Teachers may also experience personal crises in their lives which interfere with their classroom performance. Sensitive supervisors respond to teachers' anxiety and problems by providing emotional support and reassurance. In carrying out these functions, the supervisor actually takes on the role as a counselor, which is not the major focus of their clinical supervision objectives. Another form of counseling the clinical supervisor seems to be swayed into is providing career decisions to teachers who feel that they are not successful in the school setting. Instead of providing the teachers with means of improving their educational objectives, supervisors are spending time giving out suggestions related to career decisions.
Teachers sometimes ask their supervisors for advice about curriculum materials they are using.
Supervision in the form of curriculum support can be very helpful to the teacher, but it should not be equated with clinical supervision. In order for clinical supervision to be beneficial for teachers, supervisors must be trained and highly knowledgeable in the area of clinical supervision itself. Unfortunately, clinical supervision is not an area which can be learned overnight, it takes many years of quality practice in order to fully understand its educational objectives. With all the other responsibilities of a principal today, it may be hard to convince districts that this time consuming form of supervision is truly beneficial. Although a major goal of clinical supervision is cooperation between the supervisor and the teacher, a concern of teachers is that the conferences can be too authoritative.