After Blowing Up

Today I read a great article from Crucial Conversations. Having been to the training several times and even accepted a job offer to facilitate here in Alberta, I am obviously bias toward the program. That being said the training has lots of great methods and techniques for handling tricky situations.

I used this particular method a couple days ago with my football team. Last Saturday we played Claresholm. The final score was 36-6 for us. Our boys had a message to send after last year’s allegations of having over aged players on our team. Perhaps because we were so hyped up, or perhaps because I am so new at all this – during the game I lost my temper with a couple players. Nothing serious, but I felt horrible about it for days after. I decided I need to confront this situation at practice.

Following the skills I learned from Crucial Conversations I started by stating facts: “You were playing the guitar in the changing room while I was trying to talk about team strategy and improvements”, “I did not play everyone on the defense”, “I screamed at you and told you to go look up how to play football on Youtube”, and so on. After stating the facts I tried to establish a new context for our relationship. I committed to being more prepared. I also committed to training how I want the rotation to work. Finally I told my players that they can expect me to be more level headed and clear on my expectations of them.

Now that I’ve established this new context, my players don’t have to guess whether Coach Toone is just pretending to be level headed and will snap again if mistakes are made.

The Crucial Conversation book is worth the investment. I highly recommend it.

Cheers,

Cody

Day 10

Ten days into my first teaching assignment in the Westwind school division. Teaching on the East Cardston Hutterite Colony was not in my master plan when I quit my great job at Copper Hills Youth Center and moved my family back to the mother-land. After a year of substitute teaching I got the nod and was given this wonderful teaching assignment.

As this is my first of hopefully many updates about my daily interactions with these wonderful people, I will try and give a brief summary of my first 10 days as teacher:

Days 1 – 3: Procedures and Culture

These first 8 days were spent mostly rehearsing procedures (what to do before recess, before lunch, before PE, at the end of the day, etc.) By the end of day two the kids were pretty good at responding to my little desk bell. I left the colony feeling pretty good. Then day three happened.

On day three I had dozens of arguments and two major fights wherein a 3rd Grade girl landed a wicked right hook right in the eye of a fellow 3rd grade boy. That was in the morning. Before the day was out one of my 1st grade students (a boy this time) had successfully pummeled a small kindergarden girl smack in the face.

Days 4-8 were basically days of small improvements, lots of calming kids down, and trying to figure out how 6 different grades were going to function in the same small room.

Days 9 through today were much improved. I’ve actually completed an entire day according to my schedule!

By highlighting these small scraps and fights, I hope I don’t paint a horrible picture of these wonderful kids. They really are quite responsive (much more than most kids I’ve taught) and generally listen well. For those lacking the perspective (which is probably everyone reading this) imagine being with 13 siblings all day, every day – with no real break. This is really how the dynamic works. These kids are so familiar with each other that there is little tolerance for annoying behavior. To make things worse, each of these kids has had years of practice in pushing exactly the right buttons to make their peers explode.

I should end by saying that I’m a guest on the Colony. I feel honored to be trusted with the task of educating these wonderful children. I look forward to sharing some of my special moments as the year progresses.

Cheers,

Cody