Overview:
Not only is teacher rage normal but there is a scientific explanation on why we have it and a three step method to stop it.
There was a long moment of silence after I’d turned around and hurled my chalk to the floor with great force, eyes glaring, lips bared, a growl escaping from between my clenched teeth. Chalk dust was settling on my shoulders, and my seventh-grade class was staring at me like I was a wild animal. The kid who interrupted me had handed me my last straw. Luckily, someone started laughing at how silly I looked, and everybody joined in. I’m a sucker for a good laugh. But in that long moment of silence, I knew I’d lost it due to teacher rage.
I’ve been teaching middle school for twenty years. I can hardly even believe that that’s true, considering the fact that I spent the first ten trying desperately to find something else that might fill the many wishes on “what I want my occupation to be” list. Something challenging, something that makes me grow, something meaningful, something that helps others – teaching checked all the boxes. It was the ever-growing list of cons that made me want to quit: constant interruption, invasion of my space, messes, noise, challenges to my authority, and feeling disrespected. The students exhausted me, but worse than that, they made me MAD. How could I continue to show up every day and be a good role model if I was constantly triggered by teacher rage?
I decided I was going to have to change myself in order to make this job work.
The science teacher in me took a hands-on, methodical approach: self-help books, coaching, therapy, workshops, conferences, support groups, vitamins, hypnosis, emdr, breathwork, meditation, yoga, and lots of exercise helped me decide to stay with teaching and avoid teacher rage. I took a particular interest in neuroplasticity and autonomic system regulation. Around year ten, I felt like I got my feet under me and things started to get easier. Lately, I’ve begun thinking, with all I’ve learned, what I might say to someone who thinks they might want to be a teacher, which might make it easier for them.
And so I sat down to write an article about teacher rage.
The Myth of the Perfect Teacher
Look at the mainstream ideal of a teacher. You can see what people THINK a master teacher is supposed to be: kind but firm, able to quiet a room with an owlish or withering gaze (depending on the crowd), grading papers with a cup of coffee on a Saturday morning, coaching debate on Tuesday nights, talking kids out of doing drugs by eloquently quoting Shakespeare, solving a tricky math theorem in the nick of time, chaperoning the dance with a funny hat.
Reality looks a lot different, especially post-COVID. There are days when the horses have control of the carriage for more minutes than feels particularly comfortable. I’m pulling on the reins, but horses do not have a well-developed prefrontal cortex, and sometimes it comes down to confrontation.
As a teacher, I have limited options in a confrontation with a student or group of students. These options can be divided into two overarching categories: attuned or disharmonized. If I’ve slept well, done my breathing exercises, had a decent morning, don’t have any particular issues with anyone, and my pants aren’t too tight, I can usually find a way to shift my point of view and maintain composure, keep my autonomic nervous system integrated, and retain my joy.
When the Amygdala Takes Over
But there’s another place I go to when I’m hungry, or tired, or can’t find the paper I just had in my hand, or spilled coffee on my best sweatpants, or got an email from someone that didn’t sit right, found a note on the floor written on paper I ordered with special erasable colored pencils I picked out with words I taught how to spell: “Do you think Roz is a good tetcher? Eh,” or that one time I was running late because I ran to the store on my break to pick up a burrito for lunch. As I hurried through the crowded hall, sweaty and anxious with children blocking my every move, a kid stuck his head in my space bubble and said, “No fair! Teachers get burritos! Can I have a bite?” These are the times that if I’m not careful, my amygdala will commandeer the whole caboodle and shunt every electrical response possible straight into pumping me full of adrenaline and cortisol.
Teacher rage is akin to an out-of-body experience. I’ve confirmed with other teachers, so I know it’s not a singular-to-me experience. One second I’m there, puttering along, getting in the work, the next I’m standing next to myself watching the other me who is fully triggered, eyes bulging, face red, fists clenched, and mouth flapping away, in full fight or flight, saying things like “You CAN’T just GRAB things OFF MY DESK!
HowwouldyoulikeitifIcameandgrabbedyourstufflikethat?!?!?! I LITERALLY JUST ASKED you NOT TO DO THAT ONE MINUTE AGO! And now it’s BROKEN!” And the kid is just standing there with that look they get, maybe terrified, maybe embarrassed, but definitely not listening because now their amygdala is pumping away too. In these moments, I can hear a voice, quiet, like it’s far away or muffled by a fluffy pillow, telling me to breathe, step away, calm down. Still, the indignant, red-faced me somehow believes that the next words out will do the trick, the kid will see the error of their ways, and never do this offensive act again.
The Science Behind the Teacher Rage
Our reactions under stress are far more programmed than most of us think. Babies are born with billions and billions of brain neurons, but these neurons are mostly disconnected. As the child grows and has experiences in the world, synaptic pathways form at a breakneck speed, millions per second, creating the brain architecture. The formation of these synapses starts to reduce significantly at age two, and by age five or six, the brain shifts focus and starts pruning weak or disused synapses. This brain architecture forms the foundation for how you view the world, how you will react in the face of adversity, and how quickly you might go into fight or flight. You, as an adult, are using brain architecture that was formed decades ago, in a land far, far away.
Take a minute to think back on the environment you grew up in. Chances are your parents or siblings spent some time out of attunement. And you, sweet little toddler you were, used that information to write the synaptic book on how the world works. Was there a shortage of food? Were you left at daycare against your will? Did you have an unkind older sibling? Each of these experiences, and all the other ones too, were programming you for how your nervous system will work to keep you alive. You’re still using those same synapses today, in your classrooms, homes, grocery stores, and beyond.
Blazar Neutrinos & Childhood Synapses
A few months ago, I found an article in which the author posited that the fastest thing we’ve recorded on the planet is a neutrino fired from a natural particle accelerator in space. I became obsessed with neutrinos as a metaphor for teacher rage.
Neutrinos are something that seem like they’d be made up by a sci-fi writer to fill a plot hole in an outer space drama. They are particles that are ten billion times smaller than protons, travel in cosmic rays at near the speed of light, have different “flavors” that can change as they travel, and can pass through your body by the trillions without ever being felt. Cosmic neutrinos are infinitesimally small and rare but if we examine them, follow them back to their sources, they can give us helpful information about Earth’s composition and about extreme and violent environments in space. Studying them gives insights into how our universe formed and what might happen to it in the future.
As ridiculous as it sounds, this extraterrestrial dustlet I read about was found by neutrino detectors suspended in a giant ice cube in the South Pole. Scientists were excited about it because it was the first one they found that came from outside our solar system and, since neutrinos can travel long distances passing through matter without breaking apart, they are basically messengers from deep space. They caught another neutrino in 2017 and sent out a message to scientists around the world to look around and see where it came from. Using a giant telescope, they deduced that this neutrino was born in blazar (rhymes with quasar, to which it is closely related) TXS 0506+056, four billion light years away. A blazar is a supermassive blackhole that sucks in cosmic debris, mashes it all up, and shoots it directly at the Earth in a supercharged cosmic ray made of neutrinos and other stuff.
Teacher rage is like a blazar neutrino. You think your life is about this moment, you think you’re mad at Jimmy or Sam, but really this rage was born a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, a time when things were all collecting and building under high pressure and intensity, and you were just trying to make sense of it all. That neutrino from your childhood was formed under stress and shot here, to this moment, at super speed, and lit up those old synapses.
Maybe you had to split every treat with six siblings, share every Twix bar, snarf down your piece of cake, or hide your ill-gained chocolate chips under a layer of peanuts to throw off the predators. And now there’s a slobbering kid hovering over your plate, ogling your burrito. I’m a full grown adult now! you tell yourself. I don’t have to share! But there they are and you feel the threat. “Get away from my food!” you bellow, knowing you’re overreacting but you don’t know why. The kid backs away and you can practically hear their synapses crackling.
Maybe once you felt lost in a sea of voices. Everyone was bigger than you, smarter than you, faster than you, and funnier than you. You felt like you couldn’t be seen or heard. And now in front of you there’s a kid who facilitates a full volume conversation about whether tape or glue works better to make your lip stick to your nose, as you try to teach them how to reduce fractions. This is important! you tell yourself. I am important!! “Clearly you can’t manage to sit in your chair and listen to this lesson today. Take your book to the office, I don’t want you in here, disrupting everyone else,” is what you snap instead, face red, stress hormones pumping, not to mention the kid in front of you is reinforcing the brain architecture that they will be using twenty years from now.
Three Steps to Defuse the Teacher Rage
We can change our brain architecture by changing our thoughts. It’s not easy, but recognition is the first step. Take some time when you’re not triggered, early in the morning or on the weekend, to note your blazars–Why am I so defensive about my food? Why does it bother me so much when students talk over me? Why do I find children shrieking with joy so troublesome? When was the first time I remember feeling this way? Be a scientist, trace the path back in time, find its source and sit with it for a while. You don’t need to try to get rid of it or feel bad about it. Just notice it and sit with it. Once you’ve sat with it, flip the coin over. If that’s the synapse you don’t want to be working with anymore, what is the synapse you DO want? Say it out loud, write it down- “I want to feel relaxed when students are talking over me, so that I can address it from a place of calmness and freedom.” Visualize yourself saying to your students what you wish you would have said.
What is something that might have worked better?
In my experience, the most effective way to shift teacher rage in the moment of confrontation is a three-step method: 1. Fake it til you make it, 2. Breathe, 3. See students as real people.
The first step, interrupting a brain habit, is the most difficult of the three steps because it requires a deep desire to change. For me, this is where it’s good to have a metaphor (like the blazar) or a mantra (“I’m not in danger right now, I am safe” is one I’ve used). When I feel the pierce of rage I can think to myself it’s only a blazar neutrino, come from the past, to show me where I’ve been hurt. I have the power to transform this into something new. We can examine that rage as scientists examine neutrinos. They are highly energized parcels of information from the past that tell a story about how we were treated, how our feelings formed, our own villain’s arc. That searing hot jet that screams “they can’t do this to me! They’re ruining everything! They won’t learn! They’ll stop others from learning! I’m embarrassed by their behavior!” can be captured, examined, and shifted.
Step two gives me time to regulate my nervous system. Deep, slow breaths help me keep my heart rate down and my cortisol in balance. If I’m able to stay regulated, I can move onto step three: remembering that this person in front of me has hopes and dreams, feels sad when they disappoint me, and wants me to love them. I can ask them clarifying questions like “I’m curious about why you were climbing over the wall in the bathroom. Was there something dangerous happening in your stall?” (This question must be asked with true sincerity, no hint of sarcasm, unfortunately.) If I get to this stage, I’m doing ok! If I can manage all these things, I can actually hear what was happening for the child in front of me, grow a connection with them, reinforce healthy brain architecture (mine and theirs), and build community.
William James, a well-known psychologist and philosopher, said, “the greatest weapon against stress is our ability to choose one thought over another.” This is the work of neuroplasticity, teaching an old dog a new trick (idiomatically speaking, of course), building new pathways in your brain, which allows you to feel better, trust yourself more, and build better connections with those around you.
I would argue that this is the most important work of a teacher, self examination and self reflection. Without it, the violence from the past will continue to wreak generational havoc on our nervous systems, through shame, fear, manipulation, and rage. We have the power to transform this into something new.
