anger management in schools (and any organisation) is a shared responsibility

My earlier post argues that anger and rage are different and that it is rage (teacher/pupil) in the classroom that is the problem and not anger; in my opinion, where rage is involved it is not about the here-and-now (though it is always triggered by a here-and-now incident) and people are relating to one another as objects and not seeing themselves or others for the whole separate human beings that they are. Far too often these issues are personalised (pupil / teacher).
In my relational model…everyone has a responsibility for creating the emotional environment in a school or any other environment….teacher / pupil / managers & policy makers. Relationship and integrity between these agencies is the key…where there is relationship, connection, mostly shared values and goals and an environment which treats everyone as vibrant human beings and not as ‘heads on legs’ there is much more chance of an approximation to harmony.
Further…being realistic, where there is a one-size-fits all programme (curriculum/prescribed practice) which treats all members as the same….there will be a large number of students/clients who will be regulalry traumatised by it. Government ministers, policy makers, schools & other organisations have to be more imaginative about what constitutes education/service and how it is delivered.

That’s probably quite a way off! For now I think it is necessary to give as much attention to encouraging functional relationships between all parties in schools/organisations as is given to the curriculum; to build an optimum emotional environment where all human needs get met and where everyone experiences their natural organismic hunger and joy for learning . RELATIONSHIP is the vehicle for learning / change, not the curriculum/prescribed practice.

 

question posed about teacher’s anger in the classroom

administrator: usually we find teachers carrying their rage and frustrations to the classroom and then they hunt for opportunities while teaching for expressing their bossism and authoritativeness upon the students. Which is the best way for a teacher to keep cool while teaching?

Sue Parker Hall response:

I have a different take on what is happening in the classroom here…..I differentiate between anger and rage (Anger, Rage and Relationship: An Empathic Approach to Anger Management (Routledge, 2008)…anger is an immediate, here and now, proportionate and respectful response to this specific here and now incident..e.g I didn’t like what you just said….e.g…I have a different opinion….I would prefer to do something else….stop that!

What I think you are describing here is rage….in my opinion, rage is the earliest defence mechanism…..it results from an inability to process life’s experiences…..either because of early trauma (‘there was no one there’ Pierre Janet, 1908) and we never learned how or because we are overwhelmed with a recent trauma or an accumulation of unprocessed events …it happens all the time for teachers, emergency service workers, carers, parents, therapists! and just about everyone…. (hence we have supervision)….no one can process all their life events and everyone slips into rage from time to time…may be the easily recognisable hot rage (sarcasm, gallows humour, grumbling through to talking aggressively, verbal abuse, violence) or the less acknowledged form of cold rage (shutting down…withdrawing…untouchable)… the teachers you are talking about are not responding to the here-and-now…they are overwhelmed with experiences they have been unable to process which ‘leak’ or ‘spill’ out….

One last important point to make here is that cognitive interventions do not have a long lasting impact on rage issues….any short term benefits cannot be sustained….unless life events are processed (these are any kind of life events not just major traumas) once the organism is under stress it reverts to this earliest of defence mechanism, rage. This issue has to be addressed at an emotional, feeling level…cognitive and behavioural interventions do not address the trauma that underlies rage. My definition of trauma is simply – ‘any emotional response to life experience, whether of epic or apparently trivial proportions, which has not yet been processed’ (Parker Hall, 2008).

In my opinion, teachers would benefit from the kind of supervision that therapists have whereby they can debrief and process professional and personal (perhaps historical) issues which have affected them…possibly personal therapy to clear any backlog of archaic and they need to work in an emotionally intelligent and aware environment where all feelings are valued and expressed.