This has been a challenging year for me in the classroom. My classes, as do most at our 100% free lunch school, always have a considerable number of students facing multiple difficult challenges, but this year the number and severity was noticeably larger than usual.

I’ll go into it more in-depth in a post after the school year is done in two weeks and I have a little more distance. However, I read a short article today that shared some wisdom that I hope to carry into these final two weeks and beyond.

I pride myself at being very patient, not being reactive, and being able to “get over” things quickly, but I’ve become a bit worn down by the classroom challenges of this year, and have sometimes not done a good job of not letting my sense of feeling frustrated at one student or class spill over to how I treat other students and other classes.

I’ve previously posted some ways I deal with these issues at What Do You Do When You’re Having A Bad Day At School?

Today, I read a useful short article titled Keep Calm & Carry On.

The author offered two suggestions on how to move beyond feeling frustrated that I think are helpful. Here’s one:

Mr. Loehr was describing something he had observed in the best tennis players – namely that they were meticulous about renewing themselves in the 20 to 30 seconds between points. The first thing these players did when a point ended was to turn away from the net. I loved the metaphor: Turn away from the net. Let it go.

When I’m feeling frustrated, I try to become more conscious of my breathing and slow down, but it’s sometimes hard to remember. I think this metaphor of “turning away from the net” could an effective reminder.

Here’s his other idea related to Adam Grant (see my previous posts about his work here). Grant’s research suggests a simple, and not new, idea:

…that people who give without expecting anything in return actually turn out not only to feel better for having done so, but also to be more successful. Giving, Mr. Grant explains, does not require extraordinary acts of sacrifice. It simply involves a focus on acting in the interests of others.

The author of the article, Tony Schwartz, describes feeling frustrated in an airport and applying Grant’s research by asking people how they were doing, hearing one person respond “I need a cup of coffee,” and then just going to get one for her.

I’m wondering if I could get into that kind of pattern — anytime I have a frustrating experience with a student or class, get into the habit of intentionally doing something “nice” (and out of the ordinary kind of “nice”) for another student or another class? It could be simple — for example, if I see that a student is not feeling well and has been getting up and getting facial tissue from the box in front, I could just bring the box to him/her once and ask if they needed one. Just a thought….

What are your strategies for “keeping calm and carrying on”?

I wrote a post a couple of years ago titled Emphasizing What Students Can Do, Instead Of What They “Can’t” and have since elaborated on it in my books and in an article at ASCD, Eight Things Skilled Teachers Think, Say, and Do.

As I said in that original post:

For example, if a student asks to go the restroom, but I think the timing is not right for our lesson, I’ll respond, “Yes, you can. I just need to have you wait for a few minutes” instead of just saying, “No.” Or I’ll start off field trip instructions by saying what students can do, instead of what they can’t.

Marvin Marshall, who inspired that original post, has now written another one that is somewhat related and is worth reading. It’s titled Use Contingencies, not Consequences, to Discipline.

You’ll want to read the entire piece, but here’s an excerpt:

A more effective discipline approach than imposing consequences is to use contingencies because they paint positive pictures and empower. Contingencies prompt people to feel better, not worse.

Here is what a contingency sounds like: “Yes, you may do that, as long as you first do this.”

And here is an actual example: “Yes, you may go to the park, as long as your room is clean.”

I’ve found that these positive approaches are generally much more effective than alternatives.

The challenge, of course, is remember and having the patience and self-awareness to use them “in the moment”…..

Photo Credit: Tambako The Jaguar via Compfight

An old community organizing adage goes like this:

“Sometimes the only thing worse than losing a fight is winning one.”

In organizing, that can mean your group gave so much to an issue campaign that you’re left with burnt-out leaders and a hollowed-out organization, or perhaps you burned too many bridges with potential allies along the way (it could mean many other things, too).

I was reminded of this saying when I overheard a teacher commenting that he “never let a student have the last word.”

The vast majority of the time, I don’t believe a teacher can ever truly “win” any kind of power struggle with a student. The teacher may “win” in the short-term, but the relational toxicity left behind will be long-lasting. Learning struggles and classroom management problems are likely to escalate and continue.

Dr. William Glasser suggests that most classroom management problems relate to students’ needs for power and freedom. Instead of getting sucked into power struggles with students, perhaps we should spend more time helping them feel and be powerful.

In addition to that last link, you might want to read my article, Eight Things Skilled Teachers Think, Say, and Do, to get more related classroom ideas, and/or my books.