Jose Vilson included a graph of new teacher attitudes towards teaching in their first year on his insightful blog about teaching in the inner city. I have seen this graph played out by the first teacher that I was a university supervisor for last year. She started out great. Her attitude took a nose dive as she got some late registering students.
She struggled through Oct. and Nov. then right before winter break, I could tell she was going to make it. I am not exactly sure what it was that told me she was going to be able to be a great teacher in our high needs inner city school but, I could tell. She started laughing again, and maintaining a guarded optimism that seems to be one of the key ingredients to success in our school. Here is the graph. I also have a copy that I showed my former student teacher in Nov. just to give her some perspective. Maybe it helped.