There are times when teaching, despite how rewarding it can be, is an extraordinarily frustrating experience. It can be time-consuming and difficult to do well, and even the best students do not always appreciate the hard work teachers put into their assignments and activities. Teachers are sometimes swamped with resource limitations that make it difficult to achieve their learning outcomes, and even on their best days, they do not reach all the students they hope to reach. Plus, despite their best efforts, their innovative and grand plans for teaching do not always work, leaving them frustrated.
As a psychologist who researches anger, I routinely come across people who feel that anger is a purely negative emotion. That, however, isn’t true. In fact, anger is usually a valuable emotional experience, as it alerts people to problems and energizes them to confront those problems (Deffenbacher 1996). In this chapter, I will draw upon my research on anger and my experiences as a college teacher of psychology to explore the reasons teachers become angry, the meaning of that anger, and how teachers can use the experience to motivate students and themselves toward better learning outcomes.
