Episode 15: Kristabel
A SPED teacher and researcher talks about the crucial roles emotions play in teaching.
BB: So today is an interview day! I won't be telling a story. Instead, I have someone who will tell her story. I have the great pleasure of talking with someone I've known electronically for a few years. I mean, when did we first meet?
KS: I was actually just thinking that I have no idea.
BB: It was when you –
KS: Did I email you out of the blue?
BB: You did! You emailed me out of the blue. And here we are. It was probably like five years ago or something.
KS: Probably.
BB: Or four. So anyway, we've known each other electronically for a long time. And it's very nice to see you by Zoom electronically and to hear your voice as well. So your name – my guest’s name is Kristabel Stark. She is out of her doctoral program and into a post-doc in Maryland and writing like crazy about the importance of focusing on teachers’ emotions. So of course, she is therefore a kindred spirit with me in the work that I do at Teaching through Emotions and here in this podcast. So it's such a pleasure to talk to you. Thank you for doing it. Thank you for being here. I'm excited to talk to you.
KS: Yeah. Of course. Thank you for having me.
BB: First question: Who are you? How did you get here and where is here?
KS: This is a great question. As you said, my name's Kristabel Stark and I was a special ed teacher in Chicago. And during my time teaching, I really enjoyed teaching. But I was getting very burnt out and very overwhelmed by the demands placed on me and my own lack of preparation for meeting those demands. And also the way the system was not providing me the resources that I needed. And so I was not feeling like myself. I felt like I needed to make a change and I started to think about what I wanted to do. And I just randomly came across some research on teachers’ emotions and on the role of teachers’ emotions in their work. And I just found it very interesting because I didn't know that researchers ever thought about our emotions as teachers or thought about why that might matter for teachers or their students. And as I did with you, I emailed the author of this paper – called Email Out of the Blue – and said, “Hey, I really like this research. How did you get into academia? How did this happen?” And so that person that I emailed was Dr. Nathan Jones, and he became my advisor at Boston University during my doctoral program where I had the pleasure of working with him and also Dr. Elizabeth Bettini as my other advisor. And I was able to study a variety of aspects of teachers’ emotions during that time and also continue to teach and work in classroom settings a little bit to continue to understand the experience of a teacher and as a teacher. And then graduated, and now I work as a postdoc at University of Maryland.
BB: And what does that mean?
KS: So a postdoc position is the research position after you get your doctorate that is funded through a more experienced researcher. And so you are in some ways a research assistant or a support on their projects, but then you also usually have time to work on your own projects. And so for me, that looks like working with my supervisor, Dr. Jade Wexler, on research related to adolescent literacy and coaching of teachers, and also continuing to work on my own projects. And kind of the bridge between those things is the coaching. We're looking at teachers’ motivation to develop professionally and to change their practices. And a lot of that motivation involves their feelings about their work and their emotions that they experience during the coaching process, during the professional development and just in their everyday practice. So that's the bridge between how I got there.
BB: So you actually have written, have published at least five articles in the past year! One of them you just sent to me this week and I've read them except for the last one, I only read half of it. But the thing that, when you mentioned your project, it seems to me based on those articles that at least one of your projects is this notion of emotional labor. You're really digging into that to great effect. So I wondered if you would talk about what emotional labor is and how it relates to teachers.
KS: Sure. And I will say that if anyone out there is listening who wants to go to a doc program, do a three study dissertation, because basically what that means is your dissertation is three journal articles and then you just send them in for publication! So I will not say that I wrote four journal articles in a year. I will say that I wrapped up my journal articles this year. But yes, I don't know how I came across the concept of emotional labor. I know that it's gaining a lot of kind of popularity in general discourse these days, and to some extent I think being misinterpreted or overused. But it came out of sociology and organizational psychology research. And it's this concept that within an organization there are professional norms, often implicit, about what emotions are appropriate or not appropriate to display. And those norms are not usually taught to new employees. And so the common kind of example given in some of the early research was flight attendants and how flight attendants always have to have a smile on their face no matter what someone on a plane does. And for teachers, what I found is that emotional labor is super salient in all that they do, whether it's providing instruction, interacting with students in supervisory roles, interacting with their colleagues or their administrators. And what I mean by emotional labor is this idea that they have to regulate what emotions they display in order to come across as a competent professional. And so a teacher might experience a student’s behavior as very disrespectful or frustrating or disappointing, but they still remain neutral to that student with their emotional expression to become a competent professional and also for the student’s benefit. So I've been able to interview different teachers about their experiences and also use some data from Dr. Betsy Brown and some other colleagues on studies that they've done on teachers, emotional labor, so.
BB: So there's the tacit recognition, understanding of display rules for teachers. And then there's just the raw emotions. And there's another article that you shared with me this week in which you offer a means or kind of four steps to teachers for managing the emotions that they do have. Right. Rather than masking your emotions, what do you do with the emotions that you really do have? Can you say more about that?
KS: Yeah, I think there's two. Yeah, I think there's two kind of different things going on for teachers. There's the fact that there are these display rules that shape what emotions are appropriate for a teacher as a professional to display. But there's also the fact that teaching is inherently an emotional process and that teachers experience a wide range of emotions. And that's not a – there's no fault of a teacher. If a teacher feels upset or angry or frustrated or disgusted or happy or enthusiastic, those are all natural things to experience because we're interacting with a wide range of people and we're expected to have consistent relationships with those people. And so even with people that we love dearly, we experience a wide range of emotions. So of course teachers do. And so part of I think the research goals that I have is not only helping teachers recognize, hey, there's these norms that professionally you're not going to be able to display everything that you feel and here's guidance on how to navigate those norms. But also it's okay to feel all these emotions, but there is implications of these emotions both for yourself and for students. And so I think in the paper you're referencing, I was talking with my colleague about using emotions as data and how often we think of teachers using student test scores or student feedback or interactions during class as data. But we can also use our own emotions during interactions as data to shape “What are my goals as a professional? Am I achieving those goals? How do I feel about this relationship with the student? How is that impacting the way that I interact with them?” and on and on. Yeah I think that paper was trying to help teachers instead of thinking of emotions as a byproduct of their work, as kind of something that happens to them, thinking about how they can proactively take those emotions and really run with them and see them as a support and as a part of their professional work.
BB: How to use the data, emotional data and what I would call emotional and relational data as well as numerical data.
KS: Yeah and I think understanding that the ability to regulate your emotions effectively and the ability to sometimes choose not to display the emotions that you naturally feel is a professional skill, just as your understanding of math or reading content or your understanding of direct instruction, these are all, this is a professional skill that teachers should feel really proud of themselves for developing and not expect to know from Day One, whether that's Day One in a new school or with new students or Day One as a teacher. Yeah.
BB: Yeah. And I just want to reinforce there's the figuring out how to manage your emotions, how to self-regulate, how to display emotions or be an appropriate what I would call developmental partner in the classroom. But there's also, as you're saying, the ability to make use of the emotions that do come up. And from Teaching through Emotion’s perspective, it really is about doing psychodynamic analysis, which is – I don't think you go as far as that. You definitely come up with some really great questions for teachers to ask about their emotions, to interrogate their experiences, to help them align better with their professional goals and roles in the classroom. And I think you would probably not disagree that there are also ways of making sense of those emotions that allow you to discern what's happening in specific relationships, either with specific students or with specific classes, collectives, that those emotions can say, can teach a teacher so much about the state of the relationships and what kinds of tweaking can be done, either with individuals or with entire classes, to turn, to attune those relationships so that the learning that needs to happen can happen.
KS: Yeah. And I think one of the things that I'm continuing to dig into and that I think is really interesting is sometimes we have assumptions about what emotions are harmful or helpful, and those might not necessarily be true. And so for, there's a lot of studies on white teachers like myself where this emotion of caring or empathy is rooted in deficit beliefs and biases towards certain students. And there's also research on teachers’ beliefs about students with disabilities and race. And so I think that there is sometimes this sense that if you really care or you really love or you really empathize with students, then of course you're going to serve their needs. But that's not actually true all the time. And so I think that's another benefit of really digging into, like you said, emotions for the nature of your relationship with students and understanding how to make sure you're providing equitable educational opportunities. That's another, yeah.
BB: Yeah, it’s true. That the same act or the same emotion that drives a particular act is not necessarily the act that any particular developing human being needs from their attachment figure, from their developmental partner.
KS: Exactly.
BB: And what is appropriate has to do with the nature of the relationship and the needs that are being demonstrated.
KS: And I think what I found in one of my dissertation studies that was a case study of a particular educational program in an alternative high school for students with disabilities is that at that school, there were educators who were trained as teachers, and there were also staff educators who were trained as clinicians and trained in social work or psychology. And in these different fields, we have different kind of narratives amongst ourselves about the role of emotions and what appropriate boundaries are or what, you know, appropriate emotional expression is. And I notice that there was a lot of tensions among the staff in their own perspectives and beliefs of what would serve students. And so I think that sometimes we think of this in terms of a teacher individually or a student in the student-teacher relationship. But it's also so important to think about teacher emotions in terms of the collective and in terms of what as a school we see as the vision for how teachers and staff should really interact appropriately with students. That gets back to the emotional labor concept, too, with these display roles where in certain schools there might be a display rule that it's more okay to express a wider range of emotions with students. I think typically that's in a high school setting a little bit more, as the students are older, versus an elementary setting, it might be less appropriate. Or it just depends on a lot of factors. That's a simplification. But yeah.
BB: Yeah, yeah. Very interesting. Yeah. I mean, in the emotional timbre of a school culture, emotions play a role and so do those display rules.
KS: Yeah. And I think that's the other that's another reason that drove me into this research and that I think this research is gaining popularity now is just the huge rates of teacher attrition that we have and the teacher burnout that is being experienced. And that a lot of that I know for me and for myself personally and I know for a lot of people it's really not about the kids necessarily. It's about the nature of the school system and organization that you're situated in.
BB: Do you have any particular advice on burnout for teachers? Given your perspective? I haven't read anything that you've written about that specifically that I know of, but maybe, I mean, given your own experience that led you into a doctoral program and now your own research, how do you understand burnout for teachers?
KS: Going back to empathy and how empathy can be used, misused or used. But I will say I have a lot of empathy for teachers and for the work that it takes to really be a thoughtful and caring and professional teacher, whatever that means. Now I'm stumbling over my words, but I think what I want to say is that it's okay if you can't do it anymore. Like, I think it's okay to recognize that not everything is within your control and that there is a lot of things in the system as it stands right now that are very harmful to teachers and that teachers have a lot of trauma that they experience themselves in a lot of difficult circumstances that they experience that are often overlooked within the school system, especially, we're beginning to focus more on students’ social emotional learning and student trauma. But sometimes that comes at the cost of teachers’ own needs and health. And so I guess one thing I would say is that if that's where you're at, that's where you're at, and you don't need to – you can't singlehandedly change the system. Don't sacrifice your own health and well-being. Don't waste your life. But I think at the same time, I also think there's ways to put boundaries on what you do within the work that you do, and to think really carefully about what does it mean to be a good teacher versus a perfect teacher, and what does it mean to be a – to do the things that you can do and to let the other things that you can't do go and to recognize within the system what you can do and claim that. I think that – I'm not going to reference them accurately, but I know there's different models of social justice that kind of talk about changing, leaving the system, changing the system. What your activism looks like might depend just on your own personal circumstance. And I also think part of what I see in my research is that you're not alone. These experiences are so common across all teachers. And there's, there is a teacher who's experienced what you've experienced before, and there's probably a teacher within your school who is experiencing it. And so I think vocalizing what you're experiencing and really talking to other teachers and talking to people outside of education is really important. It's not it's – you shouldn't be suffering in silence. So that was my ramble, Betsy. But those are kind of my thoughts.
BB: No, I love it. And I threw that one at you. So I apologize.
KS: That’s all right!
BB: It’s a great one. It's emerging from your answers. But I do want to say that in this notion – I feel as though I'm seeing this with teachers, too, that I work with – this isolation that I think was imposed and then normalized by COVID. And I love your answer that latter part of, the last part of your answer, teachers really do need to reach out to each other and link arms not just to normalize their experiences so that they realize they're not alone, but to gain the strength and perspective from each other that teams and colleagues can really offer.
KS: Yeah, and I've had the pleasure of working with Danna Thomas, who’s a leader of a group called Happy Teacher Revolution. And they set up basically teacher support groups in schools. And the teachers go through this protocol to talk through their emotions and to support each other in their emotions. And we do this with very careful expectations around vulnerability, because it's easy to create a culture of toxic positivity or create a culture where teachers are expected to be vulnerable in ways that are unhealthy. But from interviewing teachers who have participated, I know that a lot of teachers really find that super, super valuable to them. And there's a relief in knowing that not everything is your fault or your choice, and also that you, no matter how good you are, you're not going to be able to change some of the systemic issues that are impacting education that you can't singlehandedly solve as an educator.
BB: And this research, this conversation that you had with members or people who participated with Happy Teacher Revolution is one of the articles also that's going to be –
KS: Yeah, and so that article, we were talking to administrators about the need for teachers’ social emotional needs and some of the potential trauma that teachers experience or have experienced to be addressed as well as students because they really go hand in hand.
BB: And I just want to underline that I totally agree. The work that I do at Teaching through Emotions is all about is – offers support groups as well. Teacher Support Groups. Yeah, but different. We do psychodynamic work with emotions. But aiming support very specific and honest and loving support at teachers. Who knew? And I can sense there's still resistance to the idea not just culturally but among teachers themselves. Like I think a lot of teachers feel like they shouldn't need any help. They don't need any help. They're the ones who are helping. So I love that Happy Teacher Revolution and other organizations, Teaching through Emotions, are really specifically looking at how to support teachers in surviving so that, because if you put the oxygen mask on the teachers – as we say, going back to the flight attendants and Hochschild’s work – put the oxygen mask on the teachers, they will be able to give the care that their students need. But if they're burning out and losing nourishment, they're not going to be able to help. They're not going to be able to do their jobs.
KS: Definitely.
BB: Can you tell me what you think is at stake? I mean, your research focus is on teachers’ emotions. We've talked about various aspects, it should be clear to anyone listening that teachers’ emotions are crucial. And there are many reasons why looking at teachers’ experiences, emotional experiences in schools can benefit teachers and students and administrators, by the way. What is at stake if we don't focus on emotions, on teachers’ emotions?
KS: Yeah, I think I mean, I think we've talked about some of the things. But I think one of the things is that teachers are expected to continually improve in this profession. There's this understanding that you're a lifelong learner as a teacher. And I think that if we come into the profession expecting teachers to be naturally good at regulating their emotions or naturally gifted in emotional intelligence, or can just somehow understand the emotional display rules that are never explicitly taught to them, then we risk not only harming those teachers, but also continuing these narratives that only a certain type of person is capable of teaching. And often that's a really gendered understanding of what kind of person? And I think that there's a lot of research about the need for really a diverse teaching force and the need to recruit all sorts of people to be teachers. And so I think opening up our vision for what kind of personalities are appropriate for teaching is important, and also understanding that if someone thinks that they're appropriate for teaching and then they go in and they experience these things as difficult, they still probably have the capacity to be a good teacher, and it's just about being able to learn and grow. And I think just like any other professional skill, that we expect teachers to become better at progress monitoring over time, or we expect teachers to write better IEPs over time. We also would expect teachers to be able to regulate their emotions better over time. And I think that's really important. And I also just think that with all this focus on, this talk about teacher burnout and teacher stress and teachers’ feelings of overwhelm, it's also important to look at the wide range of emotions that teachers experience and really recognize that, you know, in some of my recent studies we've done, we've asked teachers to report their emotions multiple times during a day on a survey. And we find that teachers have the most positive affect when they're working with students. And so teaching really is a joyful, can be a really joyful and happy and fun experience, ideally. And we don't want to lose sight of the fact that “teaching is emotional” is not a negative thing. It doesn't mean that because it's emotional, therefore it's more stressful. Because it's emotional, that also has a lot of motivating factors and benefits and rewards for teachers, which is the whole reason they get into the job. It's not about the money or the status, clearly. So if emotions are the main reward, then we have to really think about what does that reward look like and how do we make sure that reward is actually serving teachers and their students and their families.
BB: Lovely put. You’re making me think about this notion of bias and partial perspective and racism and unconscious biases or perspectives that will not serve all students. How does your work on emotions inform you in terms of DEI, as it were?
KS: So I think that biases are not – and attributions about certain students’ behavior or actions – are not inherently emotions. But I think that there's a strong link between those things. And so I think that's one way that sometimes emotions do provide us insight into our biases or into what we're comfortable with or not comfortable with. But I also think that there's research – not me personally, people who have done this before me – who show how emotions can be communicated differently across different cultures and also interpreted differently. And this notion of six basic types of emotions is really being blown apart right now. And there's a lot of research showing that it's just so much more complicated and constructed than historically emotions were theoretically framed. And so I think for teachers understanding that, they might think that they're really clearly communicating something to a student, or they might read a student's behavior as really clearly communicating something that is just not true. I think there's studies and I wish I could cite the authors, but I don't know them off the top of my head, but showing how anger can sometimes be – or sadness or depression – can be interpreted as anger. The intensity of a person's emotional expression can be misread across cultures. And so I think that for teachers, understanding what is the norms of emotions within their own culture and within their own identity, and what shaped that for them, whether that's outside of school or inside of school in their own educational experiences, and then reflecting on how they have taken that into their classroom and kind of put that lens on their students can be really helpful in terms of providing equitable educational opportunities.
BB: I love it. It makes me think that the focus on emotions isn't simply, it doesn't end there. It's not just, “Okay, I'm feeling anger.” The focus is to attune your relationships with your students, with individual students, so that those relationships get, at least for me, the focus is on those individual relationships, out of which learning must emerge. And if a teacher can reveal biases and use anger or dismay or whatever the emotion might be to notice over and over again, “This is how I'm reacting to this particular student, this is the feeling. In fact, oh, it's actually fear.” That just can be so liberating in terms of the relationship with that student, especially if the teacher is supported in doing that hard work, that hard, honest work of noticing, acknowledging, and then trying something different based on the formulation of what that emotion might mean about the relationship with that particular student.
KS: Yeah, definitely. And I think that it's complicated because one identity marker is not going to mean that you're definitely going to feel the same or express the same emotions as that student. So I don't want to just because I'm a female and my student is female or just because I'm white and my student is white doesn't mean that they have that same understanding as me. And I think overall, what I'm learning and hoping to continue thinking through is just this concept of approaching emotions with curiosity, because I think that it's very easy, we often have secondary feelings about our feelings? And I think sometimes okay, so I experience fear working with this certain male student, which I know if I reflect, is me being socialized as a female into this or that feeling. And then I immediately feel guilt about this. And that guilt is not going to ultimately serve me or my student. And so I think trying to really remain curious is what I've been thinking about, both about our students and about ourselves, and giving us grace, like that this is a developmental process and that we're all learning and growing in it and recognizing our own responsibilities to ask for forgiveness and to make things right when we've done harm. But definitely approaching with curiosity.
BB: I love it. Curiosity. I love development. That is that teachers are developing and so are students, which means that we have to be alert to, again, corrective how correctives work, how feedback works, how this moment is not forever, but can be used to understand what's going on in this moment to promote a different kind of behavior, a different kind of relationship. That's called development. And I know a lot of teachers think developmentally, I think in terms of – especially elementary school teachers – but I'm not sure how many high school teachers do. And it's all developmental. That is to the degree that cognition and emotion are intertwined – which they are – emotional development, relational development is always involved in cognitive development. And paying close attention to those emotional signals in your body, in other students’ behaviors, in your own behaviors is part of teaching. There's no way you can escape – a lot of people do escape it, but you and I would agree: Don't escape it. That's data that teachers and students really need teachers to grab on to.
KS: For sure.
BB: Very interesting. Okay. I just wanted to end with what would you wish for teachers? I don't want to make you repeat yourself over and over again. But if there's anything else that you would want to share about your wisdom and perspective, I mean, so wise! Really. So thoughtful and I think spot on. Is there anything else you would want to say to teachers?
KS: Come be part of my research! I guess that's one thing! I can always use more participants, so if you want to chat, get my contact info from Betsy. And also to that end, if you have specific research ideas or questions, I think that ultimately as a researcher coming from being a teacher, my goal is really to serve teachers and to do research that has actual implications for teachers and their students. So I always love to chat. But I think also just take a moment to appreciate and be proud of yourself and to make sure that when you're experiencing positive emotions at work, to really take a second, to take a deep breath and enjoy those emotions and recognize those emotions, because I think that often more negative emotions can take up so much more space and power. And practicing gratitude and also practicing just celebration for the good times is really important. And I think, yeah, like we said, having curiosity for yourself and recognizing that you're part of a system and that unfortunately that system is broken in many ways right now. Yes. We appreciate you as teachers who are listening to this. And we wish you all the best this school year for sure.
BB: Yeah, lovely. I totally agree. Triple underline. Okay. I want to close by mentioning that, as I mentioned, Kristabel has already published a bunch of articles. I'm going to be linking to them in the transcript of this interview that's going to be on my website for the podcast. It's teachingthroughemotions.com. Just go to that main page and click on The Podcast and you can choose this. It'll be the Kristabel episode and that whole transcript will display and there will be links to everything and anything you could possibly want to read, including Kristabel's email address if you —
KS: Perfect. I would love that. Yeah.
BB: So I think that's all. Yeah. As I said, I just want to say that these articles that Kristabel writes are super accessible, they're super well-written, they're really robust and rigorous in terms of the way you've done your research. But — and I say “but” purposely — but they're also accessible. So there's a really lovely balance. I mean, so many research articles are just…
KS: I appreciate that.
BB: Thank you. Yeah. A really nice balance. And so I highly recommend these articles to you all.
KS: Yeah, read it and see if you agree with Betsy and let me know!
BB: So thank you all for listening. Kristabel, thank you so much for your time. And I wish you the best of luck and please stay in touch.
KS: Thank you as well.
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Contact Kristabel here.
Check out Kristabel’s excellent articles at the following links.
The Emotional Job Demands of Special Education