I need my own coach

After each challenging day in the classroom, I wish fondly for a coach of my own. So a few days ago when I felt I had "gone negative" with the kids, I wondered: what would I say to support a teacher I had just observed in the classroom doing what I was doing.

First, I would reflect on what had gone well--it is so hard to keep that in mind when you feel frustrated with the kids. So I spent sometime culling the brief moments of success. That helped me feel grounded.

Second, I thought about how often I would say to teachers that children that need attention are going to get it one way or another, so plan to give it as much as possible for the positive things. So the next day that what I did. Every second the most challenging child was not running around the classroom, climbing on the shelves, throwing tantrums for not getting his way (being picked first for whatever), and pushing or shoving, I showered him with attention. We played games together. I would call on him the instant he was sitting and quiet.

Third--Help a child to reflect by creating some distance. On Wednesday, I had playground duty. He came over and sat next to me. leaned against me and said he was hot. I said, "I'm hot too. But you get to go swimming this afternoon, and I don't," I complained. I continued to whine, "it's not fair, I want to go swimming too, but I can't"
"Why not" he asked.
"Ms Kerri (PE teacher) won't let me. She said the rule is that I have to stay out of the pool so I can help the children get dressed. I don't like that rule."
Suddenly, the child becomes the voice of reason and problem solving. "Maybe you can go swimming later. You could go when there is a party." (the week before a classmate had his birthday party at the pool).
"I don't like to wait."
"Sometimes you have to."

Fourth--have more back up plans, stay flexible, when the planned activity falls apart or ends early move on. When it feels like chaos in the classroom, I want to clamp down with more control which is totally non productive. Two weeks ago, I just substituted an second choice time in the afternoon when I knew that a more directed teaching activity would not work.

On Friday, a very hot day, (you know it's hot then the Senegalese complain about the heat!) the electricity went off in the morning. The school generator will power everything except the air conditioning. The room was heating up as we were finishing group games in math and language arts, the next activity was science--expository text about bats, as we had read the story book "Stellaluna" who is a bat. A few kids said they were tired. One child looked at the schedule on the wall and said in dismay, "we have to wait until after lunch and outside time before we can rest?" I proposed that we could do the science after lunch and have rest now, at 11:30. The group agreed. Two days before I had allowed two boys, including my challenging child, who were resting next to each other to look at the same book. It had gone very well. The next day, I said they could do it again, and others asked to have a rest time partner. I thought to myself--OMG--what have a started now. I expected it would be a disaster. But I agreed to try it and it worked. On Friday, was the second try of allowing rest time partners. At first there was some struggle over who would partner with whom. But even that was resolved quickly. There were 5 pairs looking at books together, and another 4 resting on their own. My challenging child was on his own, so I stayed close by and at one point held him on my lap and read a book to him--he fell asleep before I was finished. It was calm for 1/2 hour, as the Archduke Trio by Beethoven played in the background.

If I had a coach, I would ask for suggestions of other music to play at rest time, other active songs or activities to do when kids have been sitting for too long--I need to add to my repertoire--Simon Says, Head, shoulders, knees and toes, freeze dancing and counting down to blast off is all I can remember right now. I don't do the Hokey Pokey--in case that is what it is all about. And I would ask for story books about trees: our next theme is trees and it starts the week after next. I am including Caps for Sale--so the book just needs to include a tree somewhere. Comments welcome, or email me directly. Thanks in advance