Wholehearted Living, Emotional Awareness, and Mental Health: Conversations with Elementary Education Teacher Candidates
Location
Preston 2
Session Format
Presentation
Abstract
Increasing concern about college students’ mental health and well-being has been well documented in the literature (Pedrelli et al, 2015). Many of these concerns seemed to be affective in nature and centered on the idea that students were more stressed than in previous years and less equipped to manage the stressors of our education preparation program. And if there was concern about how they managed their mental health while in the teacher education program, what did that mean for how they would respond to the challenges of the teaching profession and support their own students? Research from Alhija (2015) and Zurlo, Pees, and Capassso (2013) describe teaching as one of the three top most stressful careers. Birchinall, Spendlove, and Buck (2019) note, “unfortunately stress among pre-service teachers is not well researched, perhaps because it is viewed as a normal part of teacher development.” Without as much research about the stressors of pre-service teachers and while faculty members were expressing their frustrations about teacher candidates, the two of us could not help but think about the same thing we tell our future teachers– we needed to meet the students where they were.
Keywords
mental well-being, teacher candidates, support
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
Recommended Citation
Osobov, Olha and Waller, Stacy, "Wholehearted Living, Emotional Awareness, and Mental Health: Conversations with Elementary Education Teacher Candidates" (2024). Georgia Educational Research Association Conference. 25.
https://digitalcommons.georgiasouthern.edu/gera/2024/2024/25
Wholehearted Living, Emotional Awareness, and Mental Health: Conversations with Elementary Education Teacher Candidates
Preston 2
Increasing concern about college students’ mental health and well-being has been well documented in the literature (Pedrelli et al, 2015). Many of these concerns seemed to be affective in nature and centered on the idea that students were more stressed than in previous years and less equipped to manage the stressors of our education preparation program. And if there was concern about how they managed their mental health while in the teacher education program, what did that mean for how they would respond to the challenges of the teaching profession and support their own students? Research from Alhija (2015) and Zurlo, Pees, and Capassso (2013) describe teaching as one of the three top most stressful careers. Birchinall, Spendlove, and Buck (2019) note, “unfortunately stress among pre-service teachers is not well researched, perhaps because it is viewed as a normal part of teacher development.” Without as much research about the stressors of pre-service teachers and while faculty members were expressing their frustrations about teacher candidates, the two of us could not help but think about the same thing we tell our future teachers– we needed to meet the students where they were.
