In this episode, I am going to be talking about how to change the atmosphere in your classroom. I know sometimes we have classrooms that feel overwhelming, stressful and hard so I want to show you how you can actually change that so that you don’t walk in feeling overwhelmed and stressed but you actually get to set the mood and tone of your classroom.
I am going to give you four keys to do this effectively in your classroom. We all have days when we feel overwhelmed and stressed in the classroom. Maybe the kids are acting up, maybe there’s a lot of work on, and you are feeling overwhelmed. This can be really discouraging and it can really affect your mood. It can affect your outlook on life and the simple reality is this, that when we are having bad days or we are having bad weeks or bad terms that affects everybody around us and it affects our ability to do our own work well.
So it is really up to us to be able to change those atmospheres and change those moods in a way that is actually going to have a positive impact on everybody including you and the students.
Before we get into it I want to let you know that this episode is brought to you by the Behavior Management Blueprint. This is my FREE e-book on the five key essentials of classroom management and it also comes with a free mini video course as well. You can download that by clicking the link at the end of the blog.
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1. Choose Your Mood
The first one is this: choose your mood. Every day you get to choose the attitude you bring into the classroom. Your mood is not impacted by other people. Now I am going to clarify this. I know that other people can make you feel discouraged or stressed but ultimately nobody else controls your mood except you. You get to choose how you think about a situation, you get to choose the emotions that you use to respond to that situation, so every day you have to choose your mood. Every day you have to say “Today is a new day; I am going to have an awesome day. Today is the day that I am going to enjoy myself at school”. If you choose your mood, what will happen is, that it will have an effect on all of your students and all of the people you work with.
Our brains are wired to match the emotion of the people that we are with so you can either let your brain be matched by the mood of your students or you can create an attitude, an emotion and a mood that affects the attitude of your students. Do not allow bad attitudes or bad moods to affect you. Be bright, happy, cheerful, friendly and greet people enthusiastically when you see them. What you will find is it changes your feeling inside but it changes everybody else around you, so choose your mood.
2. Learn To Have Fun
The second thing is this, learn to have fun. Do not take yourself so seriously. Teaching is way too stressful for you to be serious all the time. Learn to have a joke with your kids. Learn to have a bit of fun, muck around, make fun of yourself, be self-deprecating; that’s really powerful. Play a funny video at the start of the day, get a silly joke book and tell some jokes, whatever it is just find opportunities to have fun in the day and be a goofball. Enact doing stupid things, be an actor, make kids laugh. When you learn to have fun the people around you will enjoy you more and you will enjoy the environment more because “fun” is contagious, happiness and joy is contagious. Be a bearer of joy, be a spreader of happiness and you’ll find that it changes the atmosphere in your classroom.
3. Make Someone Else’s Day
The third thing is this, make someone else’s day. Find a way to lift somebody else’s spirits whether it is a fellow teacher or whether it is a student, lift somebody else’s experience. Encourage somebody, give them an opportunity to shine, give them an opportunity to feel important in your classroom. Try noticing something that is important to them. Maybe they have a new haircut or maybe they have some new shoes, take the time to lift someone’s spirits or make somebody’s day. When you make somebody else’s day they are going to feel something because of the law of reciprocity, they are going to feel the need to make your day as well, they are going to want to repay you. So if you are going around making people’s day, making people happy, making people laugh or feel good about themselves, they are going to do the same thing and that’s going to change the atmosphere in your classroom.
4. Invite People into Your Experience
The last thing is this, you have got to invite people into your experience. Invite your students to be a part of what you are doing and I do not mean just inviting them into the lesson but invite them into the relationship of knowing you as a person. Tell them about yourself, tell them about what is going on with you, tell them about what you are interested in. Help them see you as a human being not just the teacher or the person who is administering the assessment but the person who wants to connect with them on a personal level. Tell them about your weekend, what you got up to, tell them about what you are planning for the weekend if it is appropriate of course. Invite them to share their personal experiences as well.
Create opportunities in the classroom where you can interact as human beings a can get to know each other in more personal and intimate ways because what you will find is, that the more you build those relationships of trust and good will, the behavior takes care of itself. Kids want to behave for a teacher that they find engaging, that they trust and they care about. So if you invite people into your experience they are going to invite you into their experience and they are actually going to have a greater desire and capacity to want to learn and to want to work and behave for you.
Those are four little tips that I think you should use if you work in an environment which feels overwhelming. If you are feeling stressed, you get to change it, you get to shift the mood and the attitude in your class. Choose your mood every day. Come to school bright, happy and enjoying life. Listen to something funny on the way to work, whatever it might be, listen to your favorite music, just control your mood. Secondly, have fun and just enjoy life, be a goofball, tell a joke, do not take yourself so seriously because when you are having fun, laughing and enjoying life, people want to be around you, nobody wants to be around a sourpuss, so don’t be that.
The third thing is to make somebody else’s day, find ways to encourage people, build them up, lift them, make them feel good about themselves, make them feel like a hero. Give them opportunities to shine, make someone else’s day and they will look for ways to make your day. Finally number four is to invite people into your experience, be human, let people see who you are, let people see the real you, especially your students! They will show you the real them and that will make your relationships far more engaging and far more powerful in the classroom.
I hope those tips have been really helpful for you, we have got loads more tips on our YouTube channel so make sure you go check it out. If you want to learn more tips like this do not forget to check out our online course called “Behavior Management Essentials” the link is in the description below. It is four hours of content, a deep dive into behaviour management, taken from our live workshops. If you have enjoyed this then share it with somebody that you think would benefit and I will see you next time.
If you would like to learn more about managing classroom behaviour effectively, why not check out our FREE video course Behaviour Management Blueprint. See below for details.
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