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Lessons learnt from losing it

Hands up, I admit it. This week I lost it and my year 7 class felt the brunt of it.

It’s been a tough week for a variety of personal reasons and I was not in the right mindset to handle the needs of year 7 on Wednesday morning. I don’t consider myself a ‘shouty’ teacher and try to maintain the ‘relentless positivity’ to encourage and engage my students but on Wednesday I shouted for the first time in a long time and I’ve been feeling bad and also slightly embarrassed about it since. 

Thankfully during my weekly scroll on Twitter I came across this article from @teacherhead




https://teacherhead.com/2013/01/06/behaviour-management-a-bill-rogers-top-10/amp/?__twitter_impression=true

 

It was reading point 8 about Controlled severity that has made me feel a bit better about my actions that day.


On reflection the class have begun to become quite restless over the past few lessons. In our current bubble system Year 7 are being taught all their lessons in the Maths block and it’s fair to say that the classrooms were not designed for COVID secure workings. There isn’t any space to move around the room to support the students individually and practical work is obviously very limited. I’ve learnt that I need to have a starter activity that the students can crack on with whilst I clear the desk, set my laptop up, clean the whiteboard and get organised. I thought this weeks activity was quite simple, I handed it out, gave a brief introduction and told them to have a go and anyway, the instructions were on the sheet...


When the first few students starting asking for help I tried my best to assist them whilst getting organised but when my laptop wasn’t working and I couldn’t find the projector remote and the 10th student was asking for help and the noise level was rising and the challenging student was throwing dice (being used for the starter) across the room... I lost it. 


I shouted. 


I can’t really remember what I said but it wasn’t pretty. However the class went silent and they put their heads down to give the starter activity a try whilst I stepped outside for some deep breaths. I re-entered the room with a friendly tone, rewarded the students and swiftly moved on with the lesson. The rest of the lesson was ok and the class definitely remembered my ‘episode’ as when the noise level got too high all I needed to do was make a sharp ‘err’ sound and they quickly settled! 


So although it didn’t feel like ‘controlled’ assertiveness at the time and I’m going to claim it as such but I hope that is not something I use again anytime soon.


I apologise this weeks lesson learnt isn’t particularly positive but quite honestly it’s not been a positive week. I will try to remember that for now ‘good is good enough’ and there will be better times to come. 

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