Richard D. Solomon's Blog on Mentoring Jewish Students and Teachers

Our hope is that this blog will become a forum in which people can exchange ideas on how to recruit, develop and retain exceptional Jewish educators through mentoring and e-mentoring students, teaching candidates, and teachers in our day and supplemental schools. The present focus of this blog is to empower Jewish teachers, administrators, teacher trainers, consultants, and staff developers to integrate web technology (i.e. web tools and apps) into their teaching and teacher training.

Tuesday, February 2, 2010

Emotional Listening:Teacher Intervention for Students Whose Disruptive Behavior Is Related to the Negative Thoughts and Feelings that Dwell Within

When mentoring our pre-service and in-service teachers we need to describe and model both research-based and clinically tested best practices. Accordingly, our mentees should know how to apply emotional listening when a student's disruptive behavior is related to the internal conflicts that reside within that student.

Emotional Listening: A Teacher Intervention for Students Whose Disruptive Behavior Is Related to the Negative Thoughts and Feelings that Dwell Within Them (*Solomon & Solomon, 2008)

The teacher emotionally listens to the student:

The teacher reads the body language of the student. and attempts to capture the underlying feelings, thoughts, or concerns of the student. The purpose of emotional listening is to provide the student with the necessary support so that he or she can regain his/her composure in order to focus on learning. See the example below.

Emotional Listening

Assumption: Student enters class with a look of concern on his or her face.

What the Teacher Can Say

Examples

· "Perhaps, I'm wrong, Eric, but you look a bit upset this afternoon."

· "Eric, you look different this afternoon; is something on your mind?"

· "Is something bothering you today?"

· "Eric, I sense that something is upsetting you."

· "Perhaps I'm imagining this, but you seem upset. If you want to talk, I'm here to listen."

See the definition of emotional listening on this blog post: http://richarddsolomonsblog.blogspot.com/2009/04/three-essential-listening-skills-in.html

*Adapted from Solomon, R. & Solomon E. (2008). Increasing Student Responsibility and Self-Discipline Within Learning Communities: The Participant’s Guide. Tucson, AZ: Fourth R Consulting.

On the next post we will discuss validating as an effective teacher intervention when a student’s disruptive behavior is related to the negative thoughts and feelings that dwell within himself or herself.