Challenges and Resilience: A Pre-Service Teacher's Guide

This essay examines the concept of resilience in teaching, emphasizing its importance for educators, particularly pre-service teachers. It addresses the challenges faced by teachers, such as student behavior management, catering to diversity, and maintaining work-life balance. The essay highlights the BRITE program in Australia, which aims to develop resilience skills in pre-service teachers through various modules. It discusses the significance of teacher resilience for student outcomes and explores dimensions of resilience, including social, emotional, professional, and motivational aspects. The essay emphasizes the importance of building relationships, establishing support networks, and prioritizing well-being to foster resilience. It provides practical strategies for teachers to manage stress, balance work and life, and create a supportive classroom environment. The essay concludes by underscoring the significance of resilience in navigating the complexities of the teaching profession and promoting positive outcomes for both teachers and students.

The Professional Educator-
Developing Teacher
Identity

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................3
MAIN BODY...................................................................................................................................3
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................6

INTRODUCTION
Resilience can be defined as a process of adapting the adverse situation, threats, tragedy
efficiently and in well organised manner. Resilience in teaching is considered to be beyond
memorization, calculation and adoption of various traditional methods of learning, rather it is
based upon the fact of becoming the one whom children can relate with and can easily
understand. In this easy various challenges will discussed which are faced by pre-service teacher,
the ways with which the resilience can be build, the role of support system to pre-service teacher
etc. Various challenges which are faced by the teachers are managing the behaviour of students,
catering the diversity, changing roles in the academics due to restructuring of the education
system. BRITE program is launched in Australia with the aim of helping the pre-service teachers
for developing various skills and abilities in them which can facilitate better teaching career. It
contains five modules which aim to develop various social and personal capabilities for
professional resilience (BRiTE Program, 2018). Each module in the program enables the
teachers to build resilience by understanding its importance, building relationships, managing
work life balance, building a resilient classroom, reflection and emotional awareness.
MAIN BODY
Resilience is important for teachers as well as for students as teachers resilience is
associated with intrinsic motivation in the teacher, their commitment towards the job and
engagement with the profession which enables them to have positive impact on the students,
their learning and development (Neenan, 2017).
With the increasing availability of the resources and easy excess to the internet the teachers
has been facing various challenges as the students themselves gather various on the basis of
which they put up various questions. Various challenges which are generally faced by the
teachers are lack of planning of the lessons as they have to play multiple roles in the classroom
so that they can keep students attentive. With the changing technology and diversity in the
classroom, balancing of the diverse learning needs becomes difficult due to which the teachers
need to formulate various teaching strategies for different types of students. Difficulty in
managing the work-life balance because of feeling of overworked, lack of personal time etc.
affects the productivity in the profession as it increases the level of stress (Southwick, 2018).

For the teachers it is important to facilitate their students by modelling their own resilience
as per the situation and expectation of the students as this will help them to solve their issues
efficiently. A resilience teacher need to have effective time management and organisational
skills, must have ability to ensure a balance between their work and leisure. Apart from this, to
handle adverse situation, a resilience person need to have a sense of humour which can enable
them to manage the stress level. With the ability of bouncing back after experiencing adversity
reflects strong resilience of an individual.
To build a resilience four dimensions must be considered which are social dimension that
suggest build support network and relationship; emotional dimension that includes care for own
well being, positive and optimistic view of life; profession-related dimension which suggests
reflective and organised personality with problem solving ability; motivational dimension that
includes level of confidence, improved focus and factors of motivation. By considering all the
aspects resilience can effectively be developed within an individual that can make them a better
pre-service teacher.
Relationships are very important as with the help of this supportive and positive
environment can be created within the school and at the work area. Initiative must be taken by
the individual himself for developing better relationships with other and for this various actions
must be taken by them such as regular visit to the staff room so that the staffroom etiquette can
be learned (van der Meer, 2018). Conversation must be initiated with other teachers and staff
members with a supportive behaviour, social network must be identified along with various
disputes among other so that with a positive approach such situation can be managed. In addition
to this likeminded people must be identified and communicated which can understand the
situation and the mindset. All the feedbacks must be taken so that the perception of the people
can be analysed and accordingly changes can be made which enables an individual to have better
relations with others. Opportunity for incidental conversations must be grabbed so that relations
with new people can be developed. Along with this proactive behaviours towards the visions of
the school will enable to have better relations with others.
Support networks are important for the individual as they enable them to deal with
various situations. For new teachers it is very important to have a support system so that they can
manage various challenges so faced by them. They are important they provide guidance
regarding the actions that can be taken by them; make the individual comfortable with an adverse

situation or from their discomfit zone etc. Along with this support network enables to have
leisure time and fun so that the level of stress can be reduced.
For the teachers it is important to consider the well being of the students along with that
they need to be concerned about their work-life balance as well. This has positive benefits for
both the students and the teachers along with others whose life’s are associated with them. Well
being of an individual is dependent upon the professional experience, personal responsibility and
level of motivation for an individual (Bastable, 2019).
Teaching profession is exciting as well as challenging due to which an individual
neglects their well being when they are so absorbed in their tasks. For a pre-service teacher it
becomes important to consider the well-being as with this they can incorporate themselves with
other activities that can help in delivering their experience in their classes. Work-life balance will
enable them to have better, enthusiastic, energetic and passionate life which will make them
capable of dealing with adverse situations along with various challenges.

REFERENCES
Books & Journals
Bastable, S. B., and et.al., (2019). Health professional as educator. Jones & Bartlett Learning.
Neenan, M. (2017). Developing resilience: A cognitive-behavioural approach. Taylor & Francis.
Southwick, S. M., & Charney, D. S. (2018). Resilience: The science of mastering life's greatest
challenges. Cambridge University Press.
van der Meer, L.,and et.al., (2018). The importance of person‐centred care and co‐creation of
care for the well‐being and job satisfaction of professionals working with people with
intellectual disabilities. Scandinavian journal of caring sciences, 32(1), 76-81.
Online
BRiTE Program, 2018. [online] Available through : < https://www.brite.edu.au/about-the-
program >