"Fearful but Coping": Teachers' Reflections on Their Emotional Experiences as First Responders in an Earthquake

• In Event: 61.029 - Educators and Emotional Labor: Coping With the Emotions of Teaching

Abstract

This paper reports a subset of qualitative data from a previous mixed methods study investigating how teachers functioned as first responders when a fatal earthquake struck in the middle of a school day. They put their fears aside and kept the children safe. This paper focuses on their retrospective reports of their emotional experiences, showing a range of positive to negative emotions both at that time and at the time of the research eighteen months later. At the time of the research they were feeling generally positive despite their earlier trauma. Although burnout was evident, and despite reporting lower energy for their teaching than desired, the teachers were generally positive, which may be due to their emotion regulation skills.

Author

• Veronica Mary O'Toole, University of Canterbury