TEACHING GENTLE
RESPONSIVE PRACTICES THAT CAN HELP CALM THE CHAOS IN CLASSROOMS
BY ALANNAH MCGREGOR AND AVERY GRAY P
icture this: you have a lively class of students and it’s time to get ready to go outside. It’s winter and you know what that means … snow pants. You have a stu- dent crying because their mittens “don’t fit right,” a stu- dent who has been ready for five minutes and is now
climbing on top of other students’ bodies, and a student who has just informed you that they peed in their snow pants and boots. Are you feeling overwhelmed? Teaching has not become easier post-pandemic, for any grade. As
educators in public schools, we are no strangers to incident reports, evacuations and behaviour plans. Many students seem to have little tolerance for frustration. Te smallest perceived problem can unsettle them. If you feel like much of your time is spent putting out meta- phorical fires, you are not alone. In working with seasoned and new educators, we’ve discovered
that the traditional compliance-based approach to teaching only es- calates the behaviours we see in our classrooms. Te “I am the adult, and you will listen to me” approach may send students into a fight, flight or freeze response, none of which are conducive to learning. So, what do we do?
TRANSITIONING TO GENTLE TEACHING
We have spent the last few years moving towards a “gentle” or respon- sive model of teaching. Tis responsive approach allows us to build connections with students and address the specific skills they need to learn in order to regulate their behaviour. Aſter all, self-regulation is a learned skill. Our goal is to model and foster these skills for our students, so they are able to function in a classroom environment. A dysregulated student is generally not able to learn or participate in classroom activities. With that in mind, self-regulation is the founda- tion for everything we do in the classroom.
8 ETFO VOICE | WINTER 2024 ➔
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