Class Calm

The next post is centered on an idea from Carl Rogers, a prominent name in the field of psychology. Rogers teaches that the key to communication is asking the right questions using the right demeanor. Psychology will be a recurring theme in these posts. This post is devoted to simply introducing the idea that reading the right books on the subject of psychology will yield big payoffs in classroom management situations.

For a long time I felt that the entire field of psychology was overrated and I did my best to avoid it whenever possible. Although I don’t know how I arrived at that point, I have in recent years done a near complete flip on the subject. Without a doubt, there are books and writers in the field of psychology that not only are a waste of time, they could very well set you in the wrong direction and make your classroom management problems even worse. Of course anyone would want to avoid these. However, there are a number of books that are treasure mines of useful information, ideas, and methods.

The first book I read on psychology in an effort to get better classroom management results was Man’s Search For Meaning by Viktor Frankl. Frankl was a young Jewish psychiatrist in Vienna who got caught up in the Holocaust. He survived several years in various Nazi labor camps. Upon the end of the war he became a leading psychologist. Although he wrote a number of books, this is perhaps his best known and is a riveting and inspiring story of mental toughness that can be applied to many areas of life.

The broad lesson I gained from Frankl’s book is that as a prisoner in a labor camp he always maintained the view that it was up to him how he would choose to respond to difficult situations. If a student is out of line, the teacher always has a choice on how to respond. If Frankl could do that in a death camp, we can surely do this in a high school classroom.

This was followed by another book and then another. In addition to Frankl, I have stuck to the bigger names in the field such as Carl Jung, Alfred Adler, Abraham Maslow, to name a few. Specific concepts from these masters will be discussed in future posts but for now let me just recommend finding any book by an established figure in the field of psychology.

For me, the impact in the classroom was huge, immediate, and addictive. Not only will reading the right sources in psychology help you attain a new level of skill in regard to your job responsibilities, the learning can be applied to other parts of life. This new knowledge will allow you to go about your job with greater confidence in what works and what does not. Others that used to perhaps question your competence and qualifications will now quietly and respectfully listen to you as you speak with a knowledgeable command of how the mind of a student works. Quite satisfying.