Alternatives to Anger

As a middle school teacher (or any adult that consistently works with teenagers) you realize that they know how to push your buttons. My first reaction is to pull out my angry eyes and try to intimidate them with my "authority." Often, this works well enough, other times, they throw it back in my face with a mocking smile or laugh. In addition, I typically feel a sour taste in my mouth or a twist in my stomach as I revisit those encounters afterwards.

When I have been in the good presence of mind, I have found that these methods work better:

• Crazy but possible alternatives (Fine--if you don't want to finish the test, I'll just call your mother and she can come in to sit with you while you take this test.)
• Blank stare, often with a finger pointing to what they need to be doing (The key to this working is saying NOTHING and patience--show that you can outwait them. However, the waiting can't last too long, or else the stare is rendered ineffective. You need to employ another tactic at this point.)
• Laugh & joke (Hah--take a test? Posh, why would you need to do that? <smile> Now get over there and get on with it!)
• Use pressure of peers (Everyone's waiting on you...can we get started, please?)

Sorry, parents, invoking the "I'll call your parents" doesn't work as well for you. Perhaps the "We'll see what your dad/mom have to say about that" works okay.

These are some of my suggestions. What do you do to manage button-pushing teenagers?

Being the People Who Understand

I want to be the kind of person who understands. Someone who can look at all sides of an issue and realize that my way is not the only right way. I realized today, as I helped in a teacher's classroom, that there are people who understand and people who don't. Allow me to explain.

As the end of the term approaches, the life of a teacher gets chaotic. Between finishing units, grading papers, entering scores, and then grading and entering scores of late students, your time to teach is drastically reduced. And you tend to not like it. You also have administrators, classroom aides, and other teachers who are (just like you) working hard to make sure some students don't fail their classes. So it becomes a tense atmosphere around the school as adults try to not step on toes while achieving their purposes.

Today, a teacher came into the class I was in and asked, with five minutes remaining in class, if he could borrow a student. My classroom teacher become very prickly and insisted that her student was learning something so he would just have to come back later for the student. The teacher graciously apologized and quickly left. The rest of the story is that the kid wasn't really learning anything lasting--the teacher had thrown in a movie and asked me to to "wing it" and make the kids take notes or something for a quiz that they might have at the end of class but which, she had already told me, they wouldn't have time for, and which I knew would not end up on their grade or ever be reviewed again.

After class had ended, the teacher came back for the student and this time, apologized in a manner that I don't think anyone with good intentions should have to do. He was basically groveling before her, debasing himself, his actions and his intentions just so she wouldn't hold a grudge, be offended, and hold it against him. Which made me think inside "Bully for you!" for the visiting teacher. How humble this man was to apologize so freely and so sincerely, just so this teacher wouldn't get upset. And I also thought that it was a sad moment when two colleagues, on equal footing, can't communicate in a way that helps the child and which allows both adults to maintain the dignity they deserve.

So, thus the title of this post--Being the People Who Understand. May I be a person who would allow a teacher to enter my class, with very good intentions to help a student raise his grade, and graciously allow them to help that student. Especially when I know the content in my class isn't the best thing he could be doing right then.