The Emotional Plight of Teachers: Ghanaian Perspective

Teachers are faced with diverse and challenging problems continuously in the course of delivering their duties. Most of these teachers face endless accusations from the various stake holders in education. Emotions of the teacher are important for the standard of teaching, and they are critical elements for the psychological well-being of teachers and their learners. The author during her years in the Mamexi D/A Junior High School (J.H.S) as a student observed teachers who taught two subjects. She observed that there were two teachers who had displayed varied emotions while teaching different subjects (each teacher teaches two subjects). Findings from multi-level analysis confirmed the person specificity of enjoyment, anger, and, in particular, anxiety when it comes to lessons delivering. In her carrier as a teacher, she experienced similar problem and also observed many teachers with similar problems. So, she set out to find the reason(s) for the emotional flinch in teachers. Using narrative research, she interviewed five participants, four teachers and the headteacher in Mamexi D/A JHS to find the possible factors of the emotional variation by same teachers. Teachers and the head teacher expressed their plight and disappointment in the administrators of Ghana Education Service claiming they were the cause of their emotional flinch in classes because of inappropriate subject allocation