The real trick to staying sane in the classroom if you're a teacher

Never take anything personally

It’s not you, it’s me. So many times I’ve heard that. And yet so many times I’ve decided to ignore it. Girl holds boys hand very limply, squeezes it tight and then lets go, throwing him to the breeze like so much buckwheat. When I was dating, before I grew to six feet ten and two hundred and forty pounds of pure muscle (alright – not quite), I was ditched, quite a lot. That was the line they used and in essence they were lying through their teeth. It was me they weren’t happy with, but at the same time I was never going to be it for them and so if one side wasn’t having any of it, why try to hold on to a lie.

But we can’t do that can we? We can’t take rejection and think to ourselves that it’s ok, that it doesn’t matter. We take it to heart and we take it personally.

This attitude will kill your career working with young people stone dead. You cannot take anything personally. Your detachment is your best friend and best chance of staying sane.

You will never get past the starting blocks. To be a teacher you have to give up the luxury of taking things personally. It has to go. Your emotional investment in yourself will earn you a fate far worse than Narcissus.

Whatever is said, whatever is done at all times remember they, young people, are not doing it to you, but rather what you represent. Anyone working with young people must protect themselves as much as they must protect the people they work with. Do not fall into the trap of taking to heart what happens. It is, in the words of Vito Corleone, ‘only business’.

Let me take a few examples. The first is the easiest. You will, at some point in your career, get called something nasty. This is a badge we all wear with pride. It’s not always ‘see you next Tuesday’, sometimes they will infer something about your parentage or compare you to an animal.

Why would a student do this? You can be damn sure they have no idea who you are to start with, but we’ll deal with that as we go. Why did they lash out at you? It might be anger that has no place to go; it might be frustration at not getting the lesson; it might be perceived injustice at a punishment or a low mark; you may just remind them of someone. But then they might actually hate you. They might actually think you are the worst person they have ever met.

Who the hell cares? They don’t. What they hate, what all students hate when they see you is not Brian, 34 from London, or Steven, 27 from Birmingham; they hate teachers and the process of education. They are lashing out against your position.

So what do you do?

Have a style. Have a mode of dress, of behaviour, even a voice that is your teaching. You should be able to separate your life from your job. You are a teacher, but it does not define you. You are also a man or a woman, gay, straight, black, white, Scottish, French, rugby, softball etc etc. This will become your armour. It will become the suit of protection you put on in the morning to walk to work and it will not protect you physically, but if you get it right it will save your sanity, marriage, and possibly life.

Not taking things personally means not taking onboard the emotional baggage that will be thrown at you by all and sundry. When we are angry we torture others to make ourselves feel better. We exert control over them so we feel in control of our own lives. This is the basis for the students rage and engagement with it will cost you dearly.

To anger the first thing is to not react in the way they expect. They will be expecting outrage, upset, tears, red faces. The first reaction you need to have is ‘why did they say that?’ the second reaction is to talk to them, with someone else present in as clear and as calm a way as you can. But this attitude can protect you from ever having to suffer these incidents.

You need to wear your skin thick. Think of your suit and tie, your best set of pearls, whatever it is you have put on to make you different from yourself, to start playing the part of actor, teacher, pedagogue. They are your armour.

I wear certain colour chinos andmost of all, a tie. I neverwear ties except at work. My dress sense is somehwere south of slacker, but at work I go suited and booted. The physical difference provides an emotional and psychological difference and protection against the 'anything can happen' world that you live in.

Never take what a student says to heart. They are not saying it to you, but to the teacher in front of them. There is a difference.

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