Anxieties, Desires and Sylvia: From Preparation to Beginning Teacher

Abstract

This paper makes a case for exploring underlying anxieties and desires possessed by final year teaching students prior to seeking employment in New Zealand schools. Anxieties and desires are understood in terms of ‘teaching’s intimacies’ (McConaghy, 2006), that is, the often unconscious and thus unspoken and unexplored feelings pre-service teachers have toward their teaching futures. Following calls by McConaghy (2006: 64), the reflections of at times controversial New Zealand educator Sylvia Ashton-Warner on her ‘inner life’ as a teacher, serve as both a type and a stimulus for the type of teacher reflection education students might also productively engage in. Reflective teacher practice of this type seeks to bridge the gap between the public and private worlds of teaching degree students during a significant period in their process of becoming teachers, the final year of their degrees. Reflection in this sense involves a greater ethic of care for the teaching self by addressing the silences in both teacher preparation and indeed the profession concerning teaching’s intimacies. Anecdotal evidence suggests relatively high departure rates from education programmes during degree programmes and also during the transition to teaching. The exploration of students’ anxieties and desires for teaching will contribute to understanding these problems.

Miss Honey was a wonderful teacher and a friend to everyone but her life was not as simple and wonderful as it seemed. Miss Honey had a secret. Though it caused her great pain she did not let it interfere with her teaching. 
from Matilda