Day Five

This week we have been talking about communication, body language and how to talk to adults and children and how to treat them differently. We made interview questions to ask the teachers we are currently working with. One of my questions was 'how do you communicate with parents when they are upset?' She responded with, "well because I am a music teacher I don't have many parents that come barging in my door screaming at me so it really is not a big deal." She also told me that a teacher has to be straight to the point and not get caught up in what the parent is saying. When talking to a parent you only can talk about their child and not about any other students because if you were to get into it about another student it would be considered 'gossip' and if a teacher is in on the gossip that's probably not a good sign. I also asked her about how she deals with a misbehaving student. She said that she doesn't really have that problem anymore because of the routine that she has had for many years and how they already know what to do when they come into her classroom and they know exactly how to act while they're in her room. But, when she did have that problem she usually just was very stern with the children. She told me not to be afraid to be too strict with them because they will behave if I take authority. Another thing she said was that I should use 'silence.' If the students are having a problem with talking, which is usually the case, I should tell them that if they dont know how to be silent then we'll just have to practice. So she'll set the timer for about 5 minutes and leave them in silence so they know that she means business. This was a great expierence for me because I learned early on how to deal with angry parents and with misbehaving students and this is something that I will already know to go into a classroom and teach my own students.