Graduation Year

2023

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree

Ph.D.

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.)

Degree Granting Department

Curriculum and Instruction

Major Professor

Mandie B. Dunn, Ph.D.

Committee Member

Michael B. Sherry, Ph.D.

Committee Member

Robert Dedrick, Ph.D.

Committee Member

Alexandra Panos, Ph.D.

Committee Member

Tonya Perry, Ph.D.

Keywords

English, Phenomenology, Reflection, Education

Abstract

Hybrid simultaneous teaching, surgical masks, Lysol wipes, and uncertainty capture the zeitgeist of teaching during COVID-19. This study builds on teachers’ daily stressors in the classroom. Many shifts in education that never seemed possible created angst and anxiety in the classroom (Cupido, 2018; Dubey and Pandey, 2020; El Rizaq & Sarmini, 2021; Zuo et al., 2020; Garcia and Piotrowski, 2022). Teachers entered the 2020-2021 school year having to learn many firsts.The purpose of this study was to understand the interplay of work-life lived experiences of secondary English teachers with moments of anxiety during the COVID-19 pandemic. Using a post-intentional phenomenological approach, I framed my study using the philosophies from Vagle, Van Manen, Schön, and Seidman. The following questions guided this study: (1) What was it like to teach secondary English with moments of anxiety during COVID-19? and (2) How does teaching during COVID-19 affect your teaching pedagogy? The participants are teachers of English in the United States teaching in grades 6-12 (secondary) from ages 20-69 years old. Participants in this study taught English during COVID-19 while experiencing moments of anxiety. This study had a unique way of identifying specific moments that caused anxiety for my secondary ELA participants. Each participant engaged in this study, and I found the following from my three participants: (1): Teaching English during Covid was exhausting and created anxiety; (2): Teaching ELA was Ineffective and Caused Anxiety; (3) Teaching English during Covid was overwhelming, and (4): Changes during Covid created moments of anxiety; (5) Stakeholders produced moments of anxiety while teaching English, and (6): ELA assessments were anxiety-producing. The experiences shared by my three participants shed light on the voices within the classroom, which created moments of anxiety. The experiences and findings from each of my participants it was clear that there were specific moments that were more anxiety-producing, which led me to my implications of how we can better support the needs of teachers. The following implications were discovered from this study: (a) Stakeholders need to be empathetic and supportive; (b) ELA teachers need better support; and (c) Changes should happen in stages. This study did not generalize to a larger demographic; however, other ELA teachers might be able to connect and relate to the findings and stories of this study.

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