Confrontative Mode

"I don't know"... "I can't think..."

Those statements seem self-defeating to me. Hearing that from a student under my tutelage made me feel terrible about my approach of taking one from his comfortable seat and putting him in the scrutiny of many other eyes.

While I notice that he suffers, and others were laughing and mocking. I stood several meters away, simply saying... "you can do that, I know you can!" How helpful were my actions and my decision to let that boy on board work of a very simple and basic sentence writing task?

A group of boys were yelling, I raised my voice on top of theirs "Shut your mouth up, if you cannot say anything helpful!" There was tension in the classroom, and I could notice that each prepared a sentence which should follow the instruction I gave.

With an assertion of power, I got their attention. Their minds start to warm up, think and their bodies are alerted to listen to the instructions and do the task. But, I find that unusual and exhausting. I'd rather put my energy in thinking strategies and redesigning my methods rather than fueling my behavior with superficial anger that creeps into my nerves.

I understand that I cannot be at all times in such mood because it is stressful. But we finished the class with positive results based on objective assessment. Yet, my question now is how did that situation impact my students' affective state, when I turned into something else they perhaps never expected?

On one end, the situation could be positive that it showed my student that I can be in such confrontative mode; that they should be able to understand that like anyone else I cannot tolerate error and self-defeating thoughts bind them in their learning crutches; that like any individual I have emotions too.

On the other hand, the bad side of it was that we ended the class without processing what happened, how they felt and what they learned from what happened during that period. My greatest concern is that of the student who had difficulty in doing the task on the board. Well the term is not over yet, and we will still meet tomorrow.

The first thing in my class agenda for tomorrow is again to confront the students to confront their selves and their problematic attitude and behavior based on what happened this morning in our class. I feel there is a need to arrest that situation, clarify expected behaviors, process our feelings, redirect our thoughts to more productive class goals, and lastly to give a potentially misunderstood situation a definite closure.