Solice for the Soft and Shaky Teacher
The #IATEFLPL talk that left the greatest impression on me at last weekend was the one given by Peter Medgyes on class discipline entitled, ‘Why won’t the little buggers behave’*. He described three types of teachers, the strict and serious, the firm but fun, and the soft and shaky. He used extracts from his diary of a two-year period when he taught teenagers to illustrate his soft and shakiness and how he felt he was losing the daily struggle to get his little buggers to behave. At the end of the period, when he had more or less given up and ever winning the battle, he confessed as much to the students and they revealed that they had been better behaved in his class than in any other. His advice to fellow soft and shaky, teachers was to stop whining about students’ behaviour and instead relish the daily struggle of class management. As a teacher who feels, at times, that I am on the soft and shaky side my classes of teens, I identified with his account took a lot of heart from this conclusion. My experience in this area has been that it is never going quite as well as you hope, or quite as badly as you fear, and if you are persistent and consistent you will win them over in the end.
*This title is a nod to Sue Cowley’s book, Getting the Buggers to Behave.