Building relationships
This can make a significant difference to classroom relationships and student learning and outcomes. Being ‘controlling’ comes from a need for control. However, teaching is about relationship building, which requires feeling and connection. Feeling in control is a basic human need, to feel in control of ourselves in order to make safe and self protecting choices. From this point, if we ‘feel’ in control we are in control of our emotions and our personal situation to guide healthy choices.
Teachers have to ‘be’ in control of a classroom setting for safety and education of the students. However, feeling in control allows them to provide the emotionally safe place. A teacher ‘in control’, is empathetic, aware of the feelings and states of mind of the students because he/she is aware of their own state of mind and in touch with their own emotions and can therefore notice student irregularities with greater ease. It also enables the child to see that the teacher is a ‘safety net’, approachable during difficult times.
This has terrific implications for a child’s future as “childhood and adolescence are critical for setting down the essential emotional habits that will govern our lives – the emotional lessons we learn as children at home and at school shape the emotional circuits, making us more adept or inept at the basics of emotional intelligence”. (Goleman)
Neuron connections in the brain rapidly develop in the early years through rich and engaging experiences. Teachers can help to make these connections by providing a rich environment of engagement, socialisation and opportunity. The growth of connections increase because the reasons/intention behind the messages are correct.
If the child makes a strong connection with their teacher, they will feel a greater sense of security, supporting them to feel safe to express their emotions and take greater personal and academic risks. This could look like having the courage to ask more questions, trying harder in a sport or applying greater persistence when faced with a mathematical challenge.
A happy, proud child will treat others accordingly and apply the modelling they have seen and received. Feeling in control is about leadership, allowing children and others to simply be who they are, providing opportunities for learning and growth. It is a support system, like a scaffold, the structure in place to ‘allow’. Teachers who are in touch with their emotions, have a sense of self that allows others to feel their own emotions, by simply being themselves.
Further, creativity is supported when children are given opportunities to trust their ideas and thinking and believe in themselves. They feel confident, respected, cared about. It comes from a place of love. In contrast, being in control/controlling removes opportunities for growth and connecting/relationship building. By allowing trust, ‘feeling’ in control also supports children to develop resilience.
When we trust ourselves, we feel a greater sense of self, thereby allowing trust and a sense of self in others. This is extremely powerful for building relationships and developing the “essential emotional habits” (Goleman).
Teachers in control of their emotions are natural models. They listen with their heart and therefore use empathy rather than authority supporting the child who rarely brings in their homework – or the child who doesn’t have everything they need for their best learning or the one who regularly experiences negative emotions and feels discouraged – to make those vital connections.
Teachers can make the shift to ‘feel’ in control by asking themselves:
1. How am I feeling at the beginning of the day? Take a deep breath.
2. What stress/pressures do I have? How am I feeling about them? Name them: anxious, worried/pressured.
3. Say: ‘I am feeling a little anxious about the meeting after school. I can trust that I have done all that I can to be prepared for it, so it makes me feel better; or I am feeling pressured because I am not fully prepared for the meeting, so I will put time aside at recess to have all the data I will need, then I can feel more relaxed’. By doing this, the teacher has felt and named the emotion, allowing the connection.
4. When the children come in to the room, share feelings with the children in a group sharing, allowing them to feel, name and connect with emotions. It is a perfect opportunity to discuss how to deal with negative emotions and how they can be turned to a positive emotion/thinking.
5. At the end of the day, reflect on any positive or negative emotions and how they were dealt with, encouraging effort taken to get there. Often the internal effort is harder to deal with and overcome, so requires greater recognition and encouragement.
Further, teachers who are organised and know what they are teaching are less stressed if the lesson doesn’t go to plan, is interrupted or cancelled. Organisation allows for flexibility and minimises stress (on the teacher, and therefore the children), and negotiation can happen at an adult level with regards to the cause of the interruption and strategies to minimise this in future.
Teachers will also feel a greater sense of esteem as they allowed the communication to take place and they maximise the opportunity to connect and build the relationship and esteem in the other. Teachers are in a unique position to provide a ‘safe place’, an environment that helps children to make vital connections needed for healthy emotional growth and intelligence for their future. By feeling in control, teachers show empathy and leadership through creating a classroom environment that is conducive to best learning, providing the safe place. We know that children do well when they feel good about themselves. We all do. Feel it and be the difference.
References
Goleman D 1996. Emotional Intelligence: Why it can matter more than IQ. Bloomsbury, pxiii
Early Life Foundations, seminar Neuroscience Informing Pedagogy in Early Childhood Years, course notes p2 Brain Development: Implications for Educators, November, 2016.
Winner Michelle Garcia Think Social! A Social Thinking Curriculum for School Age Students Think Social Publishing, 2006.
Juliette is a long term member of the IEU Victoria Tasmania Branch. She has 15 years experience in teaching, professional development, professional reading and interaction with children, parents and staff from a range of cultures and backgrounds. Early in her career she explored Adlerian psychology and has been using intrinsic motivation to build self esteem in children ever since.
