Resilience in Novice Teaching

           Upon reading Melanie Tait's (2008) article about resilience in novice teaching, I felt apprehension with the amount of work that is yet to come in my future. I found the statement, "teaching is one of the few professions in which beginners have as much responsibility as their experienced colleagues...[t]hey often have more difficult subject combinations and more challenging students" (p. 58) to be very interesting, yet quite daunting. I still have so much to learn with regards to teaching. For example, since novice teachers generally are given more challenging students, how am I going to maintain classroom management and make sure that all of my students are learning? Tait provided key contributors that allow novice teachers to be successful:

1. Resilience: resilience is the ability for an individual to accept, overcome and improve from challenges (Tait, 2008). Resilience will be really important for me when I am teaching. Resilience is important to me as a student, as well. I know that when a new challenge arises I will be able to overcome it, because I have overcome so many other obstacles in my life. 
2. Personal Efficacy: teachers with self-efficacy view difficulties in life as challenges as opposed to threats (Tait, 2008). They are able to be "proactive" (p. 59) when these challenges arise in order to overcome the obstacles. Another important aspect of self-efficacy is to believe in myself, even if no one else does. It is difficult for others to appreciate me, if I do not appreciate myself. Thus, I must have confidence that I was chosen for my job for a particular reason and I can overcome any challenge that arises.
3. Emotional Intelligence: everyday teachers display their vulnerability to their students (Tait, 2008). Therefore, teachers must have emotional intelligence. Emotional intelligence is defined as "a set of social and personal competencies that assist people in managing their internal states and their interactions with others" (p. 60). Teachers must have these soft-skills to assist their students in multiple areas of the students' lives (academic and non-academic). Teachers must develop a safe environment to allow these soft-skills to be successful.

           One criticism I have for this article is that it mentions these three keys to novice teacher success, however, it does not thoroughly explain how a teacher is able to attain these skills on their own. The article is geared more towards administrators and mentor teachers as opposed to the novice teachers themselves. As an individual soon to be entering the teaching world, it would have been more beneficial to have an article that explains more in-depth what novice teachers can do on their own.

References

Tait, M. (2008). Resilience as a contributor to novice teacher success, commitment, and retention. Teacher Education Quarterly, 57-75.