Teachers are the filters for the day-to-day reality of school. Whether we are aware of it or not, our behavior sets the tone. If students overhear us whining or complaining about something, it may be the talk of the school for days even if it was something minor. By the same token, if we always approach things in a positive manner, then this is what the students reflect. The most effective educators understand this and choose their filters carefully.
As educators, we hear this question many times a day. Our response not only influences how others view us, but also affects the frame of mind of the person who asked. What’s more, we have choices about how to respond.
You can smile at a fellow teacher and say, “Things are great! How about with you?” Or you can respond, “That Jimmy Wallace is getting on my nerves!” Then all of a sudden Jimmy Wallace is getting on that teacher’s nerves, too, whether the teacher knows him or not.
You may be thinking that you could not do this because you would never lie. Hmm: So when the second graders ask if you like the mural they drew, what do you tell them? How do you answer the question, “Honey, do these pants make me look fat?” Again, it is always up to us to determine what gets through our filters and what does not.
Here’s one scenario, filtered two ways. Let’s examine what happens under each. Say I’m a homeroom teacher meeting with an irate parent behind closed doors. As so often happens, Mrs. Smith is really mad at the world, but I just happen to be the one sitting there as she vents her feelings. After she leaves, I walk into the hall and a colleague says innocently, “How is your day going?” Now I have choices to make.
I can choose to filter my response: “Things are great, how about with you?” If that teacher feels good about the world, we both move on, smiling. If he has concerns, at least I have not made them worse.
Or I can respond, “Oh, I just met with that whacko parent Mrs. Smith. Man, she has some temper! I hope I never have to deal with her again. Yikes!” Now, what have I accomplished? Well, I have made that teacher terrified of Mrs. Smith. And if I tell enough people about Mrs. Smith, I might have every teacher in the school worrying about the possibility of meeting this notorious harridan. Some might be leery of working with any student whose last name is Smith, or hesitant about calling any parents (and especially the ones named Smith). I have shifted their energy away from confidently approaching their students to unproductive worrying.
One way or the other, my response affects the school. By sparing others the unnecessary bad news, I can create a much more productive environment.
When the teacher sneezes, the whole class catches a cold. This is neither good nor bad, it is just the truth. Our impact is significant because our focus becomes the students’ focus. If we have great credibility and good relationships, students work to please us. If we lack credibility, students work against us. Students come to class each day wanting and expecting us to set the tone. If the tone we establish is positive and professional, they’ll match that tone. If our attitude is negative and confrontational, they’ll respond in kind.
We often hear the statement, “You have to earn students’ respect.” Yet the students are on their best behavior the first day of school. Did we earn that? Did we work with the students and their families one on one over the summer to build that bond? Of course not. On the first day of school, students hand us respect on a platter. We determine what happens to that gift. The best teachers continue to nurture and build respect all year long.
I really like faculty meetings; I always have. As a principal, I cherished the opportunity to spend time with an outstanding group of professionals. I tried not to waste that precious time on administrative or logistical announcements. I sought to end each meeting on a positive note, sending teachers to their next challenge with energy and enthusiasm. No matter what the purpose, content, or focus of the faculty meeting might be, I always had one fundamental goal: I wanted the teachers to be more excited about teaching tomorrow than they were today.
Great teachers take the same approach in their classes. No matter what the lesson plan “covers,” great teachers want their students to be more excited about learning tomorrow than they are today.
A friend of mine once shared a story that took place in a kindergarten classroom. At the start of class, the teacher said to the students, “I think we will be inside at recess today, because it was raining on my way to work.” After a pause, one of her little charges raised his hand and asked, “Where do you work?”
Each day, we decide what to bring into our classrooms. Even on the days we don’t feel quite so perky, we can filter out the negative energy that makes students feel we’re just there to do our job. If our attitude shows we want to be there, our students will reflect that positive energy back to us.
Now and then, I ask a group of teachers, “What advice would you give a student teacher about the teachers’ lounge at your school?” The most common reply is, “Stay out!” Isn’t that a shame? I don’t know of a single college program that includes a class on griping in the teachers’ lounge, yet some first-year teachers seem to have it down by November. Where do they pick up that habit?
The great teachers don’t add to the litany of complaints. Instead, they filter them out.
Probably the best predictor of whether teachers will gripe in the teachers’ lounge tomorrow is whether they heard we were griping in there today. The great teachers don’t add to the litany of complaints. Instead, they filter them out.
The lounge should be a place where teachers relax, socialize, and enjoy each other’s company. The faculty workroom should be a place where professionals support each other. Sure, teachers are overworked and underpaid—but do we really want to focus on those aspects of our profession during our free minutes? Teaching is a demanding job, but it’s the job we’ve chosen, and we can choose to focus on its rewards and challenges in a positive way. The great teachers do that.
It almost goes without saying that great teachers establish an effective filter between their personal lives and their classrooms. Every teacher ought to model this professional behavior. The classroom is no place to discuss marital problems, to complain about low salaries for teachers, or even to show home movies of the family pet’s antics.
By the same token, the best teachers keep school issues in their place. I recently worked with a high school that was debating whether to initiate block scheduling. Teachers had strong opinions on both sides of the issue. What caught my attention, though, was the ferocity of the student involvement. In some classes, the teachers actively lobbied for or against the change. Some encouraged their students to initiate petitions, or drummed up parent attendance at school board meetings. Other teachers never brought up the issue in their classrooms; if the subject did come up, they addressed it calmly. Instead of fanning the flames of controversy, the best teachers had a quieting influence.
“This Is the Worst Group of Kids We’ve Ever Had”
Have you ever heard this refrain? It seems that the same two or three teachers start the chant at about the same time each year. They are tired. The honeymoon with their students has long been over, and they have not developed the critical positive relations in their classrooms when February and March roll around. Such complaining doesn’t help to solve the problem—and indeed, in my experience such statements usually have no basis in fact.
After a recent evening of parent conferences, I heard a teacher complain, “They only care about their child!” I chuckled to myself, wondering which children she expected the parents to care about. (When you take your car to the mechanic, do you care much whether the car in the next bay gets fixed that day?) Would that teacher prefer to confer with parents who don’t care about their child?
Whenever I hear someone complain about “this group of kids,” I think again of the auto mechanic. “Sorry, sir, I wasn’t able to fix your car—due to budget cuts, all the auto shops have a really high car-to-mechanic ratio this year.” Would that excuse make the customer feel better? “This is the worst group of cars I’ve ever had!” I don’t know about you, but at that point I’d start looking for another mechanic.
As educators, we understand that perceptions can become reality. People who say, “This is the worst group of kids,” soon start to believe it. Eventually, they start to treat them that way and, unfortunately, the students will start to behave accordingly. Effective educators understand that one of the best ways to alter perceptions is to provide other perceptions. I’ll give you an example from my first year as a principal.
I was hired in July. I had not met any of the teachers. When I started working regularly, teachers began to drop by the office. One by one, they complained about the student body: “The worst group of kids we’ve ever had.” I was scared to death to start the school year. I remember thinking that these students must really be different than any other students in the world. I guess I was right; as I walked around the school and visited classes the first day, I realized that these students were so bad, they must have even skipped the first day!
Of course, the students were there, and they were no different than the challenging students we all know. Yet I realized that the teachers’ perceptions indicated how they felt about the students and, ultimately, about teaching. If I could not change these perceptions, they would become reality before long. I pondered what to do.
About a month into the school year, I attended the annual state conference. One session, billed as a roundtable discussion, turned out to be a gripe session for principals with each relating his or her “biggest problem.” I happened to sit next to the principal from a very wealthy school (we’ll call it Country Club High). I had always assumed that Country Club High could not possibly have problems. After all, they always had outstanding test scores, partly because of their clientele. Their sports teams were consistently winners, and their salaries were the highest in the state. Imagine my surprise when their leader described his school’s biggest problem as students “pantsing” drugs—putting drugs in their underwear so that they could not be searched. That really put things in perspective for me. I resolved to share this perspective with the teachers at my school.
We are very fortunate to work in education. Sometimes we just forget how blessed we are.
At the next faculty meeting I told the story. When I reported that I sat next to the principal of Country Club High, the faculty gasped as if I’d met a famous movie star. Then I told them that students at the most prestigious school in the state routinely hid drugs in their underwear. My staff was speechless. Finally, I described the biggest problem at our school: The door to Dennis Newton’s locker keeps sticking. Though they chuckled at my obvious attempt to downplay our issues, the teachers realized that many of the challenges posed by “the worst group of kids we’ve ever had” were closer to Dennis’ locker door problem than they were to “pantsing” drugs.
We are very fortunate to work in education. Sometimes we just forget how blessed we are. By consistently filtering out the negatives that don’t matter and sharing a positive attitude, we can create a much more successful setting. Consciously or unconsciously, we decide the tone of our classrooms and of our school.
Great teachers consistently filter out the negatives that don’t matter and share a positive attitude.