Guidance Through the Storm
Mark Anderson
It's another day of teaching. You haul yourself out of bed at 5 in the morning, get to your school at 7:30, and go downstairs to greet your students at 8:30. You are greeted by a student who tells you she hates you when you say “good morning.” She turns and runs up the stairs, where she will run around the building a few times, disrupting other classes, before eventually drifting into your classroom. This is habitual behavior. You have made frequent calls to her grandmother, are pursuing her psychiatrist via endless voicemails and missed calls, and have fruitlessly maintained and analyzed functional behavioral assessment checklists. You feel anger seep into your being, but remind yourself that it is not worth getting upset about. You redirect your focus to the students lined up patiently before you.
After morning routines, you begin a reading lesson. A student who is onto his third foster parent and who has shared disturbing stories hinting at past trauma releases a stream of curses. You square up and wait for him to stop, which signals to him that he has successfully gained your attention. He therefore continues. You try ignoring him and continue your lesson. He becomes more disruptive, banging his desk. Other students ask him to stop, which sets off a string of invectives and insults passed back and forth. Sometimes this scenario can lead to physical altercations, and aware of this danger, you step close and lean forward and ask him firmly to focus on the lesson. He curses you out. You repeat your directive. He responds with increased aggression by raising his voice and insulting you. The whole class is watching. You are seething – literally shaking -- with anger and also despair.
You take a deep breath. You remind yourself of what you know about your student, of what he has been through, of what he is going through. You remind yourself that what you are feeling – the anger, the despair – are feelings that he has experienced in the core of his being and that he is sharing with you, feelings that perhaps he experiences on a daily basis. It is up to you to provide guidance through this storm. You take another deep breath and step away from him. You grab a set of worksheets from your desk that all the students are capable of working on independently, pass them out, and you sit down at your desk in the corner of the room and call him over. He ignores you. You wait. He is quietly occupied with the worksheet.
As you sit at your desk, you take stock of the situation, and consider what he is asking you for. He wants to know how to overcome despair and its attendant shock of rage. He wants guidance from an adult who does not respond to him with the loathing, fear, or aggression he already knows so intimately. He wants attention. He wants to understand how to deal with anxiety induced by difficulty with decoding words. He wants to understand self-control.
You get up and crouch next to him and talk to him for a minute about the worksheet to make sure that he will allow you near him. He has calmed down, so you ask him again to come over to your desk. This time, he acquiesces, perhaps because he has determined that you are calm and have caring intent. Meanwhile, the paraprofessional in your classroom circulates and assists your students with their work.
“I noticed that you interrupted the reading lesson. What's going on?”
“Your lesson sucks.”
“What was wrong with the lesson?”
“I hate reading. Reading is stupid.”
“Reading can be difficult,” you nod. “I had a strategy I was going to share today to help you become a better reader. I'd really like to see if it can help you, but if you interrupt my lesson it's difficult for me to help you. You know, we've talked about this before – how when you are feeling bad about something, or when you are upset in some way, you sometimes interrupt by shouting out or making noise. Do you remember our last conversation about this?”
“Yeah.”
“What was the strategy we talked about using when you can tell that this is happening?”
“Stop. Take a deep breath. Count to 10. Then ask myself, ‘What are my choices?’”
“Awesome. I can tell you were really listening because you remember all the steps perfectly. Did you try using that strategy today?”
“No.”
“Could you try it during the reading lesson? I'd really like to see if the lesson I'm going to teach the class can help you.”
He nods.
“Let's review the steps first just to make sure this is going to work. I'm going to begin my lesson, and you may get frustrated as you try it out for the first time. You can feel yourself beginning to get upset. What are you going to do?”
“Stop. Take a deep breath.”
“OK, now let me see you do it.”
The student takes a deep breath and counts on his fingers. ‘What are my choices?’”
“What are your choices?”
“I could keep bothering the class.”
You nod.
“Or I could see if I try again, I could read better,”
“Which is the better choice?”
“Try again.”
“Let's go back and try it out.”
You instruct students to put aside their worksheets for now and that you will allow them to complete them later. You begin your reading lesson again.
End scenario
I began with this scenario to demonstrate how specific therapeutic principles and techniques can be utilized when confronting challenging students in the classroom.
Here are a few things the teacher in this scenario did well:
• Modeled the use of explicit strategies of self-control, such as:
◦ Redirecting his focus to things he could control
◦ Deep breathing
◦ Positive self-talk
◦ Stepping away from power struggles
• Maintained a caring professional relationship with his students
• Prepared with a backup plan to keep students occupied during such moments
• Successfully de-escalated an aggressive student and guided him through the problem-solving process by using:
◦ His knowledge of and relationship with the student
◦ A Life Space Interview1
When I first began teaching in a self-contained special education setting, I was greatly underprepared not merely for the demanding act of teaching itself, but more critically for the deep-seated social and emotional challenges I would encounter. How does one respond to a child who screams and kicks the desk for an hour when you place a sheet of paper in front of her during a writing lesson? How does one respond to a child who becomes verbally or physically aggressive when he is not called upon immediately every time he raises his hand? How does one respond to a child who experiences bouts of neurosis in the afternoon and will assault other students, accusing them of calling him names (and they have said nothing)?
There are no easy answers to these situations. But fortunately, there are some concrete systems and methods that can assist teachers and schools in caring for and nurturing challenging students.
First, however, let me state the importance of maintaining your own emotional and physical well-being. Teaching challenging students is a stressful and emotionally charged endeavor. Exercise, a healthy diet, and adequate sleep (I know, I can hear teachers laughing) are necessary to maintain a strong immune response and to be prepared to perform and present in front of the classroom each day. But beyond care of body, the stress that you must endure necessitates care of mind and a strong sense of well-being.
If you can’t cope with your own emotions and reactions when experiencing stress, you will be unable to provide guidance to students who have undergone or are currently experiencing trauma or stress. Some students are experiencing events and situations at times nearly incomprehensible to someone who has not lived through them.
When I get glimpses into the reality of the lives of some of my most challenging students, it can be so heart-rending that I can’t discuss what I am feeling nor what is going on in my classroom to my wife, family, or friends. If left to fester, these emotions will eat away at my capacity to cope with stressors in my personal life, in addition to the stressors undergone in my professional role.
There are many ways to cultivate mental and emotional resiliency and nurture a sense of well-being, and ultimately, what methods you utilize will be based upon your personal preferences, values, and circumstances. But some possible ways are:
• Daily meditation2 or prayer3
• Reflective writing in a journal or blog. Martin Seligman suggests writing down three things that went well each day and their causes4
• Setting aside time each week to interact with friends, family, or other social networks5
Taking care of yourself in this way will enable you to be a stable, strong, and constructive presence in the life of your students. If you are unable to self-regulate your emotions and model positive coping in the face of stress, aggression, and sadness, how can you expect your students to be able to? Studies of leadership have demonstrated that the ability for self-regulation in the leader translates into greater ability for self-regulation in followers.67
So when that moment in the classroom comes when you are confronted with a challenging student, you will be able to take a deep breath and remain calm because you are centered and strong in your sense of self.
As you stand there in that moment of aggression, insult, disruption, or acting out from a student, feeling rage, frustration, or despair, it is important to recognize that you are channeling the very feelings that your student may be experiencing. In a very strange and unfortunate -- but perhaps wholly necessary -- way, they are sharing with you some of their deepest and darkest inner self. They are asking you for help.
By channeling these emotions in a proactive and positive manner, you are modeling coping skills for your students, and setting the tenor for guiding them through their own storms. In order to do so, you must utilize therapeutic techniques and conversations.
Fortunately, contextual therapeutic techniques have been developed specifically with the teacher and exactly the type of student you are dealing with in mind. In my first year of teaching, the social worker in my school lent me a copy of her book, Life Space Crisis Intervention: Talking With Students in Conflict8. I had heard of it before, and knew that it was exactly the sort of perspective I needed. I drank in passages such as this:
Understanding and self-control is required to disconnect from the struggle, putting aside personal emotions that arise in reaction to a student's behavior. Again, the expression “dispassionate compassion” is a useful way to think about emotional reactions during the Conflict Cycle. Reject the natural instinct to win out over the student; it is not necessary. Through careful self-monitoring, you can stop your own potentially destructive involvement in the Conflict Cycle. By recognizing the existence of your own counteraggressive feelings, you can exercise choice and control over your own behavior, and not allow yourself to be drawn into the Conflict Cycle (p. 35)
Life Space Crisis Intervention (LSCI) hinges on a fundamental principle: moments of crisis and conflict are opportunities for learning9. By guiding children through the problem-solving process in the context of what led up to the event of crisis or conflict, they gradually learn to build self-awareness and cope with similar situations in the future. This guidance is performed through a therapeutic conversation called the Life Space Interview (LSI). In some studies, LSCI has demonstrated reduction in disruptive student behavior, with sustained results10. Furthermore, LSCI trained personnel are less likely to utilize coercive strategies, and their negative feelings towards students and their families are reduced, in tandem with reduced student referrals out of the classroom11 12.
There are concrete steps and techniques that the adult caregiver can utilize to guide the student through what led up to the event and begin problem-solving how they could have chosen to act differently. The steps of the Life Space Interview are embodied by the acronym I-ESCAPE, which stands for: Isolating the conversation; Exploring the student's point of view; Summarizing what they are feeling and expressing to you and translating it through your adult perception; Connecting their feelings to their behavior; discussing Alternative choices that could have been made; developing a Plan and/or Practicing the new choice; and finally, Entering the student back into the original setting. These steps can be viewed in the scenario that this piece commenced with. The teacher holds the conversation as privately as possible in the back of his room. He asks the student what is happening, and rephrases what the student is expressing in a manner that focuses the conversation on solutions. You may notice that the teacher doesn't spend much time exploring the student's point of view in this particular conversation. What can be observed is that similar conversations have occurred in the past and the teacher therefore cuts to the chase. These conversations are not Freudian, free association couch therapy conversations -- when performed by a classroom teacher, they must necessarily be concise and focused on solutions, with the goal of de-escalating a student’s emotions, providing an opportunity for learning, and allowing them re-entry into the classroom routine. Finally, the teacher ensures that the student has practiced and role-played the strategy to be used in the future.
Without licensed training and guided practice in this method of conversational therapy, it is difficult to implement. In my second year of teaching, I was fortunate to be trained in Therapeutic Crisis Intervention13 (TCI), which was developed by Cornell University for residential care settings from the principles and techniques of Life Space Crisis Intervention. It is also important to note that the full implementation of LSCI is incredibly more complex and nuanced than I have presented here. However, here are a few fundamental therapeutic principles and strategies that can be gleaned from the LSI process that I hope you can take back to your classroom and apply immediately:
• Crisis and conflict are learning opportunities best addressed within the context they've occurred -- which places you, the teacher, as the most logical therapeutic guide
• Make therapeutic conversations with students as private as possible. If you don't have the option of leaving your classroom, create a niche where quiet conversations can occur while you continue to monitor your class
• Active listening is highly important when engaging in conversations with students. This means resisting your innate urge to lecture, reprimand, or solve your students' problems for them. However, for students that struggle with verbalizing or critical thinking, explicit strategies can be suggested, as the teacher in the beginning scenario has done
• Use reflective statements -- repeat or rephrase what students have said directly back to them. After they have spoken at length, summarize and interpret what you have understood to make sure you are on the same page. If they do not agree with your perception, then return to the active listening phase
• Through a series of ongoing conversations with students, you will begin to learn more about what a particular student struggles with, and to help them understand this struggle within themselves. These conversations thus establish a relationship based on trust, in which you coach and foster independent problem-solving skills in your student
• The ultimate goal of a conversation, beyond building a relationship with your student, is to enable the student to realize practical choices and strategies that can be made in the future. This requires the opportunity for practice and role-playing
Any way you slice it, a Life Space Interview is a time intensive process. Pulling a student aside for a private conversation is a difficult thing to do when you are the sole teacher in the classroom or when you are under pressure to push through a curriculum. However, the real question is: can we afford not to invest this extra time in our most challenging students? Valuable learning time will be lost, either to disruption or to one-on-one conversations. The difference is between helping a child or leaving them to suffer alone.
At the very start of my scenario, you'll notice that I included mention of a student who the teacher does not have a strong relationship with. The teacher is frustrated by his inability to gain control of her. I included this for a reason: it takes great humility to teach challenging students. Even with well delivered approaches like LSCI and strong relationships, you can't change the lives of all your students with deeply entrenched social and emotional difficulties on your own.
It takes a whole school to address the needs of students that are experiencing acute or chronic stress in their lives. Having systems in place, such as positive behavioral interventions and supports (PBIS)14 and a quiet space for de-escalation, can be critical in providing the attention and care that students with great needs require. Furthermore, having well-trained and competent counselors, social workers, paraprofessionals, and psychologists is essential.
It is my belief that whole schools -- all the staff, including the administration, custodial staff, and aides -- should be trained in LSCI, TCI, or a similar therapeutic methodology. Perhaps expecting that this could even be accomplished in a time of ever diminishing budgets is unrealistic. But I think the ultimate cost of ignoring childrens’ mental health needs is far greater. Students are arriving in our schools with overwhelming psychological needs. They sometimes build relationships with the security guard, the payroll secretary, a paraprofessional, or a trusted school aide. That staff member could serve as a critical figure in providing guidance during times of crisis by utilizing the therapeutic conversation techniques discussed in this article. For such students, that staff member could be the difference between learning from moments of crisis and conflict, or further solidifying dysfunctional habits of mind.
Working with challenging students is hard. But with a therapeutic approach, training, and whole school support, professionals can make a tremendous difference in a child’s life.