Darling-Hammond & Melnick, 2020); transitioning to online formats and/or use of technology (Daniel, 2020; Moorhouse, 2020; Trust & Whalen, 2020), and what these changes mean for education in general. These are difficult conversations, with constantly changing targets.
While Delemarter and Ewart (2020) offer: "perhaps one of the greatest services we can provide our student teachers is a framework to help them process their fears, such as modeling how to reflect on one's emotional state" (p. 5); this study adds the use of the newly conceptualized CT-TEP model to a more extensive discussion on methods to understand, evaluate, and mitigate the crises our preservice students face as well as the vitality of teacher education programs' futures. Furthering that claim, I argue more research is needed, not just on student teachers, or preservice teachers already in field components of their program, but on introductory, foundational, pre-field students. These students in their first or second year of schooling are the most volatile to changing career paths, as they are not too far into the program to change course. Teacher education programs, based on the feedback of participants in this study, need to incorporate prospective reflection practices throughout their course sequence, as understanding how preservice teachers see their possible selves offers much needed information regarding their emotional well-being.
5.5. Limitations and future research
This study is limited to a single public state university in the upper Midwest, United States, and only examines first- and second-year preservice teachers. Future research should investigate how CT-TEP applies to preservice teachers at multiple universities – facing their own unique curricular and environmental issues – as well as varied levels of preservice teachers' experience, including student teachers. How will the continuation of this pandemic impact attrition rates in classrooms as well as enrollment rates in teacher preparation programs, particularly pre-field students? What do we as teacher educators do to ensure our own university programs offer, within the curriculum itself, crisis resources that mitigate stress/stressors and provide coping strategies to preservice teachers? Moreover, how do we teach them to be a conduit for minimizing their prospective students' own crises while also garnering insight into our own students' emotional health? What can teacher educators do to assist students already in field placements during a crisis? These questions are left unanswered; hence, it is essential for teacher educators to focus on the emotional health and well-being of preservice teachers to ensure they realize their possible selves.
6. Conclusion
The COVID-19 pandemic is not the only crisis preservice teachers will face; thus, teacher educators need pedagogical tools to address emergencies as they arise. Writing in the context of school shootings, Wiest-Stevenson and Lee (2016) offer: "In an increasingly unpredictable and vulnerable time, it becomes imperative for schools to be proactive in providing the resources, environment, and planning to assist in the effective management of traumatic situations" (p. 498), and in the middle of a COVID-19 reality, these words could not resonate more. The CT-TEP model provides a mechanism to gauge preservice teachers' emotions while also gleaning insight into their possible selves.