Show No Fear!

I grew up in a large family with 2 older brothers, a younger brother and 2 younger sisters and as we were all close in age, we did a lot of things together. Our family went on long camping trips, we’d have friends over for dinner, we had a backyard pool and we’d play cricket or football out on the road on the weekends. We would ride our bikes to get around the neighbourhood and as there was a waterway across the road from our place, we would go tadpoling there. It was next to a main road and we’d slide down the muddy slope, collect the tadpoles in buckets, bring them back to the house and put them in an old bathtub which was in the shed out the back. They’d grow legs and hop away as frogs but in the meantime, we would observe their growth and show them to our friends.

I was never particularly fond of spiders but daddy-long-legs didn’t bother me at all. We all helped out in the yard on Saturday, if we weren’t off to football/netball, a friend’s place or a community fete. Bugs and insects were my brothers’ means to scare me and they’d wave them in my face, waiting for a reaction, or exclaim, “Watch out for the spider!” I learned to feign indifference and they’d give up and go away.

Not reacting, has become a very useful tool for me. The first school I was teaching at, was in a rural area and there was a dam on the property. Students would go down to the dam at recess and lunchtime and not only come back dirty but also come back with a bucketful of yabbies. They would wave them in front of other kids’ faces hoping for a reaction and some of the kids would squeal. They would then shove the living, moving yabbies into my face, smiling slyly, waiting for a reaction. When none was forthcoming, they would put the yabbies back into the bucket and try to smuggle them in to keep under their desk.

Recently a colleague told me of some of her experiences of students trying to get a reaction by putting lizards in her desk and I’m also reminded of Maria in Sound of Music. When she first arrives at the Von Trapp family household, she sits on a pinecone, a child puts a frog in her pocket and she has to check her bed, just in case...

Years later at another rural school, I gained a reputation of not being scared easily so my students would try to "break me". They would come from behind a corner and yell out “boo” or hide and jump out, hoping to catch me unprepared. It became a game with them and on the rare occasions that I flinched, they would run away laughing and brag to their friends that they had scared me.

The ability to maintain a ‘poker face’ comes in handy when students confess to doing something they shouldn’t have done, be it minor or major. It comes in handy when you know you need to scold them, but it really was quite funny. There will be times when you need to be careful about your facial expression in order to maintain a student’s confidence and trust in you. There will be the times when you need to show acceptance, empathy and concern. Get to know your students well so that you can respond appropriately. They need to be able to trust you.