You might have heard the old joke about the guy who goes up to a doctor at a party. "Doc," he says as he pokes his stomach, "Whenever I touch this spot it hurts. What should I do?"
"Stop touching it," the doctor replies. We laugh at the slapstick humor with its obvious simplistic solution for the suffering man's dilemma. Yet, somehow, when it comes to classroom management or working with a challenging student, we know we shouldn't do a lot of the things we do that poke an already delicate situation. Nonetheless, when buttons get pushed, we feel the unpleasant sensation that follows and get triggered into reaction. I know. I had Section 8C. Believe me—there was a whole lot of touchy-feely sensation going on with that class.
Reactions happen to the best of us. Why don't we do better, presuming we know better? What can teachers do to dial down reactive, knee-jerk behavior? How can we help students become less reactive as well? If the only answer were as simple as "STOP."
Why We React—the Legacy of Fear, Inaccurate Appraisal, Attitude, Attribution, Judgment, Belief, and Being Confounded!
The day I declared "zero tolerance" on Section 8C, I'd had enough of their behavior. At the time, I simply didn't know what else to do. Everything that I'd tried in other classes and other schools and with some really difficult learners wasn't working with this group!
After months of deep digging into my bag of tricks, reaching out to colleagues for suggestions, and still coming up short in