Making the Most of Teachable Moments With Students
The class knows they are in trouble. While they are far away from an emotional hijacking the beginning of the fight, flee, flee or freeze reaction has started. The first action must be to calm them by doing with the students.
Dr Marvin Marshall, the American stress guru, states in one of his recent weekly newsletters that in these sorts of situations, authority must be used without coercion, presumably because coercion is likely to fan the embers of the fight, flee or freeze emotional reaction. In short, if you are dealing with a violent or distressed student, doing to, or coercion will make the matter worse. The right teacher behaviour is so important but so hard to do! This gets close to a golden rule for interaction between teacher and students: Do with, not to.
To solve problems, a wise teacher asks questions that are directed to process, rather than content. Effective questions focus on the thinking processes, which underlie behaviour, performance and choice. This is how change is promoted without relationships, such as camaraderie and rapport, being adversely affected either by teacher student relationships, or by student-teacher relationships. This is easy enough to do with a little practice, but first make a conscious effort that this is the way you will change.
This authentic example illustrates the process. I am back visiting my old school to take digital photos. As I enter the classroom, a class meeting is in progress. It has been one of those wet day lunch hours and the students have danced away the time doing a silly sort of stamping dance that attractedthe attention of the duty teacher. Their class teacher is not impressed. She hands the problem to me.
I start by asking, “What Habit of Mind did you neglect to use?” There is a babble in reply, “Impulsivity! We neglected our impulsivity and just did it!”
Immediately I intervene, “What Habit of Mind are you neglecting now?”
Sheepishly, hands go up. The majority opts for listening with empathy, a few stick with impulsivity, and one, only one holds out for thinking interdependently. However, they are now settled, and we can begin a short, sharp and focused discussion on how Habits of Mind are important in keeping us out of trouble. We go on to add in the need to be proactive rather than reactive, and that the Habits are there to be lived.
Let us analyse this. As far as the teacher (in this case, me) is concerned, he has the capability and capacity, through his practical knowledge of how to apply Habits of Mind in situations like this to manage himself. His interpersonal intelligence then feeds from his intrapersonal intelligence and Habits of Mind are used to manage the noisy class.
A similar situation also occurs with the students. They too have the capability and capacity through their knowledge of Habits of Mind to have a sufficiently developed intrapersonal intelligence to self-manage. An important aspect of all this is that there is a collegial relationship between students and teacher. It is doing with and not to. The students own the process and are being set up for successful lifelong learning, by developing and maintaining a growth mindset.
Overall, there is a context, a class culture, of positive success. Success not because they are bright, intelligent or gifted, but because they problem solve by mindfully working through the process. It is doing with, which leads to interdependent thinking characterised by congeniality, and collaboration. Such a class and school culture are positive, but the process must be constantly explained and brought to the consciousness level (the teaching side) and then metacognitively reflected upon by the 
students to promote continuous learning, so that each success leads to more success and so confidence escalates. In another school a teacher, who I have been coaching, has done something similar by turning a negative teachable moment into a positive, because the teacher was constantly on the look out to talk-the-talk that led to corrective action.
This year eight class had been having drug education with Life Education. The presenter had an accent which he apologised for in advance, regarding pronunciation of names. A group of boys thought it was hilarious when one of the girl’s names was mispronounced – the ensuing giggling disrupted learning the message that was being given.
The teacher had posters for all the sixteen Habits of Mind on the wall as a reference. (Use this link if you are not familiar with the www.habitsofmindinstitute.org/what-are-habits-of-mind ). On returning to class, she grouped the class around the poster on HUMOUR and talked about the age of the baby in a current television programme and what made her laugh (people getting hurt, etc.). They decided that this was immature humour. Back to the teachable moment, and the discussion moved to deciding what kind of humour laughing at other people was. The sheepish looks from the boys confirmed the point was made. Despite further mispronunciation at the next session not a titter was heard.
At the conclusion of the series, the presenter commended the class on the maturity they had shown by the questions they asked and their ability to deal with advanced information. This is a typical example of the old story. The battle was lost because the horse was lost. The horse was lost because the shoe came off. The shoe came off because the nail came out. Imagine what might have happened had the teacher not pounced immediately on the teachable moment, or worse, punished those boys and activated the fight, flee or freeze reaction in them. A great example of doing with, not doing to.