A Culture OF Fear - I. What are some of your fears in the classroom? How have you dealt with them? What have you learned about yourself and about fear as a result?

Well I think we all have our own fears as a consequence to different factors and experiences that have affected our lives.

In fact, when I'm teaching I face some fears for example failing to motivate students during lessons. Usually my students are bored and are very passive in the classroom,  they don’t not like to speak, or  to express their feelings or ideas, so  in every class I face the challenge of providing creative lessons to pique their  interest. However, if I see them with no direction, lack of motivation and lack of engage with their own learning, I face the fear that I'm failing as a teacher.

Sometimes I face fear when students do not respect me or show undisciplined actions because they feel I am too young to be a real teacher and I lost the control during activities. Also, my lack of experience as a teacher makes me feel unconfident when I do my job as a teacher.

To deal with my fears, I try to learn from each new experience to evaluate my actions and learn from my mistakes in order to overcome the difficulties.

Although fear is a natural feeling to some extent, I try to control my emotions contrary I could lose control of the situation and I could fail to meet my goals effectively.

I have learned to understand my own fears to overcome them. Because despite the short time of working in a classroom I have realized that sometimes my fears stem from my lack of preparation or lack of confident. But even those fears have helped me to learn and grow, because if I do not able to deal with my own fears much less I could help my students deal with theirs.

If we fail to deal with our fears we might not be able to effectively advance in the teaching-learning process because it could  be a barrier between teacher and students and between the subject.