Resilience! A Guide for Educators - You Can Do It!

More documents

Recommendations

Info

“Things Are Neither Good nor Bad But Thinking Makes Them So.” -ShakespeareWe now understand that the greatest influenceover the extent to which you are emotionallycalm and in control when faced with adversesituations is your thinking rather than thesituation itself. Take for example a teacher whois faced with a student who curses. You can seefrom the accompanying diagrams that one largefactor that determines how upset you become inthe face of cursing is the way you think aboutthe student’s behaviour.Examples of Different Emotional Reactions to the Same SituationAngerHappening Thinking Feeling Behaviourstudent curses Students should always be respectful.extreme anger yellsThis is awful and terrible.angerputs student downI can’t stand it.out of control irrational penaltyThis student is a real _______.Teacher ATeacher BI prefer students to be respectful.I can deal with it.I don’t like this behaviour.This student is fallible and is making a mistake.annoyedin controltalks respectfully tostudentlogical consequenceDownHappening Thinking Feeling Behaviourstudent curses I should have been successful with this student. extremely down withdrawalOthers will judge me badly.This is awful. I can’t stand it.I am hopelessTeacher ATeacher BI prefer to be successful and have my workapproved of by others.When I am not, it’s bad, but not the end of theworld. I can cope.I’ll try to figure out if there is anything I can do.disappointedconstructive actionDon’t Go Blowing Things Out of ProportionPlease take a minute to read through anexample of a teacher and a principal who areexperiencing extremely high emotional stress.Please consider whether or not the way theyview and think about some troubling eventsreveal an “It’s not as bad as you think it is”mindset.Mary James is a grade 7 teacher who is viewedby many as an excellent teacher. She seems toenjoy teaching adolescents and has many waysto make the curriculum come alive. Currently,Mary is not enjoying her teaching and isexperiencing Monday‐morning‐itis. Theproblem is that several of her students, all boys,are taking advantage of her good nature. Whenshe asks one of them to stop talking or anotherto stop throwing paper in class, she is greetedby opposition or delaying tactics. From ateacher who had strong positive relationshipswith her students, she is changing over to onewhom, because she is yelling, lecturing andscolding is becoming viewed by some of hermore difficult students as the enemy. Mary’smindset towards the students seems to bemaking matters worse and causing her severeResilience: A Guide for Educators 4
emotional stress: “Their behaviour is terribleand awful. It is not tolerable to have to put upwith it! They deserve to be treated as they treatme!”Brian Fordham, school principal of Shady LakesSchool has begun noticing that he is becomingmore intolerant of one of his classroom teachers,Mary James. The issue surrounds the way Maryis handling one of her more challengingstudents, Jonathon Singer. Jonathon is routinelysent by Mary to his office for any number ofmajor and minor offences –the last one beinghaving drawn a face on his maths work sheet.While Mary does a great job with her “good”students, she feels that when students behavebadly, there is nothing she can really do. AsPrincipal, Brian’s responsibility is to helpsupport Mary in learning new ways to bettermanage her students, but finds his frustrationand occasional anger about Mary’s approach todifficult‐to‐teach students hard to take. Hismindset is leading to unprofessionally highlevels of stress: “She really should be able toteach all students and handle the difficult onesin firm and positive ways. It is really awful andunbearable to constantly have to deal with her.She should probably consider leaving teaching.”Over the past few decades, I have written aboutan aspect of our thinking that contributes agreat deal to our emotional stress and pooremotional resilience. This tendency is referred toas catastrophising. Simply stated, catastrophisingmeans the tendency to blow the badness ofevents out of proportion.What we have learned is that when people of allages become extremely emotionally upset, theydo so because they are thinking to themselvesthat what has happened or is about to happen isnot only bad, but is the worst thing that couldhappen. We use particular words and phraseswhen we catastrophise such as: “This isterrible.” “This is horrible.” “This is really theworst thing.” We use these words and phrasesnot only when referring to events that arecatastrophic such as war, terrorism, naturaldisasters but to events that are bad but notcatastrophic such as when we make mistakes,fail or when people are thinking critically ofwhat we have done or said.Consider the Emotional Thermometer. It can beused to measure the intensity of how stronglysomeone feels. Now, when something happensto us that we perceive to be bad such as makinga mistake or being rejected, it is normal to feel inthe middle of the Emotional Thermometer. Wemight feel somewhat or medium down, orworried or angry. However, when wecatastrophise, that is, blow the event out ofproportion, our emotional temperature movesway up the thermometer and we feel verydown, panicked or furious.The key to staying relatively calm or in themiddle of the Emotional Thermometer when weare faced with something that is bad but notawful, terrible and catastrophic is keeping thebadness of the event in perspective. Ourthinking at these times will sound somethinglike: “While this is bad. It’s not that bad. It couldbe a lot worse.”Resilience: A Guide for Educators 5
Page 1 and 2: Resilience!A Guide for EducatorsMic
Page 3: Things that Lead to Anger …Advers
Page 7 and 8: Resilience: A Guide for Educators 7
Page 9 and 10: What to Do to Build Your Emotional
Page 11: 2. Does it make sense to conclude (
Page 14 and 15: • Setting realistic goals and tim
Page 16: In ConclusionResilience is a vital

Resilience! A Guide for Educators - You Can Do It!

You also want an ePaper? Increase the reach of your titles

Delete template?

Save as template?