Dealing With A Strong-Willed Child

This is the kid that will drive you nuts. The kid that always has a "smart" answer to any question you throw at them. The kid that is genius at simultaneously following and evading your rules. The kid that has that stubborn set to their face that the whole staff knows so well. This is the kid that probably has a longer relationship with your principal than you do.

How do you deal with them?

Going from my experience this year (and as a strong-willed child myself), I don't have all of the answers but I do have a few tips to make your life easier.

1. Try to build a relationship with this child. This is true for any child but very true for a strong-willed child. Ask them about their weekend, about their hobbies. Joke with them on occasion. If they genuinely hate you it will make your job 10 times harder. They don't need to like you. You don't need to be buddy-buddy, but it does help if you can make them smile on occasion.

2. Always follow through. This is once again true for every child, and for every command you give. However, if you go against what you said, or let them off the hook once, or let another kid get away with something you nailed them for, they will lose respect for you and run roughshod all over you.

3. Try to avoid giving public commands to them. This child is the type that needs power and does not like coming out on the losing side of a power struggle particularly when there is an audience. You want to make sure that you don't humiliate them, or they will really dig in their heels and refuse to budge. Try to phrase your commands as requests and keep an eye on the student until they follow through. If they do not, or if they only listen to half of the command, you need to be there to encourage them to do the job correctly and completely. In some ways, instructing a strong-willed child is like a battle of will. You need to be more stubborn than they are and to hold them to the task that needs to be done. Sometimes it can take a whole five minutes to get them to completely follow an instruction, but you need to stick with it to prove that you mean what you say.

4. Always know the purpose of the command you are giving and hold them to the purpose not the command itself. If you say, "Sit down please," because you want them to be facing you, ready to listen, then sitting down backwards in their chair is not following your instructions. One of my biggest phrases in the older grades and with strong-willed children is "You know what I mean." I always encourage them to follow the meaning of the words, over the words themselves.

5. Pick your battles. If I phrase a command to the children, like fold your paper hamburger style (in order to fit it into an agenda pocket) and the strong-willed child proceeds to fold up their paper really small. They are not really disobeying the instruction because they are reading your intention and they are following that. If the child is following your intentions, then they are on track. If they are purposely disregarding your intentions, then you need to step in.

6. Know your chain of consequences. Always have a next level that you can enforce with students if they up their misbehaviour. Being baffled about what to do, is the worst possible thing in the moment.

7. Give them choices. Strong-willed children need power. They exercise their power through their decision-making. That is why they so often make counter-norm decisions because they are testing your response and exercising their own view of their rights. Giving students choices when it comes to projects, consequences (i.e. a behaviour contract) and ways of doing things allows them to have some power over their own work in the classroom without allowing them to usurp yours.

Those are just some things I've learned. I hope they help.

Lesson Learned. Grade 2.

You Will Need A System For Everything

I've never taught in the primary grades before, yet here I am in Grade 2.

I volunteered in a Grade 2/3 class last year and thought I was ready for this age group but boy, was I wrong.

I've got kids who can't tie their shoes and need a lesson on how to put papers in a duo tang. Coming from my Grade 6, 7, 8 background, Grade 2 has been a completely different world.

If you do not have routines, you will die.

If you've read Harry and Rosemary Wong's The First Days of School you will have heard already about the importance of routines. Let me just say again, they are crucial.

Things I've implemented routines for so far:

• morning work (they do spelling or word work while I come around and check agendas and collect money)
• sharpening pencils (I do all the sharpening in my class and the pencils are communal, more work for me but saves a lot of time and excuses)
• lining up (I literally had kids do a slo-mo domino fall in line during the first week of school because I had turned my attention for two seconds, now I make them line up shoulder to shoulder and then do a jump turn to face the front of the line, they like the challenge plus they are all perfectly spaced so no accidents)
• sitting at the carpet (some kids get stools, some get rugs, some get cushions, they're on a rotation schedule)
• listening from their desks (some of the kids need to turn their chairs around to face the front)
• who gets the special chair when it's time for read-to-self

Things I may need routines for yet:

• passing things out
• collecting things in
• who turns off the lights
• who to ask if you need help tying shoes
• clean up crew

You need to head into the year with some clear ideas about routines that you want to implement. Once you have the crucial ones you can always build from there. Other teachers in your school are bound to have good ideas. You can always go to the teacher(s) who had them last year and see what the kids are used to. At the end of the day, you need something that will make your life easier, not harder. You will have more work as the kids first learn their routines, but after that, the way will be much smoother.

Lesson Learned. Second Grade.