Mentoring our students

I was at a professional learning session recently. One of the teachers shared about managing difficult students from the book ‘Teacher Leadership and Behaviour Management’ by Bill Rogers.

As I have written in some of my articles, I am managing challenging pupils this year so all my old methods are not working as well as they used to.

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The teacher, who did the professional sharing, has more than twenty years of teaching experience and we are both experiencing difficult students from broken families.

This article is just to share some of my thoughts and ideas that I may just explore and try them with my challenging students to see how well they would work.

Mentoring Language

As parents and teachers, we often simply ask our children why they hit or punch their friends.

We would immediately start to scold them for such bad behaviours.

With awareness of mentoring language, we need to change the way we relate the incident to their difficulty in keeping their hands to themselves rather than stating the action of punching or hitting.

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Instead of saying that they are screaming or shouting, we need to say that we understand their difficulty in controlling the volume of their voice.

Bad behaviours are not longer being highlighted directly but we need to state the difficulty that they are facing.

We also need to use mentoring language to get students to think about their difficulty in controlling their emotions rather than simply saying that they have anger management issue.

Get pupils to see their difficulties to work on them for self-improvement.

Warm Body Language

After the sharing, I see a need to have better body language with my students.

A simple pat or putting my hands on their shoulder of my difficult students may build rapport and friendship to break the barrier of the almighty teacher image.

A bright smile each day while student enter the classroom.

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I would need to welcome them for lesson as though they are important guests to the classroom.

I wonder whether my students would get a shock but I may just give it a try to see how it goes.

Immediate Affirmation

One thing that impressed me during the sharing is we often have delayed our affirmation even to our own children unless there are repeated good actions that we observe.

For challenging students, we may need to recognise their good behaviour immediately even if it is only once so that there is motivation to exhibit more for future.

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We need to be more generous with our affirmation to encourage more positive actions.

Eat With Them

My school has snack time during curriculum time.

Students would bring their snacks to eat in class. I have yet to eat with them during snack time.

I guess it is a chance to build rapport when I just take a seat at one of the chairs and eat with them.

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I must also take the effort to eat with them during recess.

I used to do it but marking load had been heavy so I was constantly drowning with my daily marking.

I need to leave aside those marking and spare some time to eat with my students so that I can build relationship beyond classroom.

In conclusion

When I have difficulty changing my students, it is time for me to change.

Teachers are often guilty of using the same old methods for years without changes because we are too comfortable with them.

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My students are not the same like those ten years ago. I have never handled a class with so many broken families.

My students need more than a teacher, they need a mentor as well as a caring parent image.

I would be stepping out of my comfort zone and I may share more about my journey of change in the way I handle my students in future articles.

Disclaimer: This is my personal reflection and I am not in any position to instruct anyone what they should do. I am not responsible for any action taken as a result of this post. My post can only be a reference for your further research and growth. By reading this post, you acknowledge and accept that. All images and pictures were taken from google images that are free from copyright under labelled for reuse.

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Posted from my blog with SteemPress : http://fun2learn.vornix.blog/2019/03/11/mentoring-our-students/

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