It's unfortunate that one of the first things I heard from an experienced teacher was " just remember that you can't solve all of their problems." Children have certain needs that need to be met, and I consider it my personal mission to meet those needs as best as possible. However, I had no idea the emotional toll it would take on me until today. Principles of Classroom Management (Levin & Nolan 2014, chapter 3) says, in summary, that undesired behavior is a result of a student's psychological needs not being met. Children have a need to belong, be loved, to achieve academically and socially. If these needs are not met, then children tend to act out, or even worse have a low self esteem that results in thoughts of worthlessness. Unfortunately I got to experience this first hand today and it really took a toll on me. In order to protect the privacy of the student I will attempt to convey the events of the day without giving any recognizable details. Lets just say, that this particular student did not achieve the results that he desired on an assignment. Because of this lack of desired achievement, he expressed feelings of worthlessness, and anger, and his behavior for the rest of the day was completely unacceptable. And as confused as I was about why such a simple thing as a low grade could cause such extreme behavior, I had to stop and ask my self two things. First, what could he NEED, that he didn't have? Second, could something be going on at home or in class that we as teachers are not aware of? Of course I left out a lot of details to maintain confidentiality, however I assure you that this was a very severe situation. So severe in fact that the classroom teacher had to seek out an alternative resource to assist. Some of the things that the student said about feeling useless and unwanted made me hurt so deeply that the mother inside me wanted nothing more than to hug him and tell him that he really was soooooo important, but the professional in me knew that he needed some professional help. His needs were something more than what we could provide in the classroom. Now I understand what it means by " you can't solve all of their problems." It's not that you have to become emotionally numb or hard hearted. It means that you literally cannot always solve their problems and that you have to know when to ask for help, in order to provide the needs of that student.
0 Comments
|