Teaching Tough Kids

Simple and Proven Strategies for Student Success

Mark Le Messurier

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2009
• ISBN:
  9781135176419
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

How can you really make a difference for your students?

Teaching Tough Kids delivers a refreshing collection of realistic ideas to sustain the organisational and behavioural transformations of all students, particularly those who 'do it tough'; who learn and react differently. They are complex kids who find life tougher than most. Managing their emotion and behaviour presents educators with a spectacular challenge in schools today, and numbers are on the rise.

Filled with inspirational case studies, this book focuses on building improved relationships, structures and behaviours, rather than seeing the student as 'the problem' that must be fixed. Highlighting the value of promoting positive connections with students of all ages, the author presents ways to incorporate inclusive ideas into everyday practice and construct pathways for students to become engaged in their learning and achieve success.

This stimulating book shows teachers how to:

• build student connectedness to learning;
• set achievable goals for each individual child;
• support emotional stability;
• strengthen organisation patterns;
• address behavioural issues;
• improve homework planning;
• create friendships and deal with bullying.

Teaching Tough Kids takes a particularly close focus on students identified with Learning Disability, Attention Deficit Disorder, Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, Oppositional Defiant Disorder and Asperger Syndrome. Another group of students with executive functioning difficulties are emerging in schools. These are the kids who have endured neglect or too much stress and uncertainty in their lives and as a result display classic symptoms of hyperactivity, hyper vigilance and impulsivity.

Teaching Tough Kids will be of immense interest to teachers, student teachers, staff in Pupil Referral Units, SENCos and all those involved with Behaviour Support work.

What is our job?

CHAPTER 1

To accept we are
potent agents of change

As educators, we have the capacity to influence transformation within students. We can fill them with inspiration, dread, dreams, confidence or deep feelings of failure or resentment, and history tells us we are very good at it. Whether we know it or not, the mark we leave on every student who comes our way is absolutely enabling or disabling to them.

The results from Dr. Pamela Snow’s recent Australian studies remind us of some-thing many educators might predict, and wish for. Snow emphasises the dynamic influence educators have on the young people they interact with. She encourages teachers to think of themselves as public health professionals – holding each generation’s future emotional, economic, mental and physical well being in their hands (Snow and Powell 2008; Snow 2008). Snow’s research strongly suggests that the longer educators engage students in learning, the longer teachers can sustain vibrant emotional connections with students and the longer students remain at school with a willingness to learn the healthier and wealthier their life expectancy will be. Similarly, New Zealand researcher John Hattie tells us that ‘teachers make the difference’ (Hattie 2009). He says we have little control over what kids bring to us at school because 50 per cent of their variance in achievement is contributed to by genetics, personality and background. Our role is to teach them all, whether they happen to be large or small, eager or reluctant, fast or slow, red or blue, compliant or otherwise. The next largest variance in achievement for students is associated with the potent influence teachers have on them. Teacher influence accounts for about 30 per cent. Hattie believes it is what teachers know, what they say, what they do and how they show they care. They have a big impact on the climate of a school and the perception the community holds of a school. Teachers are powerful.

The young learners who are at the heart of this book are reliant on teachers who continually question and adjust what they think, say and do with kids in classes, in both the good and bad moments. Options to build the emotion, behaviour and learning of these kids require hard work, persistence, flexibility and faith. Rarely is there a silver bullet, and believing it is possible to measure some of the fabulous transformations seen within students in the same way literacy and numeracy levels are scored misses the spirit and depth of an educator’s work and influence. These students are dependent on our clever abilities to place an emotional lens on our work while delivering quality curriculum (Thornton 2008). The best any of us have to offer is a willingness to connect with students through a quality emotional lens. It is the only thing that will ever go close to providing any sort of inclusion that is remotely authentic.

Figure 1.1 Percentage of student achievement variance (Hattie 2009)

So before leaping into grand plans to encourage any student to lift their organisation, care, motivation, mood or responsibility let’s review what we have to offer: the depth of our personal resources and our understandings. A periodic stocktake helps us to resist the temptation to blame students for their poor functioning or under-performance. Without this awareness, the constructive influences we may be able to generate are likely to be erratic at best.

Take a look at a few guiding ideas that can help young learners, tough or otherwise, find success.

Your personal checklist, take the challenge and reflect

Do you offer relationship and engagement to students?

Engagement is an emotionally based experience and relationship is the catalyst. However, not all educators understand it or want it.

Nothing is as effective as real, everyday connections. They bubble to the surface as a smile, a wink, a silly face, a nudge, a dare, a joke, the zombie walk, a friendly eye roll, a thumbs up, a kind or a reassuring comment. They allow cooperative attitudes to be reinforced, stretched, reshaped and improved. What is more, the benefits arising from a trusting relationship provide the scope for everyone to make mistakes without a catastrophe ensuing. Without relationship and engagement with students all we have are a few flimsy tricks to deliver a little temporary control. Our best work is always done inside relationships with kids because as we truly get to know students the wonderful advantage of being able to read them so much more successfully begins to surface. It becomes easier to gauge changes in their emotions and we begin to know when to pull back and change tack. As relationship strengthens there is the scope to develop privately understood signals that convey vital messages between both. A look, in these circumstances, is worth a thousand words.

Experience alerts us that the first interaction is the one that really counts. It’s the one that becomes imprinted on their social memory, and is likely to be drawn on as trust in difficult times. Recovery from negative first impressions is always difficult. One of the best tips is to start by reading the student’s file before meeting them: anecdotal notes, reports, reviews and assessments. Skilled educators build on the judgements of those who have previously worked with students. Their collective opinion is valuable in appreciating the student’s journey and places an educator in a far more proactive position.

Do you ask kids,

‘What will help?’,

‘What can I do to help you?’

When a student’s performance is awkward or challenging they are almost always aware of the difficulties too. They know that their short concentration, impulsiveness, bossiness or emotionalism triggers tricky situations. When asked, a surprising number of kids know what could help and are prepared to trial ways to help. Others won’t know, but don’t despair because it’s not the idea that tips the balance. More often it is the act of asking and participating that makes the greatest difference. Make time to talk and listen. Let them know that many fine human beings have had difficulties and low motivation about school and schoolwork. They may, at the moment, find it difficult to embrace the school culture, but reassure them they are ‘normal’. A critical step is to normalise their functioning. Begin by teasing out what they enjoy and what they feel good at. Work to create balance so interests are rekindled and feelings of success are aroused.

Reflect on your own school days.

Can you recall the teacher who had a positive impact on you?

What did they say or do?

How did they gently build your belief in yourself?

How did they plant optimistic seeds?

How did they approach the tough conversations with you when they needed to?

In all probability the teacher that made a difference was the one who made quality relational connections with you.

Between teacher and child: what sort of emotion do you radiate?

I have come to a frightening conclusion.

I am the decisive element in the classroom.

It is my personal approach that creates the climate.

It is my daily mood that makes the weather.

As a teacher I possess tremendous power to make a child’s life miserable or joyous.

I can be a tool of torture or an instrument of inspiration.

I can humiliate or humor, hurt or heal.

In all situations, it is my response that decides whether a crisis

will be escalated or de-escalated, and a child humanized or de-humanized.

(Ginott 2003)

A teacher who radiates an emotional tone of acceptance, openness and enthusiasm creates an atmosphere where there is always potential to fine-tune the emotion and behaviour of students. Kids of all ages quickly gauge a teacher’s emotional character and make a decision whether they will trust and enjoy, or challenge and react against the teacher’s manner. As a student assesses their teacher they run through a set of questions.

Does my teacher like me?

Is my teacher moody?

Is my teacher short-tempered?

Does my teacher like me?

Is my teacher predictable?

Does my teacher shout?

Does my teacher like me?

Does my teacher get agitated by some of the kids too easily, too often?

Does my teacher prefer the smart kids?

Does my teacher admit when they are wrong or have made a mi...

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Half Title
• Dedication
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• About the author
• Foreword by Stephanie Newland
• Acknowledgements
• Online content on the Routledge website
• Introduction
• 1 What is our job?
• 2 A restorative spirit
• 3 Inspiration to improve concentration and task completion
• 4 Strategies to help organisation and memory
• 5 Creating the best start for challenging kids
• 6 Ideas to enrich social and emotional connections
• 7 Designs to lift moods
• 8 Mentorship
• Close
• Useful websites and further reading
• References
• Worksheets