How do you cope when you are not in relaxed and assured control of the class?
(Some teacher testimony)
Many teachers have to teach classes where they do not feel in completely relaxed and assured control and are not working at levels 9 and 10 of the scale (see Chapter 1). Many teachers acknowledged that they sometimes had groups where they did not enjoy their teaching. How did teachers respond to that situation? A variety of suggestions emerged
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Coping strategies |
| Change the format of the lesson
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‘I change the order of things. Do my ‘fun' starters at the end of the lesson instead of the beginning as a reward for being cooperative… being reasonable.'
(NQT) ‘With the worst groups I've stopped “classic” teaching in the sense of having some sort of exposition, oral introduction to the lesson. I don't talk at the start. When they come in, the activity will be on their desks and I will tell them to do it straightaway. Even with really tough groups, some of them will just get on with it, or will slump, heads down. This narrows down the number of kids you have to sort out. Then you work on them, by name, trying to cajole them, settle them down. And I try to have something planned as a reward for the end of the lesson… we'll finish with a video if….'
(NQT)
‘I used to resort to a series of worksheets, do-able tasks, fill in the missing words, things to keep them occupied. Now I'm more experienced I would probably do it differently, but then that was the only way I could get through the day.'
(Seven years in teaching)
‘If it's Thursday or Friday period 6, I have to make radical changes to my planning. There's a real difference in terms of what I can do with them and my planning has to take account of that. You just develop a better understanding of what school is like from their point of view. A lot of them have had enough, they don't want to be in your lesson they want to go home, they are looking forward to messing about with their friends and socialising. You've got to bust a gut to make it either really structured and purposeful, or try really hard to have something that might interest them, grab their attention, at least try and plan a bit of fun or interest into the lesson, even if that means going a bit all over the place in terms of content.'
(NQT)
(Several teachers mentioned using short extracts of a ‘watchable' video as a means of getting through the lesson with difficult groups).
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| ‘Keep going'
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‘I've learned that you have to take some things with a pinch of salt. With some groups you have to let some things go, just pick up on big things.'
(NQT in tough school)
‘With some groups I just plough on, just keep going unless there is a major atrocity. Sometimes they subside a bit when they realise that I'm not rising to it, that I'm just carrying on with the lesson, and they just put their heads down, slump over the desk. I know the theory is that they get worse and worse until they find out what your limit is but this doesn't seem the norm.'
(NQT in tough school)
‘I still ignore some things, you can't pick everything up, but this one thing – not talking when you're talking – that's a key one. But if you start “Where's your tie boy?”, “Put that gum in the bin now”, “You, stop banging that ruler”, “Stop swinging on your chair”, “Turn round now”… it's about priorities, the art of the possible, one step at a time.'
(Third year of teaching)
‘I learned to battle through. You have to let some things go… sometimes even some of the ground rules you've been trying to establish… because it's one of those days and you just do the best you can. You've got to keep going, don't stop, focus on the kids who are learning and complying even if there are not many of them.'
( Mentor ) |
| ‘Keep calm'
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‘It is important not to start getting narky with all of them just because you are under pressure. You've got to stay polite, calm and reasonable, even if you don't feel like that inside. You need the patience of a saint some days and you've got to be fairly thick-skinned… you mustn't take it personally.'
(NQT) ‘The biggest thing was just learning to keep calm under pressure. Don't let them wind you up. I learned it almost by accident when I went in one morning feeling really tired and not very well. I didn't give up, I didn't just let them do whatever, but I perhaps came across as a bit more relaxed and they didn't seem up for it as much.'
(Second year of teaching)
‘I know you're not supposed to do it but I would sometimes pop out for a minute… not far and with an excuse… but it sometimes just gave me chance to compose myself, to calm down, to gather my resources for another round.'
(Third year of teaching in a tough school)
‘I remember the Bill Rogers thing about dealing with the things you can control, not the things that you can't control. I try really hard to keep calm, even when provoked, I try hard not to let it get to me. You can make a mental effort not to get angry or upset or exasperated and that has helped me.'
(NQT in a tough school) |
Some of the coping strategies were as much philosophical as practical. One strand of this was remembering that (usually), lots of teachers are finding it difficult to get to level 10:
‘I'd had a bad day and my mentor advised me to just have a walk round the school during a lesson when I wasn't teaching. I saw other teachers having a tough time and it made me feel a lot better.'
(Trainee)
‘We do have issues with behaviour. We've got some lovely, lovely kids, but also, a small minority who are really difficult. I've had to develop a thicker skin, to realise that it's not just me, it's not personal. You see other, more experienced teachers having trouble and it makes you feel better.'
(NQT at a school ‘with serious weaknesses')
‘You worry about it and if you are sensible, you talk about the issues, the pupils who are doing particular things to give you a hard time, and this usually helps to get things in proportion. It might not provide a magic answer but you realise that it's not that big deal, it's not beyond the parameters of what' s happening to other teachers…'
(Teacher Educator)
One Advanced Skills Teacher talked of how important it was to try to not take it personally when pupils were aggressive and rude, and how difficult it was to do this:
‘It is incredibly hard not to take it personally, not to think that their awful behaviour should in some way have been prevented or minimised by you. I still take it personally after all these years, even as I tell younger teachers that they mustn't take it personally. It is crucial for your psychological well being at this school but that doesn't make it easy to do.'
‘Keeping things in proportion' was also suggested as a strategy for coping with unsatisfactory pupil behaviour and deficits on the 10 point scale. Remembering that Level 10 is not a natural state of affairs, and that lots of pupils with problems are prone to misbehave and ‘try it on'. In going into the world of classrooms, you are in a sense leaving the adult world with its developed and generally accepted conventions of appropriate behaviour and going into an environment where many of the inhabitants have not yet understood and internalised these conventions, and part of the teacher's job is to help them to get there:
‘It's not a nice feeling not being fully in control of a lesson but you've got to keep things in perspective. Not giving up, not stopping trying but being philosophical about things not being perfect. Not thinking that life will never be the same because 8R were not fully under your control.'
(Teacher Educator)
‘Some of them (teachers)
seemed to have the ability to shrug things off… to think after a bad lesson, a rough ride… tomorrow's another day, to learn to be resilient. Not to give up, to stop trying, but not to just brood about it in a sort of negative, passive way.'
(Teaching Assistant)
‘Some teachers were just so professional… always calm, polite and composed, even when they were under pressure. Some of them also seemed able to put incidents behind them once they were over… to walk away from it and just move on to the next class.'
(Teaching Assistant)
It might be helpful to think in terms of a sort of ‘Richter Scale' of pupil atrocity to try and keep things in perspective:
‘I think of the atrocities that happen the world… 9/11, beheadings, terrorism, muggings – or even the stuff that happens in this school, and in the great scale of things the fact that one small child with problems doesn't want to do the work doesn't seem such a big deal. I've still got to try and do my best to sort out the best possible way forward but it doesn't seem quite so desperate.'
(NQT working in a difficult school)
From Haydn, T. (2007) Managing pupil behaviour, London, RoutledgeFalmer: 96-9.
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