It was a crisp clear day as I sat watching my breath curl up into space above me waiting to meet the bus at Namadgi. On this particular day I was taking 15 student’s abseiling. I like working outdoors. I can do things my way, be more relaxed and not feel like I am being watched or for lack of a better word judged. I feel at home working with kids in an outdoor setting, I am the one who is familiar with the setting, not them (usually anyway).

The bus arrives. The usual mix of students; confident and athletic, smaller and shy, nerdy, over enthusiastic and over equipped. This group was a real mix of year 9 students.

It was about a 40 minute walk to where we were abseiling. Usually, I am happy to walk in the middle of the group monitoring the pace of the group and giving students land marks to stop at for rests. 

But this was not possible today.

Three boys from the group who were very fit (they all played league for the raiders reserves) wouldn’t slow down and wait at landmarks for the rest of the group to catch up. This lifted the pace of the walk for the rest of the group, generally not a major issue, one that can be reined in easily.

At first I tried getting them to walk at my pace beside me, but they always kept creeping forward (in retrospect I can see they were testing the water with me).

I tried explaining to them that the others couldn’t walk as fast and that it was unfair for them to push them to walk faster.

Then I tried something that has always worked for me in the past. I get the people at the back, to lead the group with me, and send the people at the front to the back, rotating through so everyone has a turn at leading, this always slows the pace of the group down and gives everyone a chance to lead. BUT…it failed.

With no help coming from the useless PE teacher who controls his class by letting them play dodge ball, I did something that I am not proud of. I raised my voice and made threats. I am not embarrassed that I did what I did, but I am not proud of the fact that I had to resort to such, what I see as cave-teacher like tactics.

The students finally responded…they listened to my requests, but distanced themselves from the group and sulked for the rest of the day.

The provocation I am choosing to explore in depth relating to this experience in my teaching is ‘will I be allowed to teach the way I want to teach?’ I am examining this provocation wondering whether my students will allow me to teach the way I want to, and in the above instance I believe they didn’t.

I feel as though I like to teach in a relaxed non interventionist style. Whether or not my class of students will allow me to teach this way is another story. In the story above was probably the first time I wasn’t allowed to teach the way I wanted to by my students. The behaviour of some students on this day didn’t let me teach in a non interventionist style, and called for a more authoritarian style of teaching.

My situation with this particular school whilst bush walking reminded me of being in a teaching fight or flight situation. Do I stay in the situation and fight to be able to teach the way I want, or take flight from the situation and teach kids in a way that I don’t want to but in a way that their behaviour is asking for?

If I do take flight from the situation I feel as though I am not being able to teach the way I want to, I am not able to retain my identity as a teacher. I almost feel like me teaching in a relaxed, non interventionist style is a privilege for my students. If they don’t respond to, or respect the way I teach them, it doesn’t bother me, I can change to another style which they probably won’t enjoy as much, and won’t benefit their learning as much, as it is not my preferred style and I won’t be functioning 100% effectively as a teacher.

When the body undergoes the fight or flight response, the heart beats faster, lung capacity increases, palms become sweaty etc.  These are actual physical responses to stress. The cortex (the thinking part of the brain) also undergoes changes. When too much stress is placed on the brain in a flight or fight situation, it undergoes a process known as downshifting where it blocks out useless information. It also becomes less efficient at processing information. This is evident in everyday life, when you are insulted by someone, but only think or a comeback the next day. This is due to the brain downshifting (Wolfe, 1998).

In relation to teaching, this process slows creative and rational processing of information, causing the teacher (me) to become short tempered, angry and irrational. In my case, I couldn’t think of any other teaching strategies to use so I made threats and became an authoritarian.

To me, reflecting on all this, it seems like a combination of two things, led to me becoming an authoritarian teacher.

a)      Me not wanting to battle with my students to teach them the way I wanted to, when I wasn’t being respected.

b)      My brains physiological response to the flight or fight situation I was placed in, leading me to become short tempered and not functioning at my normal information processing capacity.

Resulting from this physiological change and my resulting mood, my attitude towards my students changed. As  said previously I feel as though it is a privilege to be taught by a relaxed friendly teacher, and if you don’t respond well to my style, I won’t fight to retain that identity, ill change to an authoritarian style, which most students wont enjoy as much.

An example of this in everyday life, is when you are having a conversation with someone and don’t agree with them but don’t argue strongly, you give up because you can’t be bothered, or don’t want to ‘waste your breath’.

This is unfair to the rest of the students who were in my class, as my mood changed because of only three students, but it affected the whole class. After the incident, I was more distant, less interested, and probably not as friendly to the whole class. This meant that none of the students were learning to their full capacity due to my lack of interest, and their day might not have been as fun because I wasn’t as enthusiastic. Hunter (1982) calls this a drop in level of concern, in my case, for their learning, and for the fun they were, or weren’t having. This drop in level of concern I believe is contributed to by the downshifting in my brain in response to the stressful flight or fight situation.

Another idea Steve explored in his blog related to the fight or flight response was the mother/teacher relationship with students. According to Winnicott, The mother needs to survive their student’s attacks, which I didn’t on this particular day. Steve reassures us in his blog that students are often unsettled by change or something different. Following this change students feel the need to undermine the teacher (which they succeeded in on this particular day with me). “Our ability to survive is what makes us useful to our students” (steve blog.) on this day in my circumstance I did not survive, and after the incident was probably not very useful to my students.

I feel as though Steve’s blog on his student revolt relates very closely to the attitude I have to take whilst I am teaching. Do I fight the situation, flee from the situation, both avoidance tactics. Or do I tackle the problem head on, analyse it, sort out the problems, adapt and move forward in my teaching, which will benefit me and the learning of my students.

So will I be allowed to teach the way I want to by my students? I believe the answer is yes, if I handle things differently to how I did on the fateful day described at the beginning of this post. I will need to fight to retain my identity, but also to remain strong like a mother figure and mean something to my students.

References

Hunter, M. (1982). Mastery teaching. El Segundo, CA: TIP Publications

Krause, K. (2006). Managing behaviour and classrooms. Educational psychology: For learning and teaching. Retrieved from University of Canberra E-Reserve

Shann, S. (2012, February 24) The student revolt: online lecture for CPP 2 week 4 [weblog post] Retrieved from http://degreesfiction.wordpress.com/2012/02/24/the-student-revolt-online-lecture-for-cpp-2-week-4/

Wolfe, P. (1998). How the Brain Learns, Revisiting Effective Teaching. Educational Leadership56 (3)