Thinking Like a Teacher; LOVE IS NOT ENOUGH

As teachers, we want to have a positive classroom atmosphere. We want our students to look forward to coming to school in the morning, to love being in our classrooms, to enjoy learning. Any teacher who does not delight in those things has made a truly bad career choice. No one enters the teaching profession wanting to nag and criticize, but many teachers end up doing so every day. At the beginning of their careers, those teachers wanted to be positive. But, wanting to be positive and having the skills to pull it off are miles apart.

It is the undying hope of green teachers that if they just love their students and are nice to them, everything will turn out fine. That is the sweet dream of the uninitiated. It will get a smile from anyone more experienced in raising children. To succeed, you will need both love and skill. Love without expertise is powerless.
One of the key skills of successful teaching is meaning business. Any teacher can tell you that you have to mean business. But, how do you do that?

Meaning business involves your entire being. It is mental, emotional, and physical. In this segment, we will look at the mental aspect of meaning business. The mental part of meaning business centres on a clear understanding of consistency -- consistency when setting limits on children's obnoxious behaviour. Effective teachers and parents are consistent, but they are consistent within the context of nurturance. Perhaps a story about my mom will set the tone.

NO MEANS NO

My mum had been a schoolteacher, and I never doubted that she meant business. I have very clear memories of her meaning business. I remember one time bugging my mom for something to eat in the late afternoon after my little playmate had gone inside for a snack of gingerbread. I deserved gingerbread too. I opened my negotiations where all children begin their negotiations, at whine level number one.
"Mum, can I have something to eat? Tommy's getting gingerbread."
My mother turned from the stove and said, "Fred, I'm going to have this meal on the table in 45 minutes. Now, I don't want to ruin your appetite."
Naturally, I escalated the negotiations to whine level number two.
"But Mum, can't I have something? Don't we have some ginger snaps? I'm hungry!"
My mother said, "Fred, I am not going to give you a snack now and then watch you sit at the dinner table and just peck at your food."
My mother always used bird analogies when describing my eating habits as a child. But, I knew what to do.
I went to whine level number three without missing a beat.
"But this isn't fair! Tommy gets gingerbread. Can't I have something?"
My mother put down her spatula and turned slowly to face me. She looked at me intently as she wiped her hands on her apron and said, "Fred, I said no, and no means no."
I couldn't just let go of it. After all, life had been unfair.
"But why can't I? Tommy gets..."
I was cut off in mid-sentence. My mother, with eyes squarely focused on mine, said, "Fred, I am not going to stand here and listen to your yammering. ('Yammering' was my mother's code for, 'You are really pushing it.') You may either go outside to play, or you may open your mouth one more time and end up sitting on the stairs until dinner."
My sense of injustice must have been profound.
"But, why can't I..."

Those were the last words spoken. My mother stood before me with eyes fixed and finger pointing to the stairs. I felt something inside wilt. I knew it was over. I was silently ushered to the stairs to sit.

I must have been there for 45 minutes. Mother finished preparing dinner, and Dad came home from work. My older brother, Tom, came home from playing up the street and was given a quick gesture to leave when he started to ask me why I was sitting on the stairs. Mother set the table and called Dad and Tom to dinner. When they were all seated, Mother turned to me and, without a trace of upset in her voice, said, "You may join us now." I was grateful. And I learned that Mum was not fooling around when she said, "No."

I have no idea how many times I was sent to the stairs while growing up, but I am sure that it was more than once. From those experiences, I learned two very important lessons about parenting that served me well in later life:
Rule #1 -- No means no. Rule #2 -- I am not going to stand here and listen to your yammering.

CONSISTENCY

Consistency is a word that everyone knows but few people understand. We all know that it has something important to do with child rearing. But, exactly how does it work? Consistency permits only two conditions. You are consistent or you are inconsistent. There is nothing in between.
The irony of consistency is that the closer you come to being consistent before you fail, the worse off you are. If the parent cracks easily, the child does not need to be a world-class yammerer in order to succeed. But, if the parent does not crack easily, the child must learn to play hardball in order to win. By making kids work hard in order to win, we train them to be ruthless and persistent.

THINKING LIKE A TEACHER

If you want to act like a teacher, you must think like a teacher. For starters, you must be truly consistent. Very consistent won't make it. We all know how obnoxious brat behaviour is. We have friends and loved ones who have raised brats. We shake our heads when thinking about their weenieism and say to ourselves, "That will never happen in my classroom." But beware! Weenieism can sneak up on even the most experienced of teachers. It can easily go unnoticed.