ABSTRACT
Heim Ginott encountered a realization as regards the emotional responsibilities of a teacher inside the classroom, which I quote:
“I’ve come to a frightening conclusion that I am the decisive element in the classroom. It’s my personal approach that creates the climate. It’s my daily mood that makes the weather. As a teacher, I possess a tremendous power to make a child’s life miserable or joyous. I can be a tool of torture or an instrument of inspiration. I can humiliate or humor, hurt or heal. In all situations, it is my response that decides whether a crisis will be escalated or deescalated and a child humanized or de-humanized.”
This emphasized the encompassing influence of a teacher to a student such that when a teacher’s emotion on specific situation is not managed it may damage a student one way or another for life. As a hardworking professional, teachers need to hide their personal feelings, and remain calm and positive at times. A teacher’s job requires them to manage their emotions, or the way they express those emotions, to meet organizational expectations. This is called 'emotional labor.' People in a service-oriented role – hotel workers, airline flight attendants, tour operators, coaches, counselors, and teachers – often face the demands of emotional labor.
What is emotional labor? Arlie Hochschild created the term 'emotional labor' in 1983 to describe the things that service workers do that goes beyond physical or mental duties. Showing a genuine concern for customers' needs, smiling, and making positive eye contact are all critical to a customer's perception of service quality. These types of activities, when they're essential to worker performance, are emotional labor.
Schools often place a great deal of strategic importance on service orientation, not only to students and parents but also to colleagues and stakeholders as well. While emotional labor is applicable to many areas of business, the consequences are probably greatest in traditional service roles. However, in an increasingly service-oriented marketplace, it's important to understand how emotional labor affects teachers, and what DepEd can do to support and manage any issues.
When one is engaged in emotional labor, there is a need to control the feelings to fulfill the goals and expectations of your organization. From a practical standpoint, this means that it’s either (a) express only positive feelings, or (b) hide or manage negative feelings. To deal with negative emotions, people tend to do one of the following:
• Show emotion they don't really feel.
• Hide emotion they really do feel.
• Create an appropriate emotion for the situation.
This can be done using two emotional labor techniques:
• Surface acting – You fake, or pretend to have, an emotion by using unnatural and artificial body language and verbal communication. Smiling and using a soft tone of voice help you show emotion that you don't feel, or hide emotion that you do feel.
• Deep acting – You control your internal emotions, directing them to believe that you actually are happy, and enjoying the interaction with the other person. Rather than feel like you're pretending, you convince yourself you're not experiencing a negative reaction.
When you continually need to show only those emotions that are appropriate for the job, despite how you really feel, this can often lead to emotional conflict between your real emotions and those you show to others.
This is the reason why the Philippine government, pursuant to the provisions of paragraph (e), Article 11, of R.A. No. 7836, otherwise known as the Philippine Teachers Professionalization Act of 1994 and paragraph (a), section 6, P.D. No. 223, as amended, required the Board for Professional Teachers to adopt the Code of Ethics for Professional (Public School) Teachers.
Article VIII (The Teachers and the Learners) Section 2 of the Code of Ethics for Professional (Public School) Teachers states that:
“A teacher shall recognize that the interest and welfare of learners are of first and foremost concern and shall deal justifiably and impartially with each of them.”
Moreover, Section 8 of the Department of Education (DepEd) Order No. 40 series 2012 known as “Child Protection Policy” reminds the teachers of their Duties and Responsibilities over the children under their supervision, instruction, and custody. Considering that everyone is entitled to human rights, a person should treat and be treated with equality and fairness. This implies that no matter what the race, color, gender, language, religion, political, national, or social origin and/or socio -economic status is, people must be given an equal opportunity to enjoy the fundamental rights of living in a decent and a harmonious environment.
This study aimed to determine the degree of emotional labor being experienced by the teachers at Sta. Anastacia Elementary School in terms of level of compliance with the Article 4 of Code of Ethics and Section 8 of Child Protection Policy. This study also proposed emotion regulation strategies to mitigate the negative consequences of emotional labor.
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