How Veteran Teachers Keep Their Cool

In the quiet early-morning stillness of the school parking lot, Michael Linsin would close his eyes, take a few slow breaths, and set an intention for the teaching day: “No matter what happens today, I’m not going to let it affect me emotionally,” he’d remind himself. “A herd of elephants could come crashing through the door,” but come what may, he’d remain serene. The practice worked so well that in time, even his students “began to feed off of my calm energy.”

Inside any classroom, student misbehavior can test the mettle of even the most chill teachers. With an audience of watchful young eyes and the pressures of the school day on their shoulders, most teachers will eventually respond with a snappy tone, raise their voice louder than they’d like, or say something they might regret later. 

The trick to short-circuiting—or at least reducing the likelihood of—a reflexive, potentially regrettable response, veteran teachers told us, is to develop the ability to recognize heightened emotions as soon as they surface and then quickly recalibrate (pause, breathe, take a sip of water, step away) so the teacher response is proportional to the student misbehavior. “Helping a student who has made a poor choice of behavior to regain their composure begins with the awareness of my own sensations and feelings,” says Lori Desautels, an assistant professor of educational neuroscience at Butler University. The ability to self-regulate isn’t easy. It takes time and practice to master (especially during high-stress moments), but “like a thermostat, the teacher needs to maintain a steady temperature throughout a moment of conflict, with a goal of creating conversation and a plan of action with a student who understands their choices and the consequences of those actions.” 

Of course, as beneficial as teacher composure is, veteran teacher Linsin notes, it’s only one part of keeping a classroom afloat when student behavior is pushing your buttons. Maintaining an even keel “isn’t possible (or necessarily helpful) unless you have a solid understanding of effective classroom management,” he says. “They work hand in hand.”

We checked in with a dozen educators about how they built their capacity to sustain, or sometimes regain, a sense of emotional balance at the most trying moments. 

Pause first: Taking a moment to process before responding to a student allows teachers to be “responsive not reactive,” writes Rebecca Alber, an instructor at UCLA’s Graduate School of Education. This doesn’t require a deep meditation, “just three seconds,” adds educational consultant Chandna Mukherjee. To prevent a knee-jerk reaction to challenging behaviors, Mukherjee recommends that teachers ask themselves, How do I want to respond? That pause ensures that your next steps are deliberate.

Imagine you’re not alone: In the heat of the moment, third-grade teacher Paul Murphy reminds himself that he always has a classroom full of eyes on him. “I have to consider that there’s an audience watching this whole thing go down,” he says. To stay grounded under pressure, pre-K teacher Allison McDonald pretends “the child’s parents are watching me.” This small mental shift acts as a steadying reminder to show up as her best self and approach each situation with care. 

Create a reminder: In his early years of teaching, educator Tony Signore remembers feeling frustrated by everyday issues, like when students ignored or missed deadlines. “Emotionally I had a tendency to let it get the better of me,” he says. To reset, he wrote down a goal to display on his desk: Discipline without emotion. “I see it all the time,” Signore says. “It keeps me focused on the type of teacher I strive to be.”

Take a break, together: Recently retired classroom teacher Melissa Antinoff occasionally asked a student to join her calm-down routine. “If a kid says something that is so disrespectful, I’m not just going to go back at them,” she says. “I’ve actually said, ‘I need a second to self-regulate. I will answer that in a minute. I’m going to count backwards from 10 and take deep breaths. You should be doing this with me right now.’” 

Similarly, when high school history and government teacher David Cutler senses dysregulation in the classroom, “we’ll step outside as a class and go for a 10-to-15-minute walk, then come back inside.” While Cutler only employs this strategy three or four times per year, students of all ages benefit from a brief brain break—regardless of the emotional temperature of the room—allowing them to slow down, release pent-up energy, and refocus attention.

Choose the (honest) moment: A harsh comment from a student can not only interrupt the flow of instruction, but genuinely sting. Instructional specialist Miriam Plotinsky remembers a student calling an assignment “the worst thing they’d ever seen.” Instead of reacting harshly in the moment, Plotinsky emphasizes the impact of choosing the right time to respond to certain student behaviors—whether that’s one-on-one at the end of class, or even a few days later. 

Next, modeling the empathy she hoped her student would extend to her, “I told him, ‘That was really so hurtful. I know that I’m your teacher, but I’m also a person and I created that assignment. If you don’t like it or if it’s not working, I would love constructive feedback, but that wasn’t constructive at all.’ I could see he was just kind of shocked because it had never occurred to him that I had feelings.”

Put it all down on paper: When she felt her internal temperature rising, Cult of Pedagogy’s Jennifer Gonzalez would “stop teaching, sit in a chair at the front of the room, open a notebook to a blank page, and start writing.” The abrupt pause would catch her middle school students off guard, and silence would spread through the classroom. 

She’d begin by jotting down her frustrations and unmet expectations—mindful writing like this can be cathartic, even in a jarring moment. Then, she’d pivot: “I’d start looking around the room and writing down things that had actually gone well,” she says, which usually outweighed things going wrong. Quickly venting, then shifting her perspective and taking stock of what was working, allowed Gonzalez to realign her focus before helping the classroom get back on track. 

A FEW THINGS TO DO AFTER A TOUGH EXCHANGE

While there’s certainly value in modeling how to navigate heated moments in class, it’s also important to show students how to course-correct when things boil over. Occasionally stepping up to say, “I’m sorry, let’s fix this,” provides an important lesson in acknowledging mistakes and taking accountability, says fifth-grade teacher Nita Creekmore: “I apologized to a student once, and he was shocked. He asked, ‘Are you apologizing to me?’ I said, ‘Yeah, I apologize. Because even though your behavior was not what I would expect in the classroom, I shouldn’t have called you out in front of your friends.’” 

After a difficult classroom interaction, taking a moment to reflect on behaviors or patterns that get on your nerves can help teachers prepare for future triggering situations, writes licensed clinical counselor Maria Munro-Schuster. “We don’t always take the time to reflect on how we felt during a student behavior thing,” says Alex Shevrin Venet, a former school leader and classroom teacher. “We might sit down and write out a referral or write out some documentation, but we don’t always look at ‘what stuff was coming up for me?’” 

With time, veteran teachers say, they learned to take the bumps in the road in stride. Eighth-grade math teacher Jay Wamsted vividly remembers “constantly waiting for the other (misbehavior) shoe to drop” during his early years. But as he enters his 21st year in education, while he definitely expects that “things are going to go sideways sometimes," what recenters him is a belief that his students can and will rise to his high expectations: “This sounds bonkers, but it feels right. I comport myself in a way that communicates to students, ‘I expect you to do the right thing.’ Students do really respond to your body language, tone, and your whole vibe and attitude.”