Hi All!
The best way that my cooperating teacher, myself, and my EA have found for handling stress this year is to allow each other to take a break. Because there are 3 adults in the room, we find ourselves often leading discussions so that the other person can take a moment to de-stress. The most frequent example of this is when we are working with our behavior needs child. The other day he was in the hallway hitting, speaking disrespectfully, and throwing pencils under the door. I could tell the EA was at her wits end, so I stepped into the hallway and worked with her small group so that she could go inside and talk/vent to my cooperating teacher. This switching of roles happens quite frequently in our room without any difficult transitions.
The same type of scenario happens in the morning when it is just I am my cooperating teacher in the room. She might be leading reading groups and the kids can get really talkative. Her personality is to yell when she isn't getting respect and have the kids put their heads down, so when that happens we transition to me reminding the kids to keep quite with heads down at their desk and she will run to the copy room or to get a drink of water during that time.
When I am leading a lesson I try to always stick with it through my stressful portion of the lesson because I am trying to improve my teaching skills. However, when teaching I know I can always ask Ms Perez to switch roles with me momentarily so that I can watch how she would handle the situation.
I appreciate your focus on how to handle stress during the teaching day. I remember reading--a few posts ago--how you try to keep balance outside of school by doing the activities you most enjoy, so with this post, it was interesting to read about stress management in the course of a school day.
ReplyDeleteAre you confident that when you're in your own classroom, you'll have the support of at least one other adult throughout the day?