How to Stay Calm When Your Classroom Management Plan is Imploding

Hey there teacher friends, welcome to this week's episode and here we're talking about something, oof, it's a little painful, but I think it warrants talking about because a lot of us carry shame around it and it isn't discussed in the open and it's this. How do you manage to main control? of yourself in a professional way when a class or a student, but typically it's when you feel they're all ganging up against you.

When students, a class is pushing you to your limit. You know when you see those stories on the news about the teacher caught on tape or on video or on some kid's phone and she is. you know, he or she is just losing their stuff at the kids. And while other people are super judgmental about that, Oh my gosh, it's terrible.

How could they, they shouldn't be in education. And you have that kind of pit in your stomach because you're like,  wow, I get it. Like I've, I've been dangerously close myself. So that's what we're talking about today. When you're really getting pushed to your limit, what are the strategies in that moment  to keep yourself under control and act in a way that is reflective of the real care and compassion that you have for students and not just reacting to their craziness.

Okay, it's gonna be a wild ride. I will see you on the inside.  Welcome to the Balance Your Teacher Life podcast, where we talk all things avoiding educator burnout, setting healthy boundaries and achieving better work life balance.  If you're passionate about education but tired of it consuming your whole life, you have found your home in the podcast universe.

I'm your host Grace Stevens and let's get going with today's show. 

Okay, so let's start off with the obvious. classroom behaviors in the last few years have  Escalated, there are many, many issues where we used to be that we had one or two students in the class who really, you know, maybe on behavior plans and had challenges. Now many classrooms, you know, there's not enough corners in the room to separate the kids.

That simply is what it is. It's a byproduct of, of many things, many of which were without, beyond our control. But here we are in this situation. So I am going to focus today on five strategies. Okay, when it's happening in the moment, five strategies. Now, of course, here's, I'm going to liken it to this. I have had anxiety on and off  my whole life.

And part of that, unfortunately, is this really unpleasant reality of having a panic attack. And I've got to tell you, it's like someone saying, well, here's a strategy for when you're having a panic attack. When you're having the panic attack. It's too late, you've already taken one step off the cliff, right?

Hold on, you're going to hit the ground eventually,  right? It's very hard to implement strategies when you've taken one foot off the cliff. The whole point and my success in managing my anxiety has been how to stop yourself from getting to that place in the first place, okay? So we're gonna start with that disclaimer.

The best strategy is to stop yourself from getting there in the first place. And that's what this whole podcast series and all of my work is about, right? Like, how do you stop yourself from burning out? How do you invest in authentic self care? How do you set boundaries so that you don't show up to class exhausted, overwhelmed?

easily triggered, reactive, instead of responsive,  right? All the strategies that I teach  lead to that, to you showing up. You know, my mantra is your energy teaches more than your lesson plans, right? So we all know that when we've invested time in creating classroom community, in having relationships with students, in showing up as our best selves, and you know, all those things. 

It's a very, you know, sounds so simple, it's so difficult, but it is a very holistic approach. I'm going to give you five strategies for when you're really right at that point, like what are some things I can do to make sure I protect myself, my students, my career. Honestly, right? You don't want to be the person on the six o'clock news.

I remember the last year in my classroom was the most challenging class I'd ever had and I felt really close to being pushed to my limit a few times and I remember panicking thinking I've had an exemplary career for 20 years, I don't like in the, in the last, you know, five seconds of my career. I don't want to mess this up here. 

It's a real horrible feeling and a real threat when you feel that you are being pushed to being out of control yourself. So the best strategy  is to stop yourself getting there in the first place, right? All the things, like I said, I talk about.  Self care, boundaries, having relationships with students, being proactive about the students who need counseling or special services, and all those things, right, not waiting till they're so dysregulated that they feel they have no choice other than to, you know, act like really in a, a non productive way, shall we say, that's a nice way of saying it.

Okay, so, With that disclaimer, all the things I teach  should help you from getting there in the first place, but we are all human. Listen, I have a tell. You know what a tell is? Like when people play poker and it's like, oh, I know that they're bluffing or this or that because they have a twitch in their eye or something.

I have a tell when I'm getting angry, which very rarely happens, but I got to tell you, my neck gets so red.  My neck and my chest get so red. And I remember one day I was just so angry at a child. He had done something so hateful towards another child. I had sent him to the office and then I found out he never showed up there.

I mean, we're talking an eight year old! And then he lied about it and he had just thrown this the slip that I sent him to the office with in the trash and Anyway, it was lunchtime and I was on the wall path. Like, just  Figured out that this is what happened and I, one of my teacher besties, she was in a different room than me, but she had her door open, all the kids were in the lunch room, so she had her door wide open so she could get some fresh air into the room, you know, without getting disturbed by kids, and she was sitting at the desk eating her lunch, and I stormed past her, and I gotta tell you,  She dropped that fork and jumped up and came rushing after me and she said, where are we going? 

Where are we going? I got to help you. You like, she knew I was literally about to lose my stuff, right? So she knew my tale. I hope you all have a teaching bestie like that, who has your back, who's like, I'm going to take care of this. for you. You seem too upset about it, right? And that's what it gets down to.

Like, really, her subtext was, you seem to be very triggered by this, whatever happened. You seem to be overreacting. You seem to be dangerously close to doing something unprofessional. I'm going to stop you from doing that. So that's great if it's lunchtime and your teacher bestie's sitting there. But when that's going down in your classroom,  there's no one to call.

What are you gonna like, oh, let me call my bestie to cover my class for a minute. I mean, there is nobody to call. That's the reality for most of us. Maybe there's an aide in another room that you know of, that you know that teacher that you could say, hey, can you send the aide over for a minute? But, you know, that's not really going to help, is it?

Are you really going to leave an aide, an instructional aide, with an out of control class or whatever bad situation you're in, right? We know the reality is it's down to us. Okay, so here's the five steps. Okay, after all that, preamble by saying try and avoid the situation if you can. Right. I know I sound like, you know,  as somebody in my life would say to me, okay, Dr.

Obvious. Okay. I know it's obvious. We should avoid it to begin with. Right. That's all the things we should be doing. Nevertheless, sometimes we find ourselves there. So when we find ourselves there with one foot off the cliff, as in my, you know, my panic attack analogy, here are five things. Okay.  So the first thing.

Always is safety first. You got, you got to, you know, triage a situation, like what is the danger level here, right? If other students are in danger, or if you yourself are in physical danger, yeah, you've got, you've got to go with the strategies you have, which are very few. They are very few strategies, the things that we're allowed to do is a room clear, call for help.

Again, you know, maybe if you work on a bigger campus, you have some kind of campus security can come help you out. I never have, like, it's kind of like be on your own. Maybe you could call for the nurse, right? Like who's going to come help you? So maybe you have to do a room clear. So safety first.

That should be obvious.  Number two  is.  Do not engage. I know that is so difficult and it sounds so obvious, but just have that in your head. Do not engage. Your number one goal is to respond to a situation,  not to react. Now again,  You, your ability to respond is going to be, you know,  as much as you have been able to, you know, protect your energy, set your boundaries, show up as your best self, right?

When you show up to class exhausted, depleted, stressed, it's hard to not take things personally and to engage with the student. Do not engage, you want to, or I always think in terms of everything I say, everything I do  is gonna either put water on the fire,  you know, or gasoline on it, right?  Don't be putting gasoline on the fire.

Do not. Engage. You should have a classroom management plan where it is very obvious to students. Well, you know, what the rules are of engagement, what, what is  required of you. So this is number three  is two. How  are you going to cope 

when a kid is yelling at you,  being disrespectful? Being their dysregulated self. You know, the tendency is for you to ramp up too.  And what you really should be doing is lowering your voice,  speaking slower,  and taking energy away from that situation. Not adding energy to it. Okay, and I know that's difficult to do.

Right. But just remember that have this visual of I am putting water on this not gasoline, right? So for me, this isn't a whole episode on classroom management.  That's something we could not tackle in one episode for sure. But for me, keeping it simple.  The classroom management for me always boiled down to the three C's.

Well, actually I would say there are seven C's, but just the three for right now. Calm,  consistent, consequences. And so for me, when a student was really ramping up, acting up, you know, the first decision was triage. Do I let this go? Is it worth engaging in? Can I deal with it later? If it isn't that important Or, you know, is it a safety issue?

But if it is something I need to address that isn't, you know, somebody's going to get hurt, but like, I can't have someone talking to me that way or acting this way, just state the rule and state the choice that the student has with the consequence, you know, the rule is. Blah, blah, blah.  You need to, if you don't follow the rule, this will happen.

I trust you'll make a good choice. You know, hopefully that will do it. If it doesn't, just remember, if it carries on going,  calm voice, speak slower. Take away energy. All right, so number one, we're going to triage. We're going to have to make a decision pretty quick. Am I engaged? You know, am I going to address this? 

Am I not going to address this? Do I need to keep students physically safe, right? Then if you decide you need to address it, don't engage. Don't make it personal, right? And number three is calm.  Slower voice, slower speech, take energy away. Now, here is something that will really help.  This is the one thing you can do.

Now, I know like, oh, you might hear, oh, count to ten, if you feel yourself getting angry. You know, maybe we don't have time to count to ten. Okay, but what you really want to do is avoid your physical response getting to a fight or flight mode. Right, you'd notice your body language is tense, you're holding your breath, you can feel your heart pounding, right, or in my case, I could feel heat around my neck and in my chest, right, that, that is my clue that I'm getting into that fight or flight mode, and that's really not helpful, and, and because I Number one, you're going to have the wrong energy to it.

Number two, you know, when you're in fight or flight, the logic center, your prefrontal cortex, it stops working, right? You're not making good decisions. The logic center isn't working. Now, remember that for students, when students are acting out of control, like you trying to reason with them sometimes is, you know, trying to get them to calm down first, right?

But how can you calm down something quick that you can do that you always come back to is. I have a strategy I teach, which is stop,  breathe,  ask. So SB, a, stop, breathe, ask. So first off, stop. Right? If you are like ranting and they're ranting and you're talking and quick and arms are waving and you, you know what it looks like when you're starting to get a little agitated, right?

Just, just stop. I would remind myself, stop. Like physically stop, like stop moving.  Staying still, close my eyes if I trust the class for just a second and take at least one real big belly breath. If you can,  take one good breath,  two breaths is even better. Activate your parasympathetic nervous system, right?

Kind of get you out of that fight or flight mode, right? And then ask yourself a question, right?  Keep it simple. You don't have much time. I always ask myself this question. In this moment, am I okay?  Right? In this moment, am I okay? Right, I might be being disrespected, I might be worried about saving face in front of the rest of the class, like all the things, but in this moment, am I okay?

And nine times out of ten, hopefully ninety nine times out of a hundred, the answer is yes. Do I have what I need to survive? Can I breathe?  Am I physically safe? Yes. In this moment, I am okay. I remind myself that. I stop,  I breathe, and I ask myself, In this moment, am I okay? And that is usually enough to calm down a little bit, right?

Now, later on, we're going to have time to ask ourselves, like, huh, why was I overreacting? What about this student's behavior was triggering me?  Right, one of the questions I always ask myself is, was this a mirror  or a wall? So a wall is something you butt up against, right, that you can't go around, but a mirror is something that's reflecting something back to you.

And I think if we're really honest with ourselves. Many times when we find ourselves overreacting to a situation it's because it's mirroring something in us that we haven't resolved for ourselves. For example, I found it hard sometimes to deal with students who had, like, I was very empathetic and I knew all the strategies when students had anxiety and panic or whatever, but there were other things that they had that I haven't quite resolved for myself that were triggering for me.

Right? They were a mirror. So I just had to recognize I am overreacting. Okay?  That's, that's for later when you've calmed down and you're beating yourself up that holy moly I almost lost my crap, excuse me, but it's true, at these kids today. Right? That's work for later. But in the moment the strategy is  SBA.

Stop. Just stop, stop,  breathe  and ask. And a good question for me is in this moment, am I okay? Yes. Because you wouldn't be in that moment if you decided you won't. Okay, you would have done the back to step one, triage, you'd have done a room clear or whatever else you needed to be physically safe.  All right, so  let's review where we're at right now till we get to number five. 

Number one, triage, safety first. Number two, do not engage.  Number three, calm, just take away energy. Lower your voice, speak slower,  move slower. And then number four,  stop, breathe and ask. Okay. Now, number five, this,  don't I say this a lot? This is the work of a lifetime. This is like advanced. But  let's do it.

I'm going to make a generalized statement,  but in my experience and in a lot of the studies that I've seen, I see it play out. A lot of times when we are upset,  it's not really the situation or the facts of the situation. It's the story about the facts that we're telling ourselves that is making us overreact. 

Alright,  so I'll say it again. A lot of times it's not the thing. It's the story we're telling ourselves about the thing, right? So, let's give an example. Let's say, sometimes I like to say stick to the facts and only the facts and I think about it like I'm taking a police report. Stick to the facts, man. No opinions, nothing else.

Just give me the facts. So maybe the fact is, right, the student's ignoring my request. The student talked to me in an aggressive tone. Now, those are the facts. Now, the story we're telling about ourself, that student has no respect for me, he thinks he can get away from any, with anything, his parents don't care, right?

Like, you, you got this whole drama that you've built in your mind that may or may not be true. He's, he has it out for me, he's trying to get me fired, right? No, the facts are,  the student's ignoring my request, he talked to me in an aggressive tone, this is the third time this week. that or this month that he's been late or whatever, right?

Here's a clue that you're not sticking to the facts, right? Because it's all happening on the subconscious level for most of us, unless we're very evolved. One of the clues that you're not sticking to the facts is the use of absolutes, right? So anytime you're using the word always or never or every time.

Like, that's simply not true. Nobody always does something or never does something or every time, right? Oh, that kid is always late. He has no respect for me. You know, the actual story is, let me go pull the  attendance and let me check. Oh yeah, he's been late three times this month. Well, that's not always.

You know what I'm saying? So really try and stick to the facts. Don't tell yourself a story about what it means because that's where you start taking things very personally and getting. Okay, so those are the strategies again, not a, you know, not a simple situation, no quick fixes, but I want to encourage you to have Compassion for yourself because I know there are only a couple of instances that I can really think of but they have stayed with me for years where I have really not been my gentlest, kindest self to a student and I, I mean I carried that feeling that one kid had just had a mess on, he just was dysfunctional and the mess on the floor and everything and I mean it had just been going on and on and on and one day I really just was so annoyed and and said, just pick up your crap off the floor.

Now, come on, who talks to a kid that way? I mean, I felt terrible. Like I went home and cried. Of course, I apologized to the student and the next day he couldn't care less. He didn't care less in the moment. I got to tell you, I mean, honestly, his life. was very chaotic, very dysfunctional, and I think, you know, he just felt very at home, having a big mess everywhere.

And no matter how many times, you know, I did do the right thing. I showed him how to, how to tidy up his desk. I explained why it was important. But you know, when it feels like it's the hundredth time you've done it that day. You just running short on patients. And I have to say the minute I raised my voice to him, you know, it was kind of a thing with him.

He would push other adults. I had noticed to kind of a breaking point. And then when they reacted by yelling, he seemed to visibly relax. I mean, I'm not saying it was a game for him. But you know, that's kind of what his nervous system was used to. It was the kind of chaos he was used to, you know, and he even said to me, Oh, it's okay.

I get yelled at all the time at home, which, you know, just makes you feel terrible. You know, I'm the adult. I should know better. I do know better. And you know, I try and do better, but it stays with you for years. I mean, I still remember it was over a decade ago. You know, some days you can be more irritable than others.

Just try. And take care of yourself. This is it's not just a class that's pushing you to your limits. At this point, it is the educational system is pushing all of us to our limits. Everybody is overextended. You know, when we complain about there's nobody to call, it's, you know. That poor school psychologist has a caseload that, you know, they can't keep up with.

The same with school counselors, the, the same with VPs and people in charge of, you know, behavior. It's like everybody is being pushed to their limits, okay? But at the end of the day, we are adults, we are professionals, and the it's on us to set the example and to mainstain the standards. So. I hope that you have a beautifully calm week, that nobody makes it their goal to, you know, push you over the limit.

And I hope that until next time you find some grace, you find some time to look after yourself, to save yourself from getting to that point. And as always, create your own path and bring your own sunshine, even if it's a little cloudy. So before we get going, I just have one quick request, a quick favour.

If you are finding this podcast helpful, encouraging, I would love to expand my reach. I really have a mission to empower as many teachers as possible and so if you could refer this to one colleague. It would mean the world to me. And if you have a little extra time, go ahead, smash those stars. That only takes a second.

And if you have a whole minute, maybe you could leave a quick rating or review. That would be awesome. But pay it forward.  Send a friend to the podcast.  They will thank you. And so will I.