Putting Your Reactions To Rest

There are hundreds of decisions made by the teacher every school day.

Allthese decisions have an impact on those in the classroom. Restraint

is important in making good teaching decisions. Teachers can improve

their decisions in the classroom by increasing their restraint of their

own anger to students’ negative reactions. The learning atmosphere in a

classroom can be exciting and motivating when the leader is a good model

of behavioral restraint. Restraint is a modeled skill that teaches the

students how to handle many types of social situations.

Restraint is a pre-existing decision, made by the teacher, to act as

an’enlightened one’ during any classroom encounter. This decision

includes conquering the urge of reacting with anger to students’

negative responses. The teacher decides to respond to the students

according to the ‘Platinum Rule’. This rule is to treat others as they

want to be treated. When a teacher treats students the way that they

want to be treated students’ hidden needs can be fulfilled and learning

encouraged. Students’ need for learning is often unreached because of

unmet personal and social needs. Such needs are love, self-worth and

confidence in self. To help those who perceive learning as less

important than their unfulfilled

needs, teachers might try any of the following:

* Have a 90 second talk with each student each week. Listen for the

student’s unfulfilled needs. Once the need becomes known, teach the

student how to ask others to help them satisfy this need. Resource

people, such as school psychologist or school counselor, can give the

teacher ideas of

how to help.

* Respond to unusual negative reactions, by students, with an

absence of personal affect. Don’t take the students’ reactions

personally, but take them as reactions in search of fulfilling a need.

This restraint will release the teacher to respond to the students’

needs before responding to their actions.

* Tell the truth to the students in advance. Consequences for

inappropriate and appropriate behavior should be explained in

advance.Consequences should reflect the teacher’s objective of peace in

the classroom. Consequences for appropriate classroom behavior should

be emphasized.

* Immediately prior to administering consequences to the

student, the teacher could tell a scenario where the worst happened or

best happened when another student chose to react negatively or

respond positively

in a similar situation. Humor could be appropriate in the scenario.

Enlightened teachers help their students through weakness to

power, through danger to security, through indifference to love, and

through resentment to forgiveness. Teachers put their reactions to rest

when they show restraint through responding to student need’s first and

then to their actions.

– Randy Brister