Everyone gets angry. It’s human nature and anyone who never gets angry is probably a droid of some sort. That said, when our kids get angry in the classroom, it’s a really hard thing to deal with since we’re trying to control a classroom of sometimes as many as 40 children and an angry student threatens to disrupt a well planned lesson.
There is no one ‘right way’ to handle anger management and whatever your solutions are to the problem, I’d love to hear from you. However, I do have one suggestion a teacher in Ohio told me about which seems to work pretty well.
He explains to his students at the start of the school year that he understands that they will feel angry and frustrated at times. He tells them that they can have a voluntary time out with no penalty in order to calm down, however they must come and talk to him after class about what was bothering them so he can help resolve it. He tells them that the reason they need to talk to him is in order to make sure they’re not abusing the privilege.
The idea actually solves two problems at once, which is why I love it. Not only does he remove the potential problem from his classroom for the time it take for the child to cool down, but he has a built in mechanism for avoiding abuse and, more importantly, for getting kids, who are sometimes reticent to talk to their teachers, about whatever it was that was bothering them. Talk about brilliant!