A cool me for a cool them
Sheela Ramakrishnan
Several incidents came to mind while I was thinking about a disruptive classroom and the demands on an educator to handle such situations efficiently.
The first was an image of me as a grade 7 student (several decades ago)! Our regular math teacher was on maternity leave and we had a substitute. Explaining her classroom management skills is impossible – it was hugely comical. I was guilty of creeping up to her desk behind her back, while she was surrounded by students who were waiting to get their work checked. Not only did I just creep behind her back, I also made a neat circle at the back of her head with the chalk powder that was freely available on the ledge of the blackboard! So noisy was the class and so unaware was she of her surroundings, that she had no idea that a neat moon had grown on her crown!
What happened later is another story. One of my classmates tattled to my class teacher. She gave me a dressing down and I was petrified that she would inform my parents. But days passed into weeks and I was relieved that the matter did not reach home. My report for the term came, I had done well. My father with a wicked smile on his face said, “This is fine, but you must learn how to behave in class!” I was stunned. Not only did he know, but my class teacher had obviously kept him informed about the humour of the situation and not to take me to task.
Circa to when I became an educator for the first time, handling a group of kindergarten babies. In those days, threats were quite common to keep a class under your thumb. (I know much better now) I threatened a little fellow that I would lock him in the rabbit hutch the school had, if he did not sit in his place. Imagine my shock, when I was summoned to the principal’s office the next morning to see the parents of the child there! They had been told by my little poppet that I had actually locked him up in the cage and the rabbits were jumping all over him and he was terrified and couldn’t sleep at night! I was lucky that my principal knew better and understood that I had not actually done the deed, and also that young children have active imaginations.
Photos: Sakti Prasanna Mohanty. Courtesy: DAV Public School, Pokhariput
Today, when I look back with the wisdom and experience of being an educator for almost forty years, I can see many things at play here. Educators need to command respect, not demand it. Humour can sometimes be found in the most unexpected situations. My class teacher, in her infinite wisdom, saved her colleague from embarrassment, by dragging me up to apologize. In her own way, she had kept the channel to discipline open. My father obviously understood the comical situation and chose the right moment to reprimand me! My principal, in turn, understood the situation and handled it wisely. That was probably the last time I ever issued a threat that I could not carry out.
Various reasons can disrupt a class and the onus of handling it in the most efficient manner, rests on the wiser between students and educator. No prizes for guessing who!
Before I delve into the strategies on how to handle disruptions, I would like to draw attention to the fact that while some are one size fits all, most of them are age or level-appropriate.
Let us understand the causes of disruption at various stages and then move to how to manage the situation and ourselves.
Foundational years: causes could range from
- Separation anxiety
- Physical discomfort
- Fear of new adults
- Poor social skills
- Specific learning challenges
What can we do?
- Reassure to prevent meltdowns: Simple reassurance in a warm and compassionate tone saying that you are there for them and you will look after the situation, will help prevent a huge meltdowns that can spread to other children too.
- Look for the cause not the symptom: Sometimes what we see and what the child is trying to tell us, needs close attention and observation. Treating symptoms does not help in the long term. It’s important to address the root of the issue. For e.g., a child fears going to the washroom: is naturally uncomfortable and starts crying. Is it only because the child needs to use the washroom or could it be a case of something that happened in the washroom – either at home or at school – due to which the fear has set in?
- Check if the child is hungry, or wants to use the washroom, or has an ache somewhere: These are standard physical needs that can disturb a child in the early years. Find out if the child has been abused in any way. Report immediately if so.
- Observe for social interactions: Children’s interactions with peers and adults can reveal a lot about their state of mind. Children who tend to be on their own, beyond normal levels, will need special attention to examine the cause.
- Provide positive reinforcement wherever possible: Sometimes that’s all it takes to draw out young children. We say success breeds success. Similarly, feeling good about oneself makes for healthy individuals. Do not lose any opportunity to praise or ‘catch a child doing good” and praise and encourage publicly.
- Watch for a week for any change after your intervention: In case you have used any of the strategies. Watch for changes to begin showing.
- If all fails, take a deep breath, involve parents and work as partners: Since the child is ultimately the parents’ responsibility, make them your partners in helping the child. Speak to them, ensure confidentiality and find out what’s happening at home. Then design a workaround together in the interest of the child.
Primary years: being a little more grown up, issues can be
- Body shaming
- Bullying
- Lack of engagement in class
- Physical discomfort or challenge
- Unhealthy home environment
- Lack of attention
- Introduction to a new environment
- Excess screen time
- Inability to cope with class or be higher than the grade level
- Birth of a sibling or bereavement in the family
- Composition of family setup (single, separated, divorced, living with grandparents, adopted)
These are impressionable years, where awareness is certainly higher, but not sufficient to manage themselves completely.
- Bullying and body shaming (too short, too tall, too fat, too thin, some other impairment), in my experience, are the most common issues for a child to feel low and therefore seek attention in any way possible. This can take on the form of aggression as retaliation too. Here, both sets of kids require remediation. Again the same strategy of treating the cause and not the symptom applies. Bullies are often the victim of bullying themselves in another situation and they take it out when they have a chance. Maybe he or she is beaten at home as a form of discipline and so feels it’s normal to bully their fears their juniors.
- This is usually when a second child is in the family, or the child may have lost a grandparent, so your student feels neglected and unimportant. Be aware of these dynamics and give the child enough feel-good boosters to prevent disruptive and attention-seeking behaviour.
- This is the time when children get hooked to digital forms of entertainment. While it is difficult for educators to regulate what happens at home, lack of focus and inability to remain attentive to the task on hand are some of the signs that the child could be addicted to the screen. Violent vocabulary and actions and frequent usage of dialogues from screen shows are also signs to watch out for.
- Not being able to perform to grade-level expectations or not feeling valued and loved enough, leads to low self-esteem. Children often seek to distract the class and test the boundaries of their teachers or parents by engaging in behaviour that can be frustrating. It is important at this time to show the child that he/she does not have the power to get under your skin. Remain super calm, however difficult it is! Breathe, breathe, breathe, and breathe again before giving any response. This is where the mindfulness activities mentioned later in this article will help you.
Middle and high school years
With bursting hormones and the need to assert their independence and identity, coupled with academic pressures, these years can present enormous opportunities for learning, both for parents as well as for educators. Some of these outlined below may sound familiar and there will be more for you to add!
- Body image
- Peer pressure
- Teen hormones
- Sexual awareness
- Lack of class engagement
- Bullying
- Fear of rejection or not belonging
- Examination pressure
- Sleep and appetite issues
- Excess screen time
- Loneliness
- Home issues
- Comparisons/self-esteem issues
- Career pressures mismatched with abilities
- Relationship issues with opposite or same gender
- New environment and peers
As experienced educators, you will be quite aware that this list is not exhaustive. At no given moment can one say exactly what is going on in a student’s mind and what makes him/her behave in a disruptive manner. Each life stage is sensitive and can have lasting impressions on their minds if not handled compassionately, yet firmly.
Of these, the ones that educators have to deal with most frequently have to do with sexual awareness, screen time, peer pressure, and academic expectations. These years also present the highest challenge in working with parents as partners, as parents’ expectations most often are disproportionate to the abilities and interests of the child. There is denial on the parents’ part and everything then becomes a vicious cycle. Nipping issues in the bud is the golden rule to follow. Do not let matters escalate till they get under your skin.
There is no readymade formula for handling parents’ anxiety about their child’s future. In a country where education is the means to a living, it is but natural for them to worry, in case the child needs to take the road less travelled. Exposing parents and children to new-age careers to impress upon them that there are several routes to a successful future. It will also help to bring down the number of suicides that happen due to children feeling a sense of failure.
It is also important to accept that at this age, sexual awareness heightens and an interest in either the opposite or sometimes the same gender can be seen, and that this is normal and natural. Sex education classes and responsible and respectful behaviour towards each other should be conducted compulsorily from grade 5 or 6 onwards. Waiting, or procrastinating, or skirting around the subject only attracts the risk of children being misinformed or turning to unhealthy digital stimuli. The concept of digital citizenship should form part of the curriculum. The internet is not just for entertainment, but also a productive responsible means to do good to the community at large.
It is important for a student at any level to know that the adult is in command and control…. Not in an authoritative way but in a reassuring way. They need to know that you have their back and will see them through the disruptive phase. You need to be able to earn that trust.
Humour is a great weapon that we most often miss. As educators, we tend to take ourselves very seriously. Humour can diffuse many a situation in the classroom and in fact serve to build relationships with the students.
As children grow, it is good for both student and educator to work as partners too. Seek students’ inputs, let them work out consequences, allow them to frame rules… more likely that something they have participated in making will not be broken too soon.
And above all, model the behaviour you expect your students to follow. If raising your voice is your means to discipline, then students too will normalize it. If anger is a weapon you use to control rather than reasoning, then students grow up learning that anger is alright to use. This again is a vicious cycle. So role modelling, even when you feel your worst, is what will stand in good stead.
While it is natural for educators to get frustrated and be at a loss sometimes, it is important to accept that this is normal and believe that it can be handled with a little effort. Teaching young children is no mean task – it takes a lot to do one’s best. It can be physically, emotionally, and psychologically stimulating as well as draining. Balancing one’s relationship with all stakeholders in the ecosystem is a tightrope walk that needs you to be on your feet all the time. Add to that family responsibilities and demands – a perfect cocktail that can get heady sometimes. The rest of the world may say that it’s a cakewalk with paid vacations, but how much of a cakewalk it is, was made amply clear during COVID-19. Parents, for the first time, began to look at this profession with different eyes. Managing one or two children at home was a task for them, and they began to wonder and appreciate how educators managed 30 and 40, not even their own!
So let us not feel guilty about self-care. For it is self-care that will give us the resilience to manage those blips in the classroom..
Here are some self-care tips that are common to all in the profession and will come in handy during those frustrating moments that we all continue to face. Hence, preparation is the key!
- Get some ‘me time’ every day: Most of us tend to get so absorbed in our daily demands and routines, that we miss giving time to the most important person in our lives – ourselves! Whatever be the circumstances, carve out a little time, without any guilt, where no one is allowed to disturb you. You may feel guilty at first, the family may find it odd, but ignore it and learn to enjoy those moments with yourself.
- Learn to say ‘no’ even to close ones if it is too much for you: Stretching far beyond what we feel comfortable with to please others can lead to suppressed frustration. This boils and spills over at the last straw trigger, which could be that disruptive class or child. Hence, learning not to bite more than one can chew can only happen when we are able to say ‘no’ to demands that stretch our limits in any way.
- Eat healthy, stay fit: This aspect does not need any elaboration. Teaching is a demanding and tiring job and it requires us to be fit at all levels – physically, emotionally, and psychologically. We need to work on all three aspects to be on the top of our game.
- Learn to prioritize your time: Sort out tasks into each of these four quadrants in order of importance. A) Urgent and important B) Urgent but not important C) Important, but not urgent D) Not urgent not important. Once we classify our tasks in this manner, managing our time becomes easier and more effective.
- Prioritize activities that promote mindfulness: Mandala colouring, breathing exercises, yoga, meditation, and such. This is an extremely important part of building resilience for the workplace. Mindfulness activities help us build focus and calm, and when done regularly and systematically, can transform us for the better. In turn, we are able to cope with the stressors around us with much less effort and heart ache.
- Do one thing that you deeply enjoy every day: Self-love is an important part of self-care. We can give happiness to others only if we have it ourselves. Hence, make yourself happy by doing something everyday that you truly enjoy. This is different from ‘me time’. Me time could be reflective, but happy time is doing time. It could be tending to a plant, listening to your favourite song, reading a few pages of a book, singing, meeting, or talking to friends, playing with your pet, going for a walk, watching tv, cooking, … just about anything, provided you enjoy it and it makes you deeply happy.
- While it may be difficult not to bring work home, set aside a fixed time to switch on and switch off: Keep a fixed time for work-from-home activities. Keep your boundaries well-defined and do not let one run into the other.
- Set aside some time every month to upgrade yourself professionally: Professional upgradation through reading or attending sessions (virtual or physical) doing a short course improves our knowledge of our vocation and also provides new strategies to deal with new situations in this dynamic scenario. Staying current and updated is also one of the ways to improve thinking on our feet. Knowledge and skills together make a powerful combination
The world is changing rapidly. Our children live in a world dominated by technology. They no longer need the educator for knowledge as Google baba serves the role very well. They need us educators to make them better human beings and citizens for the future. Hence, our ways and methods of conducting ourselves in the classroom also need to change. Authority with understanding, assertiveness instead of aggression, compassion without judgement will help us build bridges with our students more effectively. We cannot hope to shape the tomorrow of today’s children using ways that we used yesterday! The change lies in each one of us.
Sheela Ramakrishnan is an educational consultant, an author of four series of textbooks published by the Oxford University Press and a counsellor for emotional wellbeing. She has spent more than four decades for the cause of education. She can be reached at sheelaforlearn@gmail.com.
