Teaching profession as it has been described by some people is a noble career. I sometimes believe that it is more of a calling than a profession because it really involves transforming the lives of people. This is not an easy task but rather a feat that calls for commitment and willingness to offer the best so that the learners succeed. Often teachers are faced with many challenges that compel them to employ and portray a high degree of professionalism in handling. A successful handling of a problem that arises within the education system proves the capacity of a teacher handle situations effectively. This essay will describe a challenging experience that I had with students and how I dealt with it.
The most challenging experience that I had with students is when the students in a school I was teaching went on rampage. They vandalized school property and many attempts from teachers who tried to implore them to restrain from the damage they were causing did not succeed. The students eventually gave a condition that I was the only teacher they would listen to for them to air their grievances. This experience was one of the most challenging experiences in my teacher career since calm and normalcy of the school was squarely lying on my hands. The students were gathered outside in a field so I had to apply all my wit and appropriate strategies in talking to them. The strategy I used to handle the situation was first to calm the students down because they were ready to talk to me because of my affable nature. Once they were calm, I first started by explaining to them that there are better ways of solving problems rather than engaging in violence.
The strategy I used was to pick a few students who seemed very outspoken and who definitely looked very disappointed with whatever they were complaining about to air the grievances on behalf of the rest. The selected students raised their concerns and aired their grievances as I carefully noted them down in a notebook. The argued that these were issues they wanted to bring to the attention of the administration because they had been complaining for long with no appropriate action being taken. The irate students informed me that they wanted to be sure that their concerns should be addressed once and for all. Consequently they said that they would only go back to class after I took their concerns to the administration. I convincingly talked to the students and promised them that everything would be fine as I was committed towards ensuring that their concerns were addressed. The outcome of my efforts was that the students agreed to go back to class and calm returned in the school which had witnessed chaos for a whole day.
I had the greatest impact in the outcome of the student’s decision to go back to class because they had refused to talk to the rest of the teachers. Through my diligent talk with the students, they could see the sense of having problems solved amicably. I tried to change their line of thought by informing them that chaos were not the way to solve problems. I also impacted on the outcome of the solution by assuring the rowdy students that once they presented their grievances to me, I would ensure that the due attention they deserved would be given and that an immediate appropriate action will be taken to correct the situation.
After a few days of the situation calming down, I wanted to determine whether the outcome was successful or not. To do this, I secretly talked to the student leaders and asked them whether the rest of the students were satisfied with the corrective measures that the school administration took. They confirmed to me that the rest of the students were happy and contended with the solutions that were provided. This confirmed to me that the outcome of my strategy was a great success.
One thing I would do differently from what many teachers do I the approach teachers take when a crisis such like a strike emerges. Some teachers believe that students are always wrong and most of the issues they raise are not legitimate. This is always the case because while at times students may raise illegitimate concerns, most of the times their concerns are legitimate and attention should be paid to them. This is because if teachers only think that students cannot raise legitimate concerns, they will not treat them as they are supposed to and problems will continue escalating.