Professional Learning for Busy Educators

Children have such different ways of responding to being over-stressed. Some get physically ill. Some get nervous and anxious. Some become manic and hyperactive. Some have trouble going to sleep and others don’t want to do anything but sleep. Some won’t say a word and others won’t stop talking. Some become emotionally volatile and some shut down. Some get clingy and others become distant. Some can’t focus on anything and others have problems with hyper-focus. And some kids get very angry and aggressive.

 

What all these children have in common is that they behave in a characteristic way when they are over-stressed: what becomes a sort of patterned response. But what markedly distinguishes between them, is how we react.

When Grace Dearborn started her career teaching high school students, she felt confident about how to teach but unprepared for managing behavior in her classroom. During more challenging disciplinary moments with students, she used her angry voice with them, thinking that would work. Instead, on one occasion, an escalated situation led to a student following her around the classroom for 15 minutes while she was teaching until security could come to escort the student out of the class.

It wasn’t until a few years into her job that a colleague saw how she was communicating with her students and suggested a different approach. Dearborn’s colleague noticed that she couldn’t keep frustration out of her voice and body language when she was having disciplinary moments with her students, which only heightened the tension. When her mentor teacher saw what was happening, she told Grace to soften the muscles around her eyes — as opposed to creating tension when furrowing your eyebrows. She said that keeping the muscles around the eyes completely neutral will soften any harsh tones in your voice.

"Childhood — and parenting — have radically changed in the past few decades, to the point where far more children today struggle to manage their behavior.

That's the argument Katherine Reynolds Lewis makes in her new parenting book, The Good News About Bad Behavior.

"We face a crisis of self-regulation," Lewis writes. And by "we," she means parents and teachers who struggle daily with difficult behavior from the children in their lives.

Lewis, a journalist, certified parent educator and mother of three, asks why so many kids today are having trouble managing their behavior and emotions."

By addressing student behavior with compassion -- even when they're acting out -- teachers can find productive ways to get kids on task or engage in relationship-building.