When I first started teaching, I remember being shocked and reactive to the outward behavior displayed by students. This could be pointed to several different reasons, but the result was still the same – I expected all students to behave the way I would or the way I assumed someone should behave/react. Little did I know, but this was far from effective. By year three, I was still focused on the outward behaviors of my students, but knew I needed to adjust.

My school at the time was an elementary school located in the inner city of North Minneapolis. We were unable to retain teachers for more than 2-3 years. Our administration cycled through a variety of classroom management programs including PBIS, RTI, Responsive Classroom, and MTSS. We had several guest speakers around behavioral management strategies as well. The training that stuck with me more than any other, was a speaker who shared a focus on pausing to look/consider what was the antecedent or root cause of the behavior. Too often, we react to the outward behavior that we forget these are children and a lot of variables can lead to an outward behavior.

Pausing when a student throws a ball out of frustration, kicks/punches someone, throws a chair, leaves the classroom, uses profanity, etc, has helped me tremendously with building relationships, because I am able to take time to determine why the behavior occurred. The student already knows they did something they shouldn’t have, so the focus should not be on the action, the focus should be on what caused the behavior. Did something happen on the bus? Did they miss breakfast? Was there a situation prior in their homeroom? Is a family member out of town? Are they moving? Is there a disruption to their family structure? So many factors can lead to an outward behavior.

Pausing to listen and try to understand your students will go a LONG way in establishing a safe environment for strong relationships.

This microblog post was a featured post in #slowchathealth’s #microblogmonth event. You can search for all of the featured posts here. Please do follow each of the outstanding contributors on social media (including Mike Chamberlain, the author of this post) and consider writing a microblog post of your own to be shared with the global audience of slowchathealth.com

Pair this post with the following:

Positive Phone Calls Home by Mike Chamberlain

Happiness Factories by Phil Mathe

What Is The Most Fun Thing You’ve Ever Done? by Mark Housel

Have you read the latest Book of the Month recommendation?