by Barbara Lane

I was twenty-two years old the first time I ever sat at the big desk in the front of a classroom. Trying to look more like my English teacher mother than the coed in dirty denim that I’d just been before graduation, I wore an ironed church dress, stockings, and lipstick. My costume was good, but my palms were sweating.

Seventh graders—not college students—flowed through the door. A girl with chipped purple nail polish sat in the front row and used her finger to intently trace a word carved onto her desktop. A laughing boy held court with his friends in a back corner. Other students were a mishmash of high ponytails, untied shoestrings, and baggy blue jeans that drooped so low on some bodies that the stripes on boxer shorts were visible. The volume kept rising, but I kept sitting where I was.

In hindsight I know just as purple-polish girl was concentrating on the word on her desktop to avoid her peers, I was using my big teacher’s desk to protect me from feeling too exposed. It was as if we both imagined our respective pieces of furniture held the same power to protect us as those wooden chairs lion tamers use in circus rings. But she had the excuse of being a shy girl. I was simply confused about the source of a lion tamer’s power. A chair is just a prop. The control comes from the lion tamer’s confidence.

As a consequence, in that circus ring of my first classroom, my timidity served as a permission slip for my students’ collective lion to rise up against me. It nibbled slowly on my ego at first, testing all defenses. Before long, I wanted to hide under my desk as my enthusiasm for education was gobbled up, and I actually walked away from teaching for quite some time.

So when attending the 2018 Lilly Conference in Austin, I thought back to that early experience as a young teacher. As was observed in a Lilly session, even a college classroom has the potential to become a problem classroom if challenging behaviors are ignored or incorrectly managed. With that in mind, one must develop good techniques to assert control over the environment from day one.

In other words, if I may extend my own metaphor, the collective lion might be capable of eating a professor, too, but that won’t happen if a professor projects calm authority. If one shrinks when challenged–or raises one’s voice like a lion tamer cracking a whip aimed to hurt—one hazards the possibility of losing the respect required to command the room.

Instead of overreacting, reclaim disruptive students’ attention by walking towards them and quietly redirecting. The message should be consistent: a good education is the only show going, as school was never meant to be a circus.

After all, whether a professor or a middle school teacher, it’s essential to provide a safe, controlled environment in which all students can learn.