My first idea of the Hochschild concept was the limited one provided by Holstein & Gubrium. In this presentation of Hochschild’s theory, the authors explained that Hochschild believes that there are two components to identity: the true self and the false self. The true self is the self that would be revealed if not under any external pressures. Alternatively, a person can have many false selves and these are the identities that they present in multiple social situations would be those false selves. Hochschild claims that the false self performs emotion work, the act of presenting emotions that are completely opposite of what the person is truly feeling. Again, she claimed that these false emotions would have no effect on, or influence from, the true self. Hochschild’s theory was thought by Holstein and Gubrium (authors of The Self We Live By) to be important in preventing the true self from being inundated and overly influenced by the social. Other theories of the self, like Riesman’s conforming self, are more grim in that they see peoples’ identities as being completely shaped by the social, and that they don’t really have an identity beyond that which society creates for them. In contrast, Hochschild’s theory was seen as grim, but more positive than Riesman’s theory of the self because Hochschild’s theory said that there was a portion of identity that wasn’t subject to the pressures of the social. However, at least from my initial understanding of Hochschild’s theory, I felt that there was no interaction between the true and false selves.
Additionally, my initial concepts of teacher identity was that it was a direct representation of this concept of identity: that a teacher’s identity in the classroom had no influence on who they really were. However, as I have continued to contemplate these concepts, my opinion has changed. This has been influenced not only by my research for my Argumentative writing class, but also by my application/interview process for Teach for America. As I have learned more about the Hochschild type identity, I have found that there are conflicting views on the subject. Some people feel that the identity they present in the classroom is completely false and not representative of their true feelings. From sources other than the assigned text in our class, The Self We Live By, I found that Hochschild would call this surface acting. Other teachers profess that they also do “emotion work” . However, there are others that feel that they perform is more influenced by their true personality, and that they actively shape their current emotions by trying to change the emotions they are feeling, not just faking them. This is what Hochschild called deep acting.
Then, there are others who say that Hochschild’s emotion work and false selves at no level can truly apply to their profession. In the UK, they praise what they call philanthropic emotion work, an emotion work that is not exploitative at all, but truly loves what they do and don’t feel obliged to do their work. They feel that the only time they do Hochschild type work is when they are forced by the education system to follow a prescribed lesson plan and force all their class time into instruction, never being able to truly relate to their students. From this point, I started to see that when teachers do Hochschild work, they feel an emotional conflict, and often leave the profession or just feel overwhelmingly stressed. This made me think of the concept of teacher burnout, the idea that many teachers leave the profession shortly after starting, and as I believe some sources have cited, can occur at rates of 40% or higher in educators’ first 5 years in the profession. Other sources have actually determine that in large school districts, like in Chicago, the turnover of one teacher can cost about $18,000.
In my developmental psychology class, I have been reading about the importance of a safe learning environment, one in which the student feels comfortable, on the child’s development. The appropriateness of the material to their developmental stage (grade-level/age for instance) or personal traits (gender, culture, local community) is important in developing lesson plans. In my Teach for America application process, I read numerous article about how students are suffering from the short comings of the school system and how teachers need to stress improvement and do “assessment for learning,” a technique in which teachers show at-risk children with poor grades that their grades don’t show that the kids’ efforts are futile, but that they are just making minor mistakes or have minor shortcomings in their understanding, and then giving them the chance to improve. Therefore, I am constantly being inundated by the importance of the student. But, what about the teacher? Don’t they have needs to? And, if we want to teach students more properly, shouldn’t we first make sure that our educators are well adapted and prepared?
This is the point where I have transitioned to my “arguing to convince paper.” I always thought that it was important to worry about the needs of the students; however, if the teachers aren’t prepared for the situations they will encounter (not just the academic ones, but the emotional and psychological situations), how can they reach out to their students. Although some teachers don’t need what I would call “emotion training,” some do. And, this training is more important that some situations in contrast to others. For instance, in Teach for America, these corps members are placed in low-income communities. Some of these kids come from families where there parents work multiple jobs, and then the children must take the role of “parent” for their siblings. Others become parents extremely early. In blogs on teachfor.us, a site of Teach for America corps members’ blogs, one teacher mentioned how when she asked her 7th grade student about a picture of a baby boy he was holding, that the student told her that the picture was of his son! That’s right, a 7th grader with a son! How about the corps member who had to react to a student who talked about how good the popcorn was at the prison he had to visit where his brother is. Some of these kids don’t have any positive male role models because they have single moms, or their dad, uncles, etc. are in prison. Therefore, teachers need to be able to know how to properly respond to these kids emotional needs. But, if the teachers aren’t taught how to do this, they will shy away. Therefore, education reform needs to start focusing solely on the needs of the students, and instead focus on developing positive teacher emotions and identity.
If we can successfully help teachers prepare emotionally to connect with, and respond to their students in difficult situations, burnout rates may decrease. This not only helps the emotional state of the teacher, it would save the districts money by decreasing turnover rates! Also, when teachers don’t feel as stressed, they are less likely to miss work, and therefore don’t have to spend money on substitute teachers, who probably compromise students’ educational opportunities anyway in most cases. If people are worried about diverting money away from students needs, it seems from my arguments, at least, that by helping teachers, we will not only save the districts more money to spend on students, but it will help students connect with their material more and really learn, whether that means increased comprehension (what really matters) or just higher test scores (what the educational system emphasizes). In the end, I believe this is the direction that work on teacher identity research needs to take.
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