Julia G Thompson Power struggles between teachers and students are among the most common discipline issues that educators must learn to manage effectively. No matter how many years you have been a teacher or how mature and capable your students are, unless you are vigilant, attentive, and prepared, classroom power struggles can negatively dominate the discipline climate for both you and your students. In a classroom where students and teachers engage in continual struggles for power and influence, no one wins. Instead of a productive, effective, pleasant learning environment, an unpredictable and unpleasant atmosphere will make it difficult for you to teach and for your students to achieve academic and behavioural success. One of the first steps that you can take to successfully manage this problem is to be aware of the various forms that classroom power struggles can assume. Although students who want to engage in power struggles with the adults in their lives can appear in many different guises, there are some ways that teachers can find easier to recognize than others. The defiant student who is openly confrontational, oppositional, and rude. The student who can do well in school, but who chooses not to. The student who too frequently asks to leave the room. The student who has perfected the fine art of eye rolling when you give directions. The student who is consistently tardy to class. The class clown who disrupts the flow of instruction with attention-grabbing comments. The passively aggressive student who consistently “forgets” materials or completed work. The disrespectful student who somehow manages to be rude but enough not to be referred to the office. The student who says unkind things about you or about the class behind your back. The student who complies with your directions but at a deliberately slow pace. Don’t delay action when you suspect a power struggle Sometimes the frustration, stress, and misery caused by a student who wants to engage you in a power struggle may make intervention appear not worth the trouble. After all, unlike some discipline problems, often power struggles build slowly and require long-term solutions. Many teachers find it easy to adopt defensive attitudes such as, “As long as he’s sleeping, he’s not bothering anyone”, and perhaps these: I can’t change this student’s behaviour no matter what I do. Only five more minutes of class left… I can’t change her anyway. Why even try? It’s near the end of the term. Soon this will be another teacher’s problem. If the

Meeta Sengupta “Even if you are right, what will you gain by annoying the school? You want your child to stay there, don’t you? Then don’t say anything – your child is with them half the day.” I cannot have been the only parent to receive this advice. Level headed though it was, it made me cringe. How do I state my case, how do I fix the problem if I cannot talk to the school directly? Parents worry about approaching the school to talk about problems they have with the school. Some of their worry perhaps stems from a fear of authority that schools represent. But much of it comes from the struggle to find the right approach or the right platform or even person with whom one can have a constructive conversation. And this happens both ways. Teachers too struggle to share tough news with parents. How do you tell parents that their child is annoying, uncooperative, and unreliable? How does one have tough conversations without the other side getting defensive – because once that happens it is war? The parent-school relationship is often adversarial, when ideally they should be part of the same team. Both sides want the same thing, don’t they? Both want the student to do well. The only difference is that parents often only care about their own children and schools are supposed to care about every child – but in reality they care only about students who bring them laurels or are troublesome. Most schools and parents have realized that it is best to work together, each supporting the other towards greater achievement. There are some rare exceptions where schools partner brilliantly with parents and they stand as beacons to others. But often, one has to wonder if all is right in this relationship which should be based on mutual respect. The school to parent engagement is not a relationship of equals. Parents often feel powerless in their dealings with schools, even as schools often feel pressured by parents. Parents rarely claim their rights as customers and schools certainly do not behave as vendors (nor should they). There is no doubt that schools are in the driving seat here – it is the school that decides what time the family will wake up, how much the child will write in a notebook, what holidays are really holidays and so much more. Schools and teachers exercise a power over parents and students that often feels disproportionate. Students, in this