7 Things....

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...Teachers Can Do When Their Emotions Take Over I have noticed that many blog posts, especially those about education, reduce their messages to a particular number (and the numbers are almost always odd):

5 Ways to Use Twitter to Teach Math

11 Things NOT to Do at an Interview

3 Mistakes All Principals Make -- but Shouldn't

Of course, I read these posts and think to myself, "Why don't I have numbers in my blog post titles? What do I know that I can reduce to a sexy odd number?"

And then it hit me: I have something. I HAVE SOMETHING!!!!

Here it is:

7 Things Teachers Can Do When Their Emotions Take Over

(First, the brief intro:) Are you a teacher? Do you have emotions? Do you sometimes find that your emotions override rationality and make you do unfortunate things? like yell at students? or insult them? or punish them? Take heart, for you are normal. Teaching is a highly emotional enterprise (as is learning), and precious few teachers avoid feeling strong emotions in the course of a school day. The good news is that emotions are extremely valuable data for teachers, data that can help teachers align their classroom acts with students' needs and get desirable learning to happen. Here are 7 things teachers can do when they realize their emotions have taken over (now for the bolded bullet items that make everything seem so simple):

Practice Awareness

The first thing teachers can do is turn inward and notice what they're feeling. Another word for this is "mindfulness." Practicing mindfulness gives teachers super-useful information, as it allows teachers to gain insight into themselves and, at the same time, suggests what emotions their students might be feeling. If, for example, I realize I'm feeling frustrated and angry when a student contradicts me in class, I can wonder (1) am I especially sensitive to criticism? (If so, that is not the student's fault and is, rather, something I should work on outside of the classroom) and (2) is this student feeling frustrated and angry himself? (If so, I can try to address the possible source of the student's frustration and anger -- more on that in Thing #3.) Practicing awareness of oneself and of one's students can be difficult to do in the heat of the moment. So taking this step after school, when a teacher has a minute to think, is perfectly acceptable.

Describe

When we're feeling strong emotions, our perceptions are skewed. It's like our emotions have suddenly switched out our normal lenses for slightly (or grossly) distorted lenses. If we don't make an effort to remove those lenses so we can see what's around us more accurately, we can act out inappropriately. Taking the time to slow down and describe as objectively as possible what we're seeing or experiencing is an invaluable way to get to the bottom of difficult events. Describing what happened -- "My student sent me an email at 11 o'clock at night that announced her refusal to do the homework I had assigned because, in her words, it was 'stupid'" -- without judgment or evaluation -- "What an a-hole!" -- can give us grounds to wonder, to exercise curiosity, about the student's behavior. Which leads us to the next Thing.

Look for Good Reasons

"Why, o why would my student do such a thing?" (Or its close cousin, "Why o why would I do such a thing?") is a great question to ask when our emotions have taken over. It's a great question because there's always a good reason. (And by "good" I don't mean "laudable." I mean "sensical.") The emotions that arise when a student does something irritating are never, ever random. They are, rather, awesomely precise. If we can describe what we experienced in neutral terms that make the experience appear innocuous and then wonder how our (and our student's) strong emotions relate to that description, we are looking for good reasons. "Why would Mindy send me such an email? It's totally out of character! And what if, when she sent that email, she was feeling the way I felt when I received it? Namely, frustrated and angry? Why might she be feeling frustrated and angry about the assignment she announced she was not going to do? Ohhhh. I get it. I bet she was having trouble doing the assignment. And she wanted to get it done right."

That's a good reason.

Make a guess

Once we've settled on one or more possible reasons for our (and, by extension, our student's) strong emotions, we can make a guess. One way to make a guess is to float it by the student. "Hey," we can say after class the next day. "I was surprised by your email last night. I'm guessing you were pretty stressed out about the homework assignment." The student's reply will verify or nullify our hypothesis. In either case, we will have collected more valuable data that can illuminate the current difficult experience and help us handle others better. Another way to make a guess is simply to act on it. Having received a maddening email from an anxious student, and having looked for a good reason for that email, and having settled on the guess that the student was freaked out because she couldn't complete the assignment the way she wanted to, we could send her an email that directly addresses that anxiety. "No worries. We'll figure it out tomorrow." Again, the student's response will provide valuable data about the accuracy of our guess.

Good guesses can defuse difficult situations in a heartbeat.

Listen

Listening means paying attention to the new data our students provide once we've acted on our guesses. It means suspending the urge to take students personally, to evaluate or judge what they say, or to plan our rejoinder (when we listen to ourselves in our heads, not our students). It means detaching from students enough to let them be and to let ourselves simply see (and hear) them without threat or judgment. It means respecting boundaries, staying calm in the knowledge that whatever our students say or do, we can choose to react responsibly out of our own wisdom and maturity. It means taking in what students say but also double-checking to make sure we got it right. So, really, listening means communicating, not just through words but through respectful inaction.

Self-Disclose

Just so we're keeping track: This is Thing #6. And it's a tricky Thing. Self-disclosing means sharing relevant aspects of our experience with our students so as to connect meaningfully with them. What's tricky about self-disclosing is that, when a teacher does it, the disclosure must always serve the students' purposes, not the teacher's. "I'm having a hard time concentrating today because I had a fight with my wife this morning" is a self-disclosure that does not serve students' purposes. But "Would you mind repeating yourself? I'm sorry -- I'm having a hard time concentrating today" might be more acceptable, as it conveys to students the teacher's self-knowledge, her humanity and fallibility, as well as her willingness to take responsibility for her limitations. The latter type of self-disclosure would work only if the teacher were truly well-bounded and able to relieve students of any temptation to take care of her. That, for very important reasons that I go into elsewhere (see my post called Assumptions or, better yet, my book, The Feeling of Teaching), would be inappropriate -- and, again, is what makes self-disclosing so tricky.

Plan

Why do all this work (indeed, I call these 7 Things "emotion work") if it has no impact on the classroom?  Herein lies the value of planning. Once we have a good guess about what underlies a difficult classroom event, we can make a deliberate plan for bringing our newfound understanding back to the student(s). Our plan might include talking, self-disclosing, listening, or acting. It might involve instructional design. It might involve meeting, setting ground rules, or drawing up a "contract" with a student or a class. As I already mentioned, doing emotion work in the heat of the moment can be difficult and sometimes impossible. Doing it after hours and coming up with an informed, compassionate, effective plan for tomorrow, one that has transformed difficult emotions into a possible liberating solution, is, to put it mildly, a good use of time.

So there you have them: my 7 Things Teachers Can Do When Their Emotions Take Over. Simple, right? Go forth and use them! And feel free to leave a comment about how ridiculous it is to boil teaching and human relationships down to 7 things.