Anger Solutions Philosophy to Reach Grade 10 South African Students

NB Publishers in South Africa (http://www.nb.co.za), a publisher of English language educational textbooks for high school students, will be publishing my article, The Psychology of Procrastination in their Grade 11 English Home Language textbook.

The publisher's aim is not only to provide interesting English language selections for the students to study, but also to help them develop useful life skills as they work on improving their English reading, writing, comprehension, and oral language abilities.

I am very and honored by this opportunity to share even a small piece of Anger Solutions(TM) philosophy with these students. Perhaps this will lead to other opportunities to take AS to various parts of the world!

Comments from Belfast...

This interesting commentary comes from TJ MacLean in Belfast who is a "retired" teacher. His observations about the rise in unruliness in the schools could well translate to what is happening here in North America. What I found most interesting about the referral to evening anger management classes - is that he was the one receiving the referral rather than his unruly students! Check it out. I welcome your comments... especially from teachers - what do you think?
This article can be found at: http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/letters/article3856391.ece
Thursday, July 03, 2008
I was not surprised by the recent headline '320 teachers off sick each day' (Belfast Telegraph, June 25).
Speaking as a retired teacher of 30 years experience, forced out of teaching due to stress, I feel that the well-meaning comments of Frank Bunting, northern secretary of the Irish National Teachers' Organisation, and the DUP's Michelle McIlveen fail to pinpoint the main reason for these alarming numbers.
Yes, effective teaching is made difficult by large class sizes, additional administration, new initiatives and so on, but teaching remains bearable and even with these added burdens, good teaching can take place.
This does not hold true when classes are blighted by disruptive behaviour from a small, but vocal, minority.
Today's teachers are expected to face unprecedented levels of classroom indiscipline.
In my experience many teachers, particularly in the secondary school sector, face a daily routine of loud confrontational pupil 'situations'.
The use of violence against teachers is not unknown.
Worryingly, due to the availability of the mobile phone, more and more parents are prepared to arrive unannounced at school, to angrily pursue any teacher who dares to 'pick on', their 'totally innocent' child!
In our 'I know my rights society' there are few effective sanctions that headmasters can use against disruptive pupils.
Remarkably, the Department of Education's answer to rising school indiscipline has been to cut special school provision and merely repeat the mantra that schools need to be all inclusive.
In effect, schools and teachers are very much left on their own to deal with the problems.
Five years ago, as a teacher I faced rising classroom indiscipline, affecting my health. When I sought help, I was laughably offered a place on an evening anger management course.
With management answers like this to a situation where good pupils and their teachers are both suffering, is it any wonder that the average number of sick days that teachers take is rapidly rising?
These figures represent a loud wake up call to the Department of Education to come up with effective measures that will protect the rights of teachers to teach and pupils who want to learn, thus cutting to a minimum days lost due to teacher sickness.
T J McClean
Belfast

The Self-Awareness Wheel - Part Two in My Response to Anne

As promised to my online students, here is another tool that I have been using recently to explain what happens if we skip some of the steps in processing life's many events. Click on the image to see the full-size version.

What you see in the wheel is what happens when a person with lower self-esteem experiences a "frustration signal" - they will often go from 1 to 2, and then immediately to 6, without truly taking time to respond to the event. Remember E+R=O from part one of this answer...

Very often, prolonged periods of frustration such as what one might experience after a loved one suffers a heart attack, stroke, or is stricken with some other debilitating illness, will contribute to people making poor choices, and forgetting to go through the full cycle. So this is where the TSA model comes in handy. It reminds people of what we need to do when faced with frustrating circumstances.

Think: What is happening? What does it mean? How does this event make me feel? What do I want to see happen? What can I do to get myself as close to my desired outcome as possible?

Say: If the event is important enough to do something about, start be expressing how you feel. (Remember that you must first identify and classify your feelings so that you can express yourself clearly and accurately - in order to avoid minimization or escalation of your frustration). Use assertive language - "I feel... because..." or "I think, I need, I want, I believe..." Take ownership of what is yours - don't blame others for your feelings.

Ask: Ask for a response so you can begin the dialogue that may lead to resolution of the issue. I say that it "MAY" lead to resolution, because you cannot control what other people do or say. All you can do is ask them to participate in the process of resolution. If they choose not to, at least you have expressed yourself so that they are aware of how their behaviour affects you. It is important to note - and I will probably discuss this more in a future blog - that the primary objective of expressing and releasing anger is for the physical and mental health benefits that it affords YOU! You do this so that you don't end up with heart disease or asthma, or cancer or ulcers. If you manage to get your desired outcome - 100%, that is gravy. Again, I'll save that discussion for another blog entry, but it is important to know. Lastly, once you ask for input, you must be ready to listen. Then the process begins again, because the other party may say something that causes you more frustration and the TSA cycle / and the Self Awareness cycle must repeat itself until you achieve resolution of some kind.

Any questions? You know how to find me! Post a comment here on this site, or students from TAPE can contact me via the regular channels as posted on the TAPE site.