Blog Post: Let Them Catch Your Calm
Have you ever noticed that when you are having a bad day, everyone around you also seems to be struggling? You are feeling less than awesome, the kids seem to be lashing out, your responses are not helping, and suddenly you are in the middle of what Alexander experienced as a Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day in the children’s book of the same name (Viorst, 1972). As it turns out, we set the weather in our classroom or school. This is because our emotions are contagious. As educators, we have to make sure ours are worth catching.
Surely you have found yourself at some point or another matching the excitement, joy, sadness, irritation, or anxiety of the people around you. We know we have! It turns out - there's actual science behind this. Humans all have mirror neurons that aid in our connection with others. These mirror neurons allow us to feel empathy by helping us match or mirror the emotions of others around us. Learn more about this and the research behind it in our book, Connecting Through Conversation: A Playbook for Talking With Students. In a nutshell, our emotions and the emotions of others, rub off on us. We want to make sure our calm is rubbing off on our students.
Let’s imagine that a student comes in after lunch escalated, frustrated, and angry. Here are a few tips to help them catch your calm.
Go lower and slower: Model the tone and volume you would like to hear from the student. If they are escalated and talking quickly, slow your own speech and lower your volume.
Pay Attention to Tone: Ensure that your tone is calm and supportive. You might even use the phrase from Jim Fay’s Turn your Words into Gold on the Love and Logic website www.loveandlogic.com and say to the student, “I’ll talk to you when your voice sounds like mine.” (Fay 2023) This will let the student know what you are expecting, and as a bonus it will ensure you are speaking calmly. After all, this would be a super weird thing to say in a loud or angry voice!
Model Calming Strategies: Take deep breaths or a sip of water. Pause before you speak. Plant your feet firmly on the ground. Remember, our emotions are contagious! They may start breathing with you or taking a sip of water, calming themselves down.
Of course, this only works if we are actually calm. Students can spot a fake from a mile away. Our work is emotional and really, really hard. For the good of ourselves and the good of our students, we need to pay attention to our own emotions. When you notice that you feel escalated, anxious, or irritated, know these emotions are completely normal to experience. Also know our emotions set the weather so before you speak or react to students, pause and collect yourself. Do what you can to get regulated and centered. Take a few deep breaths, pause and get a drink of water, count to ten in your head, take a five minute break if you can, or imagine you’re a tree with roots growing down into the earth.
When you remember that emotions are contagious and take steps to regulate yours, you’ll find those Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Days can turn around pretty quickly for you and your students.
