The eternal rebirth of a reflective practitioner.

Thread:

My setting is incredibly challenging. There are times when I draw upon every ounce of my lengthy stock of in-action craft knowledge and experience just to survive the moment.

Some time back I had truanting pupils burst in and begin publicly humiliating me in from of my class whilst teaching. This class sat there laughing at the spectacle.

I was horrified.

After dealing with the mini invasion I rounded on the class and gave them a dressing down they didn’t forget. I told them how disgusted I was that they sat there laughing at a teacher being publicly humiliated.

We spoke about what happened. I painted a picture of teacher of colour for example being racially abused and the class laughing at it. The penny began to drop, you could hear a pin drop and it seemed that my message began to hit home. It wasn’t cool, their laughing wasn’t cool.

Today. Pupils burst in and stood there publicly baiting me. Same class.

I stopped teaching and looked directly into the eyes of each of my pupils as I scanned the class sat there in silence looking back at me.

While this was going on the pupil at the doorway went silent, left.

Seconds later another returned and stood in the doorway shouting animal noises at me, repeatedly looking for the coveted response. Again I turned to the class and looked into them. Again they kept their gaze on me in total silence.

The girl at the door went silent and walked off

I turned to my class and said a quiet calm “well done, look what just happened. You all ignored them, it made them feel stupid and they left. You did that, that’s the power of a community. Brilliant!”

The younger me might have got into a shouting match with the invaders. A not so younger me might have tried some form of dialogue to distract, bargain, maybe connect with them. But in vain as the motivation is to seek public (peer) adoration of their behaviour. I’m an irrelevance

Today I switched tack. This is my class, I’m responsible for the culture within it and I want my pupils with me because they want to be with me.

They’ve learnt a powerful lesson today.

So have I..