War in the classroom: now is the time to act!

So, I am currently trying to think of what to persuade my audience to do, or at least what audience to try to address.

In case you haven't read my other blog posts, I'll get you up to speed. I have been writing about teachers and the emotion work that they do in the classroom. Teachers must fake emotions like smiling even when a student makes them angry or seems in despair. Faking their emotions requires that the teachers must supress other emotions. Sometimes, this holding in of emotions is very stressful, and some scholars have argued that this is a large, often overlooked, factor that contributes to teacher burnout (leaving the profession early in one's career). In other cases, teachers may not leave the profession, but may feel extreme emotional stress, even breaking down crying in front of their students or in the hallway. See what you think of the following two clips.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rJQTaSu-LPg

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hg0ecMQXRPs

What would I use these two videos for you may ask?

For the first video, I think a video like this would get the attention of my audience, whoever that is (see below for discussion of this). It would make the audience somewhat scared for the teacher or for other students of the problems that can arise in the classroom. I would probably address my audience and ask them, “what would you do in this situation?” Or, “do you think that the current teacher education system prepares new time teachers for the stress they will encounter in the classroom?” Then, I would move into the rest of the presentation.

On the other hand, the second video shows exactly how teachers get stressed to the point that they cry. Is there potentially a way that we could teachers emotion management and skills that they need that may not entirely eliminate this risk? Probably not; But, according to research from literature, there are some skills that can be beneficial.
So, what do I want to persuade? At this point, there are two options:
First, I was thinking of acting as a representativefor a theoretical teaching program (not that I would present it as being theoretical...) to high school administrators. I would explain that the program would teach teachers the skills that would benefit them so that they don't get to this point in the classroom. I would try to establish and convince to them, just as I did in my paper, that one of the contributing factors of teacher burnout is poor emotion management skills, skills that can be primed and supplemented with training. I would use logos such as the cost and rates of burnout, and explain that the program that would save money in the long run. I believe that the videos shown above may help in the emotional appeal to try to make them feel sorry for their teachers, and try to help them identify with some of the difficult aspects of the teaching profession that incoming teachers would not be prepared for, unless they took my program :D Additionally,I would try to target them as present or future parents, and explain how students feel stress and anxiety when they have to switch teachers constantly, and use student anecdotes or the negative emotions they feel when their teachers leave after teaching their class.

My second option would be to essentially use the same approaches, but present my argument to a board of teacher educators at a conference or something like that. In this case, I wouldn't present a program that I developed for them to buy, but I would explain how much emotion plays into making a teacher good and able to relate to their students, and yet also contributes to burnout. I would then explain that more research needs to be done in this arena, and that in teacher education funds need to be diverted from solely benefitting the students to now also preparing for the teachers. I would explain that in diverting these funds, the students would actually benefit in the long run because positive, healthy, emotionally managed teachers are able to reach their students more, and their classes feel more engaged. I think it would be more important for this crowd to focus on the needs of the student more and explaining how teaching teachers emotion management would be the benefit of everyone involved.

So, which option do you think is better? Presenting a program that would focus on administrators and telling them that in their new teacher screening process they need to assess the emotional stability of their teachers and make them take this program if deemed necessary? Or should I focus on teacher educators and explain the need to do more research on the role emotions play in burnout and how we can develop new techniques to prepare teachers before they enter the classroom? Do you think the visuals above are effective on drawing on emotion and drawing in the audience?