What Works; What Doesn't

Unfortunately what works well one day can easily become a disaster the next with emotionally disturbed students. Staying calm, building a good rapport with the students, listening, collaborating and always being willing to change with the moment is a strong point of mine, and something that thankfully is going well. If you lock yourself into expecting a specific outcome from the same procedures each day, your classroom will be chaos in no time at all. Each day requires a self reflection of how to best deal with a behavior of a student. What I have always been good at is to not categorize every student's behavior under specific labels. Each of us wakes up each day with different issues to face. If a student wakes up to find out their mother has stage 4 cancer, it is my job as a teacher to listen, and finally to treat that student in the same way I would hope someone would treat me. Every human being wakes up to different days each day. As a teacher it is my job to be open to what each of my students is facing, rather than expecting each of them to come in like little robots, sit down and do whatever is assigned.

I find that how teachers treat their students is often times a direct reflection of how they feel about their self, and especially how they feel about their teaching assignment. If you as a teacher are constantly complaining, being critical of others and even condemning your students and co-workers, then I can tell you that the atmosphere of the classroom is not going to be positive. No matter how much you pretend to be positive, students have great intuition about how you feel. Students are social media gurus, constantly playing psychologist and posting and discussing things about each other and the people around them, like their teachers.

Something I know I need to get better at is getting enough sleep, exercising, having positive relationships, eating well, dressing professionally and feeling good about life and my vocation - teaching exceptional children. Everyone who is honest with their self should know that they do their best job at anything when they are healthy and feel good about their self. One of the problems in classrooms today is the astonishing number of stresses teachers face, and a stressed teacher is not fun to be around for students or co-workers. To be a great teacher, you have to find a way to balance your life, and to be honest with yourself as to whether you are exercising enough, sleeping enough, laughing enough, etc. You don't write good lesson plans on 5 hours of sleep every night, a fast food burger, and no exercise.