How do educators describe the emotional labor they experience during

Without explicitly being asked about emotional labor, the participants expressed that managing their emotions during negative interactions entailed difficult work. They provided examples of the emotions they experienced during negative interactions, detailed the different types of negative situations they encountered and offered examples of the work completed to manage their emotions during difficult situations.

Of the 26 participants, 21 (81%) referred to the work they complete to express or suppress their emotions. These references to emotional labor occurred 49 times across the 21 participants. One participant, Kristen, stated, “I work really hard to try to keep a straight face.” Another participant, Jill, explained, “I know that I am starting to get angry and I’m trying to just control what’s coming out of my mouth.” Educators detailed the suppression of certain emotions during that work. Of the 26 participants, 15 (58%) mentioned suppressing emotions for a total of 28 occurrences. Rhonda discussed suppressing frustration with, “I hope that I do a good job of covering the frustration with some kind of silliness and optimism.” Chrissy stated, “I always would try not to show a lot of emotion in front of the other kids because you don't want them to see that you're scared or upset.” The participants mentioned the work they completed to express or suppress their emotions, but did not categorize the work as either surface or deep acting as is done in most research. This omission could be due to the lack of emotional labor knowledge or the lack of training on the common language used to discuss emotional labor. The types of emotions that educators like Chrissy and Rhonda, experienced during emotional labor, and the sources of those emotions, varied across participants. All except one participant identified frustration as one of the emotions they felt during negative interactions

with students. The two other emotions shared with over half of the participants were anger and annoyance. Table 10 illustrates the ten most frequently expressed emotions.

Table 10 Participant Emotions: Ten Emotions Most Frequently Expressed by the Participants

Emotion

Number of Participants Using the

Emotion Word Number of Occurrences Frustrated 25 51 Annoyed 13 17 Anger 11 16 Disappointed 7 8 Confused 4 5 Shocked 4 5 Fear(ful) 4 4 Sad 4 4 Surprised 3 4 Offended 2 4

Participants’ sources of emotions occurred across three main categories: personal struggles, school or adult situations and student situations. Personal struggles related to situations educators were dealing with in their personal lives and were not necessarily school related. The school or adult situations included difficulties educators had in regards to administration, system related concerns or challenges with other educators relating to instructional differences. Personal struggles, mentioned 45 times by 21 of the participants, was a common theme while school or adult-adult related struggles comprised only 16 mentions by 12 participants. The most frequent source of negative emotions involved student situations. All 26 participants described negative

teacher-student interactions a total of 85 times. These interactions were further broken down into five categories:

1) Disrespect or Disobedience 2) Conflict

3) Student Safety Issues or Feelings of Chaos 4) Power Struggles

5) “The Game”  

The most often mentioned source of negative interactions and emotions with students was disrespect or disobedience on the part of the student. An overwhelming majority (24 out of 26 participants) detailed situation involving disrespect or disobedience for a total of 56 instances. Disobedience occurred when educators gave directions multiple times and students failed to listen or students became verbally non responsive to teacher directions. Phillip explained, “it's kind of frustrating that they’re not responding to calling on them or giving them a direction.” Disrespectful situations occurred when students made verbally rude comments to the educator. Haley explained her example, “I was talking with a student who had just said something relatively disrespectful, I mean it wasn't over the top, but it was disrespectful. And I was in the process of speaking with them and they just turned around and walked away for me.”

Conflict was the second highest category with 21 participants mentioning it 42 times. Examples in this category included students fighting or arguing with each other or students entering into an argument with the educator.

The third highest cause for negative emotions included student safety issues or experiencing a feeling of chaos in the classroom (20 times by 10 participants). Examples in this category included students experiencing an escalation of behaviors, students experiencing some form of crisis (physical or mental health) or students leaving the classroom.

An infrequent category was power struggles, mentioned eleven times by nine educators. Rhonda illustrated the concept by calling it a, “back and forth…kind of like a power struggle.” Gerry summarized the situation stating, “I think it is because the teacher-student relationship is viewed as hierarchical. Like it’s, usually results or manifests itself in this power struggle.”

One interaction, not frequently discussed (3 instances) but needing further description, was the idea that the situation was a game. Chris mentioned, “it’s like a game with them. And they know my role and I know where they’re coming from.” Gerry also described the emotion work as a game with, “he acts out the only way that he knows to get emotion out of me, which is to play that card that I’m somehow singling him out.”

During the difficult situations experienced by the educators in this study, some expressed the ability to manage their emotions in different ways. Fourteen participants illustrated how they manage their emotions for a total of 25 occurrences. Gina described repeating the message “they’re just a child” to herself to calm down while another participant explains that she pinches her elbows to remind herself to hide her emotions. The work that the educators do to express or suppress their emotions during negative teacher-student interactions during their day involves emotional labor. The educators were able to describe the many different facets of emotional labor including the displays they followed for each situation.

4.1.2 Are there emotional display rules educators report they follow during negative