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Working With Defiant Kids: Communication Tools for Teachers
It is important that children are able to express and understand how they are feeling. Some children feel uncomfortable talking about their feelings, therefore combining discussion with an external activity will often help them open up about their feelings. It is important when working with children to remember to apply the strategies and techniques that work best with the child. For example, a toddler may be able to express their feelings using a finger puppet or a stuffed animal whereas pre-school aged children like to express their feelings through creative imagery, drawings, and feeling charts.
Sessions with children tend to be short and brief. When identifying the issue, keep the idea simple and at the level the child can identify with, e.g. a little boy called Tim wanted to get rid of his fears of vampires and monsters. In the session Tim indicated that he liked chocolate, therefore he was asked by the counsellor to make all the monsters into chocolate and place them in the sun and make them melt. This gave Tim control over the monsters as he could watch them melt away (Baumgardner, 1989).
Why do classroom conflicts between teachers and students seem to occur so frequently?
Conflicts are social power struggles and must always involve at least two parties. As conflicts between students and teachers appear to be so widespread, it might help to examine what factors tend to push each party into these power struggles.Students who are prone to conflict often do poorly in school. They may act out in part to mask their embarrassment about their limited academic skills. These students may also lack basic prosocial strategies that would help them to work through everyday school difficulties. For example, students may become confrontational because they do not know how to ask for help on a difficult assignment, lack the ability to sit down with a peer and calmly talk through a problem, or are unable to negotiate politely with a teacher to get an extension on an assignment. Students can also sometimes adopt defiance toward teachers as a deliberate strategy--because, in the past, this confrontational behavior seems to have 'paid off' for them in the form of reduced expectations for schoolwork or improved social standing with peers. The longer that a student has engaged in habitual confrontational behavior, the more time and energy a teacher will probably need to invest in specific strategies to turn that behavior around.Teachers who get pulled into power struggles with students may not realize that they are often simply reacting to student provocation. For each step that the student escalates the conflict (e.g., raising his or her voice, assuming a threatening posture), the teacher matches the step (e.g., speaking more loudly, moving into the student's personal space). In other words, a teacher allows the student to control the interaction. Furthermore, if an instructor has already decided that a student is generally defiant, the teacher may be overly quick to jump to conclusions, interpreting any ambiguous behavior on the part of the student (e.g., muttering in frustration during a test) as intended to be deliberately confrontational (Fisher et al., 1991). The instructor may then reprimand or criticize the student, triggering a confrontation.
What is the most important point to keep in mind when working with a defiant or noncompliant student?
The cardinal rule to keep in mind in managing conflicts with students is to stay outwardly calm and to maintain a professional perspective. For example, it is certainly OK to experience anger when a student deliberately attempts to insult or confront you in front of the entire classroom. If you react with an angry outburst, though, the student will control the interaction, perhaps escalating the conflict until the student engineers his or her desired outcome. If you instead approach the student in a business-like, neutral manner, and impose consistent, fair consequences for misbehavior, you will model the important lesson that you cannot be pulled into a power struggle at the whim of a student.
Are there other effective communication strategies that I can use with defiant students?
There are a number of supportive techniques that teachers can use to establish rapport and convey their behavioral expectations clearly to students, including:
Active listening. Active listening, or paraphrasing, is the act of summarizing another person's ideas, opinions, or point of view in your own words. Students who are chronically hostile and confrontational often believe that nobody truly listens to them. When upset, they frequently interrupt the teacher because they believe that the instructor does not understand their point of view.
Active listening is powerful because it demonstrates beyond a doubt that you have not only heard the student's comments but that you have grasped his or her opinions so clearly that you can repeat them back to the satisfaction of the speaker. Note, though, that active listening does not imply that you necessarily agree with the student's point of view. Rather, it shows that you fully comprehend that viewpoint. Students tend to view teachers who practice active listening as being empathic, respectful, and caring individuals. ,Here are some statements you can use when paraphrasing student comments:
"Let me be sure that I understand you correctly…"
"I want to summarize the points that you made, so that I know that I heard you right…"
"So from your point of view, the situation looks like this…"
Once you have finished summarizing the student's point of view, give that student the opportunity to let you know how accurately he or she thinks you paraphrased those views: "Does what I just said sound like your point of view?" And don't be surprised if the student clarifies his or her position at this point. ("Well, teacher, I don't think that you really meant to pick on me when I walked into class late, but when you called me by name and drew attention to me, I got really embarrassed!") Though a simple communication technique, active listening can transform a potential classroom conflict into a productive student/teacher conversation.
I-centered statements. When we tell oppositional students that they are engaging in inappropriate behaviors, we run the risk of having them challenge the truth of our statements or of taking offense at being criticized for their conduct. An instructor's use of I-centered statements can reduce the potential that teacher criticism will lead to student confrontation. Because I-centered statements reflect only the instructor's opinions and viewpoints, they are less incendiary and open to challenge than more global statements that pin blame for misbehavior on the student.
For example, rather than telling a student, "You are always disrupting class with your jokes and fooling around!," you may say, "Zeke, I find it difficult to keep everybody's attention when there are other conversations going on in the classroom. That's why I need you to open your book and focus on today's lesson."
Pairing of criticism with praise (adapted from Thompson, 1993). Sometimes you have no choice but to let a student know directly and bluntly that his or her classroom behaviors are not acceptable. Many oppositional students, though, have experienced a painful history of rejection in personal relationships and lack close ties with adults
No matter how supportively you present behavioral criticism to these students, they may assume that you are in fact rejecting them as individuals and react strongly to this perceived rejection. One strategy to reassure the student that you continue to value him or her as a person is to (a) describe the problem behavior that you would like to see changed, (b) clearly outline appropriate behavioral alternatives (b) praise the student about some other aspect of his or her behavior or accomplishments, and finally (c) state that you value having the student as a part of the classroom community.
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