A Control Freak Loosing Control

I have laughed so much this week with my students and colleagues, this week will probably rate amongst one of my favorites for this school year. With that sad, one of the funniest moments this week ( licking elbows anyone), was a result of me trying to lighten the mood after one of the darkest moments in our class history. My students now refer to this moment as " Miss loosin' her cool".

Anyone who knows me knows I don't loose my cool, I'm very laid back and if all else fails sarcasm will handle the situation. So how do I manage to stay in control of myself no matter what, simple- control everything . . . which obviously is not possible in a classroom full of twenty-nine students. I have tried so hard this year to control my one atomically disruptive student that slowly, but surely he has become the one in control. He controls the tempo of the class, my mood and even worse classroom instruction.

 Honestly, my thought process was that if every time someone in my class received a negative correction and he was the common denominator, then I just needed to eliminate his negative behavior and I would no longer have a slow uprising on my hands. The problem with that is that this students behavior has very little to do with me and acres to do with situations at home that a far out of my reach.

About the time that I was bending over from laughing so hard at the numerous attempts to lick the elbow I looked up and saw this overactive student laughing along with us and actually completely his work, but more importantly I saw the rest of my class laughing along. I realized that even though I can't control every aspect of my students life and I definitely can't control my students actions, I can control the environment that I provide for them. I can introduce them to healthy relationships with adults, I can provide a place where they share their opinions with very little judgement ( they have learned sarcasm well from me), I can help them understand the power of hard work and most importantly I can make them laugh, until they cry- which is highly possible with some of the comedians in my class.

So next week when I'm starting to look at that one student with ideas of how I can subdue him, I'm praying that I remember to stop looking at him and starting looking at the needs of my other twenty-eight students who only deserve my best not my worst.

So what have you learned this week dear friends, who has taught you something that you weren't expecting to learn anything from?