Teaching scared: pre-service teacher appraisals of racial stress, socialization and classroom management self-efficacy

The fears of pre-service teachers, particularly Teach for America (TFA) teachers. about working in urban classroom settings are framed as racial stress. Racial stress is the threat of well-being when one is unprepared to negotiate a race-related interpersonal encounter. Currently, there exist no measures on racial stress, socialization, and coping for teachers of African American and Latino students. Findings reveal that newly developed and reliable measures of teacher appraisal of racial/ethnic stressful interactions, socialization and coping are related to classroom management self-efficacy and school collegial racial conversations. These findings have implications for racial stress management as key to developing high quality teacher-student relationships.