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ELLEN
BERG
Diary #6
'We
worked with glee and gusto.
What changed? I did.'
If
you want to be somebody else,
If you're tired of fighting battles with yourself
If you want to be somebody else
Change your mind...
---Sister Hazel, Fortress
Last week I
wrote about my seemingly never-before-experienced management struggles with
my students. While I was whining to my husband about my difficulties, he
pointed out that in the five years he has known me, I have always been sure
of continuing management problems and a difficult year ahead, only to discover
later how wrong I was.
Apparently,
he is right.
I am nearly
as high this week as I was low last week. Not only did my classes behave
much better this week, but they also attacked the work we did with glee
and gusto. So, what changed? I did.
It is like the
song says, "If you want to be somebody else/ Change your mind." I realized
there were several things I was doing that contributed to the problems I
was having with my third block class. I looked at them as a problem rather
than as a group of students whose behavior was a problem. I was not seeking
solutions, I was seeking immediate compliance.
To address the
problem I do not think I did anything particularly revolutionary. First,
I told my third block class that I was not proud of the behavior I had chosen
in response to their behavior, and that I did not want to spend the year
angry with them and myself.
I told them
I felt frustrated with them because they talked through instruction and
then talked too loudly during group work. I explained I took that as a signal
that they did not value or respect the work I was doing and that they did
not value or respect themselves or the opportunity to educate themselves.
I had them work in groups to decide upon some appropriate solutions to the
problem at hand.
Although I did
get suggestions to suspend the guilty parties or make them write sentences,
I also got many other creative solutions. Among them were to call parents
more frequently and count to ten when I felt frustrated. They agreed they
needed to work on their behavior, and so as a signal that there was a problem,
I would start counting backwards from ten until they quieted down. I do
not know what is magical about that, but it seems to work.
Choosing
to change
Beyond the discussion
with that one group, however, I did nothing more than change my attitude,
my posture, and my actions. I smiled more, handled minor discipline issues
with humor, and sang and danced through the hallways. It was a struggle
at first, but by the end of the first day I actually felt happier and more
positive. I changed my mind.
I always try
to teach my students that they are the masters of their lives, that they
can choose the type of lives they will have. I even practice that philosophy
in my own life to a large extent. However, I have always had that "glass
half-empty" view of life, and so I have let many small things that were
completely out of my control or insignificant in the grand scheme of things
bother me.
My husband has
always told me I could choose to look at any situation positively or negatively,
and it has always irked me how calm he remains when the airline delays our
luggage or some jerk nearly runs us off the road. Over time, however, I
have begun to understand how to process information in a different way,
to shrug off the little annoyances in life. I have been happier for it.
I hope to continue
my journey, to be a model of reflection and deliberate action for my students.
They may not be able to control their present circumstances, but they can
choose their future paths.
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