FITB- Chapter 9: When Things Go Wrong

This chapter, more so from my perspective, was for the emotions of the teacher. It can be very hard and overwhelming to try so hard with so many students and not be able to reach all or even the ones who you had hoped to reach. An important aspect of teaching is failure. Learning and teaching both need failure in order to learn, grow, accept, and move forward with more learning and more importantly understanding. Many students, similar to teachers (interestingly enough), want to succeed in every aspect of their lives and when one aspect does not go right, it usually affects all the others. The most important tool to remember is to not give up on others but more importantly yourself.

Having confidence in yourself and in your students can help the overall atmosphere within the classroom. Students’ confidence can receive blows from many aspects of their life and academic journey, beginning with grades. But communication can help to solve these confidence blows with reassurance that the help is there, the ability is there, the implementation of all of these just needs to come together. Students who have these blows or feel unnoticed at school may often want to stop going especially if they think that they will never be able to do the work and pass anyway. As a teacher, reassuring students that whether they succeed or fail you are there and will help is important. Response to these situations does matter to students as well as how teacher reacts to different situations within the classroom. Whether it is during a discussion, group work, partner work, or even just talk, students need to feel safe, physically, mentally, and emotionally within the classroom.

There are many important things to remember as a teacher and some of them can help when trying to overcome learning, behavioral, or emotional issue within the classroom. Remembering to have a hard shell but remain true to yourself is important. Share who you are and what you want from your students, keeping in mind not to cross the line of being friendly versus being a friend. Teachers should not be afraid to apologize to their students if something is said out of line or if they cross a line. Sometimes reexamining your approach can make a big difference. But some of the most important points that I thought were in this chapter were to not take a bad day too hard, don’t judge yourself by whether you are popular with your students and don’t try to be a superhero. All teachers and students make mistakes but working together is the most important part of learning.

One thing I loved is that I now understand the title of the book. Some students set “Fires in the Bathroom” and you have to learn and know how to handle, deal, and help them. It is not just an act but something more going on within the student and maybe you can be the one to help them work it out, or at least give them an outlet for that possibility.