First published in Teach Nursery Magazine in March 2011.
You have little influence on the models of behaviour that are demonstrated at home. Through the children you hear echoes of chaotic home lives, snippets of bad attitudes and wisps of fruity language. Whatever the model of behaviour that exists at home, yours can be less improvised and perhaps more carefully planned. It will need to be. The tears, tantrums and screaming fits that get results at home for some children will not work in the classroom.
There is an advertising campaign in Australia showing parents smoking, arguing with other drivers, dropping litter etc as their children follow them doing exactly the same thing. The message is hard hitting but simple, children see, children do. In the classroom there are many influences on the way that children behave. Our behaviour has the most powerful effect.
Small adjustments to your own behaviour can have a huge impact: using more non verbal cues to adjust behaviour, subtle changes in tone, pace and volume of the voice, suppressing emotional responses to the most difficult behaviours, getting as close to the child's eye level as is practical, turning away from children and leading them rather than standing over them and directing, standing at the door, smiling and welcoming children in, feigning excitement well and disappointment brilliantly. On a Monday morning we may be able to improvise this performance convincingly. By Thursday afternoon lines are dropped and the audience begins heckling.
If children's behaviour meets the adult's emotion, disproportionate responses are inevitable. It is so tempting to grab the biggest sledgehammer to crack the smallest nut. It seems rational to come down hard, squash the behaviour, make sure it never happens again. Yet human beings respond differently to being squashed. Some are scared, others enjoy the attention, many begin to mistrust. If behaviour management was as simple as stamping on bad behaviour you would not be reading this article and I would have nothing to write about.
Your teaching performance needs to be carefully sculpted and honed. A polished and exaggerated model of a civilized human being needs rehearsal! To sustain a strong model and make it obvious, clear and unassailable is quite a skill. Honest self-reflection and at times direction from others is essential if you are to maintain the most convincing performance.
The effect of a good performance at the beginning of the day is palpable. Your enthusiasm for the arrival of the children sets the tone, your consistent routine makes the hand-over safe and predictable. The power of your smile is infectious, your energy irresistible. At other times your behaviour has a more gradual effect over time. It is the certainty of your positive reinforcement, the gently repetitive and insistent interventions and unflappable commitment to success that erodes bad habits and builds a strong model.
Being able to leave your own life at the door, to celebrate small success with a dramatic flourish, to deliver your lines with conviction all contribute to the best performances. At times it is Oscar winning: to pretend that you actually care about who goes first, to fake patience when you are asked the same question for the 9th time, repressing your natural urge to gag in the face of Kylie's dirty protest. It is your performance that directly affects the behaviour of the children. You reassurance that makes even a tricky day feel safe.
Working with young children every day has a strange effect on your ability to keep your reactions and responses proportionate. To the outside eye the paint squirted on the wall (again!) seems charming and amusing. From the inside the repeated defiance of a 3 year old can seem like a planned personal attack. An attack that is perfectly timed to cause maximum stress, disruption and confusion. You begin to think they are ganging up on you. Sometimes living in the world of the little people is disorientating.
We can feel ourselves raising our voices and yet we know that it is going to do more harm than good. We can feel the frustration rising and are conscious of what is happening yet it seems impossible to stop. Emotions are difficult to turn off. To really address our emotional responses we need to examine our thoughts. Emotions follow thoughts like ducklings following their mother. You see a situation, think on it and then emote. If you can tilt your thoughts you can change your emotional response. Reframing what you see and adjusting your response is an essential skill with all children. Spend your time looking for bad behaviour and you will see a lot of it. It will lead you to believe things are getting worse. Spend your time looking for good behaviour and the good behaviour seems to multiply.
Set yourself a simple aim. When children behave appropriately show them your encouragement, enthusiasm and excitement. When they choose not to follow instructions give them the calm, assertive, repetitive choice. Show them that your emotion is reserved for praise. Refuse to reward poor behaviour with an emotional response.
Changing your behaviour to change theirs not a quick fix. It is the drip feed of your positive model that has the most profound affect over time. Changing patterns of behaviour that emerge from home takes time, patience and sensitivity. The message is simple. ‘When you walk through the classroom door, different behaviours work here'.