Can Behavioural Issues be My Problem as a Teacher?

How often we as teachers think the student is the problem.
We see their disinterest, talkativeness, inablity to stay on-task, distractions, aggressiveness, resistance or over-dependency on others as their problem not ours.

But student problems are our problems!

According to Haim Ginott...
(Source: Diana Browning Wright, Teaching and Learning Trainings, 2003 at http://ahaa.tusd.us)

 

Between the Teacher and the Child

 

I have come to a frightening conclusion.

I am the decisive element in the classroom.

It is my personal approach that creates the climate.

It is my daily mood that makes the weather.

As a teacher I possess tremendous power to make a child's life miserable or joyous.

I can be a tool of torture or an instrument of inspiration.

I can humiliate or humor, hurt or heal.

In all situations, it is my response that decides whether a crisis will be escalated or de-escalated, and a child humanized or de-humanized.

                                                                                                                           

Teachers, do you agree? 

How do you modify your curriculum to better meet each student's need? 

Learning to do so may improve student behaviour and achievement.