develop surveys and questionnaires to solicitfeedback from their students, keep reflectivejournals, engage in highly structured peer obser-vations with other student teachers, presentexamples of student work using a range of proto-cols, and work systematically with videotapes oftheir classrooms.We emphasize that teachers must becomeskilled at learning from the predicaments andcircumstances of practice. I often find myselfparaphrasing James Hiebert to my students:“Teachers are not always learning. Often it takesall of their energy just to get through the day.But all teachers learn some of the time, andsome teachers learn much of the time” (Hiebert,Gallimore, & Stigler, 2002, p. 3). Our goal is tohelp our beginning teachers become thoseteachers who have the state of mind and con-comitant skills to learn “much of the time.”THE CHALLENGE OF EMOTIONAL DRAMAAs my graduates march across the stage, Ithink back toward our first meetings togetherlast summer. Those first sessions are a brew ofintense emotion and anticipation. My studentteachers articulate a range of compelling aspira-tions that describe what motivated their desireto teach: “I believe that teachers can change thelife trajectory of children.” “I want students tolove English and find magic in the study of writ-ing.” “I believe teaching and education is wherewe can do civil rights activism today.” By andlarge, my student teachers describe a deep andabiding belief that as teachers-to-be, they havebeen called to join the ranks of teachers becausethey believe it is what Hargreaves and Fullan(1998) described as a “passionate vocation.”They have come to our program to express thispassion: a passion for children, for subject, andfor making a difference. Passion by its nature iscombustible. It connotes fervor, zeal, and anemotional energy that can sometimes manifestas raw, chaotic, and impulsive.Understanding, negotiating, and monitoringthe intense emotionality of teaching is a pri-mary dimension of beginning to teach(Bullough & Draper, 2004). Hargreaves andFullan (1998) rightly framed the issue as teach-ing “draws on every ounce of emotion teachershave.” Classrooms, in particular, are awash inemotional energy and teachers must employ arange of “emotional intelligences” that includediscerning one’s emotional makeup, readingemotional cues, responding to charged emo-tional situations, monitoring our own fluidemotional cartography, and managing the emo-tions of others (Goleman, 1995). The inner jour-ney novice teachers experience is especiallyintense, conflicting, dynamic, and fragile. In theend-of-year reflections all beginning teacherswrite, the most common phrase is some versionof “an emotional roller coaster.” Helping stu-dent teachers negotiate the zig and zag of theiremotions, contend with the emotional lives oftheir students, and understand how what ishappening inside of them shapes how theyteach and how their own students perceivethem is a critical element of supporting our newteachers.In working with this dimension of their expe-rience, I am aware that my beginning teachersoften view the challenge differently, and I feelbuffeted by their wildly discordant needs. Onone hand, I can palpably feel them lookingtoward me. “OK Sam, I’m ready. Hand over therulebook.” And as our year together progresses,versions of this refrain emerge: “When will youand our mentor teachers stop hoarding theoperating manual?” I empathize with this senti-ment. When I first began my high school teach-ing career, I remember looking hungrily at thelesson plan books of my veteran colleagueswith starving eyes, “If I only had their lessonplans, I could make a difference with thesekids.” Resisting their desire to speak and thinkabout teaching as a series of skills and tech-niques that need only be applied correctly is animportant element of working with my studentteachers. Because they begin teaching with suchrobust beliefs, they become frustrated andimpatient with their inability to “transformlives” or consistently “stir imaginative conver-sation.” As I watch them encounter these frus-trations, I hear them process it as a failure of theright method or technique. Their sensibilityaptly describes the general ethos of the profes-sion. Contending with the personal and emo-tional layers of teaching falls outside the234 Journal of Teacher Education, Vol. 57, No. 3, May/June 2006