15 Teacher Skills to Grow in 2025...CHECK-IN #3

Greetings beautiful snackers! You may remember that I decided back in December to choose and highlight 15 skills I wanted to grow this year. Of the fifteen, this may be the most difficult. At the same time, it's also the one that's most deeply connected to all the others. We all bring a personal script to work every day. It's made from snips of conversations had with our childhood caregivers and our teachers over the years. For some of us, it involves countless interactions as parents. In every case, they have molded our reactions and responses in often very subtle conscious and unconscious ways. My growth in this area is evolving in three streams.

I need to view words spoken and behaviors seen in my classroom as communication.

We all know that children act out in environments where they feel comfortable. So, if kids are acting out in your space...you've made them feel comfortable enough to do so! That can seem like little consolation when more troublesome behaviors are involved, but kids that might not have the language or headspace to use "school-appropriate" language to share their needs are using these other methods to advocate for their needs. So many behaviors that for so long I thought of as troublesome, actually were...in the sense that they were troublesome for me and my lesson. The child that is running from the classroom may have an unmet sensory need. The one that's hitting another child may have depleted dopamine and has learned that purposely doing something to get an adult to yell at them fixes the problem. I'm trying to lead with, "What is this child trying to tell me?" Trust me when I say that I get it that often teachers are being asked to deal with multiple behaviors/needs at once. The more often I ask myself that question, though, the more I find myself reframing all behaviors as a means of meeting needs, and that lens is allowing me to react in a more level-headed way in the moment.

I need to have more conversations with kids about what their needs are outside of the moment.

This is one of the other 15 things, but I mentioned that #3 is connected to many of the others! These conversations often end up being very rich and are beginning to lead to fewer challenges because one of the needs children may be feeling is being heard. So often, it's easy to simply shut down a conversation about a behavior in the moment for expediency ("You don't really need that right now. Go sit down.") Like so many other things, everything has a root cause. A seemingly compliant child that's trying hard (or not) to mask their needs seems manageable in the short-term, but I may have a larger challenge down the road when the child is no longer able to sit with unmet needs. The conversations have the added benefit of building a positive relationship with the student instead of every interaction being potentially adversarial. If I do need to speak to a student in the moment, I'm discovering that that asking kids in a non-threatening way (moving close, standing perpendicular instead of face-to-face, and using a quiet voice) if there's something I can help with helps with many challenges a large percentage of the time.

I need to think outside the binary.

We humans love to put stuff in nice neat containers, don't we? It's time for the idea of there being "good behavior" and "bad behavior" to be retired. A child in meltdown that's wrecking your classroom isn't "being bad". Again, there are needs thare are unmet and that are being communicated in the only way the child can in the moment. It's problematic, to be sure, and potentially unsafe for others, but it sits outside the simple classification of good or bad. Maybe it's easier for us to think about behaviors that way, but, again, it's a temporary "fix" at best. Now, take the child with "good behavior" sitting quietly and moving about safely, getting to work when asked, getting decent grades, etc. They might be, however, dealing with unresolved trauma, or is possibly staving off autistic burnout by mirroring friends, masking unmet needs, etc. An unexpected meltdown may be coming. Taking words and behaviors case-by-case as a way of gathering information about how to best meet a child's needs seems like the best answer.

A final word: flipping our inner scripts to be universally positive isn't one and done. I'm taking a lot of deliberate practice time making sure to quash any negative thinking whenever behaviors that need more thought and attention crop up. It's more difficult, of course, if I'm hungry, haven't had enough sleep, or if anything is going on in my personal life that is crowding out some of those positive thoughts. Spend as much time as you can doing fun things with positive people!

Please like and share this post if it's been helpful, and comment what's working well in your classrooms below! As always,

Happy snacking!

Chef Charles

Head chef

www.teacherssnacks.com