working out conflict with students (student teaching learning log)

[This was a "learning log" from my first student teaching; "TJ" = my cooperating teacher. I was supposed to send them in regularly, but this one--due Oct 3--was turned in later, reconstructed from notes, which is why it says "around this time," meaning, "back around Oct. 3, here's what was going on.]

Around this time I was extremely stressed out for about a week. I felt that I was doing everything wrong, that I was a horrible teacher and a horrible person--in large part because it was suddenly clear that there were very few weeks left in the quarter, and I did not feel that I had accomplished my goals in either of my classes.

Several incidents with students occurred around this time, which were probably both a result and a cause of my stress level. An African-American student in one of my classes (call her Danielle) told me she felt I was mocking slavery and making stereotypes about African-Americans. I knew that this had been a misunderstanding, but the sheer randomness of it made me feel that there's nothing I can do--I'm a bad communicator and students will never understand anything I say to them. Separately, another (white) student, Elisa, felt that I had put her down, and ran out of the room sobbing; in this case, I had indeed been frustrated with her. Still another student (Kayla) became very angry and lashed out at me, and I lost my temper in response--I handled it by leaving the room (it was during the "study skills" class where students are mostly self-directed) and asking TJ to intervene.

TJ taught me a lot in how she handled all these situations with students. In each case, we sat down with the student in question and first listened to her. TJ asked questions to draw the students out and tried to get a sense of how the student was feeling about life in general. Then, she asked the student to talk about the incident that had upset her, "using 'I' messages." Finally, only after these processes were complete (taking five to fifteen minutes per student) did she ask me to respond. By this time, in cases where I had been angry, defensive, upset or otherwise emotionally off-balance, the student's heartfelt words, uninterrupted for several minutes, had helped remind me that this person was fragile and unhappy and that I was responsible for trying to provide her with a stable, supportive, consistent environment. Any personal, egocentric responses I had had melted away and it was easy to be calm, professional, and compassionate, and to reach a satisfactory resolution.

For example, we found that a relative of Danielle's was hospitalized in a coma from a stroke; that outside of school, Danielle was the full-time caregiver for the patient's infant daughter (and designated adoptive parent should the patient fail to recover); AND that Danielle was going in for tests because it was suspected that she suffered from the same medical condition that had caused her godmother's stroke! By the time Danielle had finished explaining all this, and had then talked about how upsetting some of the class discussions about racism had been to her, her anger toward me seemed to have already dissipated: she had started out refusing to look at me, but before we even moved on to discuss the specific "incidents" in question, she had pulled a picture of the baby out of her purse to show me. The specific "who said what, and what did it mean" seemed almost an afterthought. I could see how, if we had jumped straight to that, it would have been very difficult for Danielle to hear me at all, what with everything else that filled her mind and heart that day. Instead, we ended up strategizing how to talk about racism in class without having any students make comments that were painful for other students to hear. Making Danielle a part of planning the class seemed to help her know what was the intended *point* of discussions about racism, whereas previously she had felt unsure of what my beliefs were and where I was trying to go with the discussion. She still didn't enjoy or participate in the discussions, but her comfort level seemed to go up somewhat. I think I can improve on this further and will be keeping it an open question in my mind.