How Do We Prepare Teachers for the Stresses of the Teaching Profession?

Greater awareness.  Plain and simple.  Students planning to become teachers must have a greater awareness of both what that job entails and their own motivations for teaching.  What are the stresses of teaching?  Do I really want to teach, considering all these pressures?  Why do I want to do this in the first place.  Too often teachers enter the teaching profession either unaware of what that means or without self-honesty, and those are the fifty percent who change professions in less than three years.  Of that fifty percent, a good portion probably never should have been teacher, whereas others might simply have been shocked and overwhelmed by what they found.  How do we prevent this shock?  More classroom observation, more student teaching, and self-evaluations reflecting on motivations.  How do we encourage resilience?  Experience.  Experience.  Experience.  Only through experience in the classroom, first in moderation and then with greater intensity, will students develop the capacity to deal with the pressures of teaching.  Mere enthusiasm and intelligence are not enough to develop mental resiliency.  Students must question their passion to make it stronger.  And they must do so before they even enter the profession if they are to last as teachers.