The final experience I wish to address occurred not with one of my classes but while I was supervising year 10 playing indoor soccer for sport on Thursday afternoons. The girls were playing underneath the library in an open undercover section in the school. The roof was quite low so the girls were instructed that not hard kicks were not allowed. However as the game went on it became apparent that the two teams had students in them that were ‘enemies’. The game began to escalate in terms of its roughness and silliness so I stopped them and told them all to relax and calm down for a few minutes and then we would resume the game if they could play properly. I also warned the girls that anyone with dangerous behaviour would be ‘red carded’ and would have to sit next to me on the sideline. The game was resume five minutes later and majority of the girls had taken the instructions on and played a safe fun game. During the afternoon a teacher came down to talk to me and in the few minutes my head was turned, one student had set up a penalty kick not even 2 meters from the goalie. She obviously got the goal and luckily did not hurt the student who was on goals. However when I noticed what had happened out of the corner of my eye I immediately stopped the game and disallowed the point. The student who was kicked the penalty began asking why it was disallowed. I explained that it was dangerous to kick a ball at another student that class and reminded her I had explained dangerous behaviour would not be tolerated. She began arguing back with comments such as ‘how is that too close’, ‘I play indoor soccer, that was enough room’ and ‘you don’t know anything about soccer’. Rather than instructing her to sit down, I engaged in the argument with her, wanting to prove her wrong and make her admit she knew it was dangerous.
This was my mistake. According to Linsin (2010) fighting with students is stressful, makes you lose your cool, causes you to behave in a manner you’ll regret, wastes time, creates friction between you and your students, makes you less likeable and encourages students to challenge your authority. Linsin (2010) also outlines five steps in which to avoid fighting with students.
1. Follow Your Classroom Management Plan – Arguments begin when the teacher asks a student to stop doing something rather than enforcing a consequence.
2. Give A Warning – Your classroom management plan should include a warning for the first offense.
3. Move On – After giving a warning, or a time-out if it’s a second offense, turn away from the student immediately and continue with whatever you were doing. Don’t give your students an opportunity to argue or explain their behavior. There is no need.
4. Pause/Repeat – If you find yourself in a situation where a student is determined to stand in front of you to plead his or her case, maintain eye contact, pause several seconds, and then repeat the warning.
5. Enforce A Consequence For Arguing – If the student continues to argue, enforce the second consequence.
I think that step 3 is the time in which to quell the argument with students. Rather than engaging in the argument with the student to make her and others see she was wrong, I should have given her an individual warning and moved on. Or the other option I could have taken was to immediately implement the consequence of sitting down next to me as the class had already received a warning. In future situations I will move on from the warning rather then attempting to prove a student wrong.
References
Linsin, M. (2010). Why You Should Never Argue With Students; And How to Avoid It. Retrieved from: http://www.smartclassroommanagement.com/2010/01/23/why-you-should-never-argue-with-students-and-how-to-avoid-it/
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