Happiness and Tolerance - Siddhi RPKM

Dealing with Challenging Students
Think of two 2 situations where you as an educator were faced with (preferably natural)/ might face the challenge of dealing with:

How did/will you deal with the student?
A) If it was a real-life situation, were you successful in helping him/her overcome their problem?
B) What is your advice to educators who want to inculcate these values in their students?

Situation 1: Unhappy Student

"Happiness is contagious. Spread this among people surrounding you." -----Invajy

As a teacher, we must always teach students what is right and wrong. But sometimes children feel unhappy if they do not want to do something their teacher has asked them to do. This more prominently applies to little kids pampered mainly by their parents. That's why they need to be taken care of by the teacher according to their moods.

Recently, a similar situation was faced by one of our teachers in her class. One of her students wanted to skip the lunch. So, the child made an excuse that he was having a stomach ache and was missing his mother. Therefore, he insisted on going back to his home. The very first day, when he did that thing, the teacher asked him to finish lunch so that he won't feel the pain, and after that, he would be allowed to go back home. But then, again, on the second day, he did the same thing, and the teacher again asked him to finish his lunch without any excuses. But when on the third day, he did that thing again. The teacher realised that it had become his habitual activity, and he just made excuses not to finish his lunch daily.

On that day, the teacher told him to have some portion of his lunch to be healthy and strong if he wanted to finish only part. For that whole day, he was so happy in class; he talked to everyone nicely and didn't ask to go back home. With time, the child began adjusting to the class by interacting and observing his fellow students.

Advice to educators:
If you have an unhappy student, you must try and understand the situation he/she might be going through instead of imposing your perspective on them. According to an old saying:

"To get a better pickup, we must step back. Sometimes we must also listen to the child's perspective to make an unhappy child happy."

Situation 2: Intolerant Student

An intolerant student, the term itself should never be an impression in any teacher's mind about any student. However, we all face such an adverse issue wherein we may encounter such behaviour in a student. They may be exhibiting very inappropriate behaviour. There may be innumerable complaints against this student from a teacher and their classmates, and no amount of counselling / or any other strict action to rectify the student's behaviour seems to change their behaviour. Any behaviour or issue can never be diagnosed, judged or handled without knowing the reason behind those actions. The reason should be based on something other than any particular act. Different situations and scenarios that might have happened earlier at school and home should be considered. A child who is overpampered at home or has no listener will exhibit behaviour to gain attention. Usually, this kind of behaviour reflects a negative
outcome.

Let's discuss a situation of a student who was never interested in listening to any kind of explanation of the chapter but in spite was always ready to put up the questions whether related to the topic or not, so I, as an educator, was forced to think that if he is too curious to know every detail of every case, or he is just trying to seek the attention of everyone, so I just thought of an idea why not to engage him in something which can use his energy and hire him, so I asked him to maintain a notebook which we will discuss in class and utilise it in class activities or quizzes. So he was happy and felt confident that he got a huge responsibility. Slowly and gradually, he collected a piece of good information about many topics and used to note down the queries aside and discuss them later. This developed his confidence in the teacher; once the bond of trust sets in, rectifying the child's behaviour will be smooth and, most importantly, effective.

Advice to Educators:
My suggestion to all my fellow teachers is never to give up on any child but to give them your time, patiently listen, and understand the reason for their behaviour and not judge them just on their superficial behaviour. We, teachers, have this innate ability to make that impression in the minds and lives of our students, and we surely can be their guides who will help them become better human beings.

Siddhi @ RKP School Moradabad
Sanskriti Tondon, Lovely Singh, Priyanka Ruhela, Soni Bhatnagar, Manjeet Patil, Sadhana Negi and Swati Saluja