As a first year teacher I wish someone had come to me with this phrase, Respond not React. Challenging situations will arise but one must always slow down, breathe and with calm in your heart respond. I was not good at this for many years within my classroom walls, often letting students get me frustrated and reacting outwardly in this fashion. Students win when they get the best of you. They will try to get you flustered and angry to see if they can "get your goat." I have lost many goats over the years.
About ten years ago, well into my teaching career, I began to mediate and find ways to focus my frustrations down to a pin point where they could be dispersed rather than consume me. This is not to say that I never get upset or flustered in class, but being flexible and accepting of all opinions has allowed me to let things go more quickly than I often do in other situations. I stop, breathe, count to 4, smile (always smile) and refocus my energy.
I say to myself, these are 12-13 year old children. They often get frustrated and upset just as I do. They all have situations that may cause them to lash out or overreact or cry or even shut down, just as I do. It is my responsibility to determine why? It is my role as facilitator to ask questions and determine why they are frustrated in class, is the lesson too challenging or are they not trying hard enough, is the classroom dynamic causing some students to feel under valued or unrecognized? Most importantly, what can I do to help alleviate this? What needs to be done to rekindle the harmony?
I have done everything possible to create a well-balanced, student-centered, flexible, safe, authentic and active learning environment for every student. I have discovered the strengths of this and the weaknesses. The strengths are student choice and freedom and independence. Students feel they have a voice and own their own learning and behavior. A weakness though can be that some students need more guidance and redirection and rules to help focus them on their daily quest. This balance is what I as a teacher, seek to find on a daily basis.
I do not step in to help resolve every situation, I let them find the right solution. Most of the time they do with little fuss or upheaval. I model for my students daily that listening skills promote trust and respect. To think before you speak. To seek the positive rather than focus on the negative. Everything we encounter is a learning possibility if we choose to make it one. I model this by allowing for freedom of respectful opinions and ideas. If I do not agree, I ask many questions to try and understand their point of view. But I actively listen and seek new ways to challenge myself and my students.
If we respond with respectful words, "I hear what you are saying, however I disagree because." "Thank you for that feed back I appreciate your ideas, however I believe..", then we are responding not reacting. I model positive feed back and together as a class, we may fail and have to have conversations to reinforce this ideal, but after 4 weeks of school, my classes have very little behavior problems because we model for each other how to respond and not react, to find the calm, and to work collaboratively towards our classroom "community" goals.
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