How Do Kindergarten Teachers Stay Calm?

Kindergarten teachers spend many hours of the day with twenty or so very young children. Children who are just starting to learn social and self-management skills through unaccustomed boundaries set within a completely new environment. Unsurprisingly, things don’t always go very smoothly for kindergarten teachers. So, how do they remain calm when teaching a class of young students?

Kindergarten teachers stay calm by regulating their emotions through reflection and actions such as mindful breathing. They maintain a good routine and practice behavior management strategies to minimize stress in the classroom. Having a balanced diet and resting also helps them sustain a healthy body and mind to better deal with the demands of kindergarten.

Although kindergarten teachers appear to have more patience than the average person, there may still be instances when their emotions get the better of them. By adopting more self-awareness and conscious actions, any teacher can become calmer and more composed.

Table of Contents

How Do Kindergarten Teachers Keep Calm?

Children learn best when they are comfortable and at ease. So, seeing a teacher lose their temper or shout will cause a great deal of stress and uneasiness in the classroom.

These are a child’s first formal school experiences, so the teacher’s conduct can significantly influence students’ association with school. It is, therefore, imperative for a kindergarten teacher to stay calm to contribute toward the positive environment that all students need. To achieve this, a teacher should do the following:

Maintain a good classroom routine and organization

Practice behavior management strategies
Identify their emotions
Practice mindfulness, e.g. breathing techniques

Do brain breaks
Get enough rest and sleep
Have a balanced diet

Let’s explore each point further with explanations and examples.

Maintain a Good Class Routine and Organization

A significant way kindergarten teachers can minimize stress is to implement and follow clear routines.

Children, especially kindergarten-age kids, greatly benefit from schedules and environments that are predictable to them. Students who have routines feel more comfortable and secure in the classroom, allowing them to focus on developing their social and self-regulatory skills.

With predictability and familiarity, young children are less likely to be disruptive or display emotional imbalance, making the teacher’s job a lot easier.

Similarly, an organized work environment helps things run smoothly. For instance, if students are familiar with the arrangements within their classroom, they will gradually become less reliant on the teacher regarding where things are and where things go.

Or if the teacher is well-prepared and has all the resources he or she will need, that teacher is less likely to become overwhelmed during lessons.

Ultimately, clear routines, organization, and preparation will go a long way toward creating a calm classroom for everyone.

Practice Behavior Management Strategies

Like with the routines, teachers should make their expectations clear early on. Unambiguous and realistic rules will again provide students with the security and predictability they desperately need.

Knowing how to behave in class is essential for students’ safety and learning, so rules must be established and reinforced consistently.

Stick with the basics, such as how they should move around the class, interact with others, and listen to instructions.

In addition to setting rules, the possible consequences should also be decided and communicated to students. Psychologists discovered that people who rehearse responses or reactions to situations cope better when issues arise.

This means that the teacher can rehearse potential scenarios of misbehavior and have methods ready for dealing with unruly students. The result is the teacher is not thinking on the spur of the moment and can implement strategies more efficiently and calmly.

Identify Their Emotions

Being reflective is often overlooked. However, one must be able to identify their feelings before knowing how to regulate them.

It is tough for a teacher to stop and consciously assess their thoughts while experiencing a stressful or demanding incident. A more doable task would be for them to reflect on their emotions at the end of the day. They should try asking themselves questions like:

How did I feel throughout the day?

What caused me to feel like that?
Were my feelings rational or justified?
How did my feelings make others feel?

With this exercise, the teacher will understand when and how certain emotions are triggered and can work toward managing their feelings better.

Of course, talking about their emotions with others, like a fellow teacher, for example, can also be helpful.

Once the experiences that bring about feelings of anger or anxiety are recognized, it becomes much easier for the teacher to deal with these occurrences in a calm and orderly manner instead of lashing out.

Practice Mindfulness

According to Education Week, around 60% of teachers experience job-related stress ‘frequently or always.’ Most things that can cause teachers distress are out of their control, e.g., budget cuts, larger class sizes, demanding parents, etc.

Yet, how teachers deal with these challenges is, for the most part, in their hands, and practicing mindfulness can undoubtedly help with safeguarding their emotional well-being.

Mindfulness, which involves being aware of and accepting the present without judgment, can be practiced in various ways. One method of decompressing is practicing breathing techniques that aid in relaxation.

A simple technique is Box Breathing. For this, the participant will have an image of a square, and as they work their gaze around the box, they inhale, exhale, or hold their breathing depending on their position around the square. Use this video as a guide:

An alternative breathing technique for relaxation can be found in the NHS video below. This method concentrates on the physiological changes that occur while breathing slowly in and out.

Both breathing techniques will help to decrease blood pressure, focus the mind, and reduce stress and anxiety.

Also linked with mindfulness, Progressive Muscle Relaxation combines breathing with contracting and relaxing various muscle groups in the body.

These exercises are not limited to teachers, as mindfulness can also be practiced in the classroom to teach students how to breathe and relax, which can be helpful when managing a rowdy class.

Do Brain Breaks

Kindergarten teachers do not have the luxury of pausing their lessons midway to reflect on and practice mindfulness to regulate their emotions there and then. At the same time, kindergarten students are known to have limited attention spans before they become disengaged and are more likely to deviate from expectations. A quick fix for both of these realities comes in the form of brain breaks.

If students’ engagement level starts to dip or the teacher’s composure is tested, a brain break can help protect the calm.

These short, structured activities give children a brief pause from what they’re doing to let them move, rest their brains, and release tension.

Here are some tried and tested brain breaks that are easy to carry out with kindergarten students:

3, 6, 9 – Students count to 10 in sequence, but when they get to the numbers 3, 6, and 9, they must perform an action (e.g., clapping) rather than say the number.
Silent Ball – Students pass a ball around without making a sound. If the ball is dropped or someone speaks, they are out. To make things more interesting, you can introduce challenges like students can only use one hand to catch and throw, hop on one leg while playing, etc.
Simon Says – A classic game where students must listen carefully and only perform commands that start with “Simon Says…”.

Brain breaks have been proven to be an excellent way to reduce any stress or tension in the classroom. The only downside is that students can’t get enough of them.

Get Enough Rest and Sleep

Teachers are constantly engrossed and occupied with multiple tasks, especially when working with very young children. They must be educators and primary caregivers at all times during the school day. Such responsibility would leave anyone physically and mentally drained.

Therefore, it is fundamental for teachers to get plenty of rest and sleep to better deal with the trials and tribulations of the job.

Research proves that rest can help to manage stress, improve mood, and enhance emotional resilience. On the other hand, tiredness and sleep deprivation make people short-tempered and will adversely impact their ability to focus or reason.

So, taking time over the weekend or after school to relax should not be underestimated. Equally, spending time with other adults can help kindergarten teachers maintain a positive attitude to their job and minimize emotional fatigue.

Simply put, a well-rested teacher will find it much easier to remain calm and deal with arising issues better.

Have a Balanced Diet

As with sleep, the human body needs a healthy, balanced diet to function optimally.

Teachers do not exaggerate when they claim to not have the time to prepare and eat healthy meals because of their work, which is the harsh reality of the education system.

Nevertheless, prioritizing a healthy diet will help teachers improve their performance while also modeling good habits for their students.

Here are some tips for teachers when it comes to eating well:

Have an idea of or research a few healthy recipes you would like to prepare during the week
Buy healthy ingredients on the weekend when you have more time and energy

Prepare your lunch the night before to make sure you have a sufficient meal at school rather than worrying about it in the morning
Make time to eat lunch! Even if this means finding someplace where you will not be disturbed
Become less reliant on sugary snacks by removing them from drawers or cupboards

Instead, keep healthy snacks like fruits, vegetables, and nuts

By choosing to eat healthy foods, teachers will find that they are more alert, have more energy, and generally feel upbeat, all of which should help them react to incidents more calmly.

Conclusion

Being a kindergarten teacher can be extremely rewarding and most teachers have a good grip on managing their students and themselves. Despite this, children will still push boundaries and test a teacher’s patience, which puts into question how they react.

The best response to any situation would be for the teacher to remain calm. To do this, they can follow the abovementioned suggestions, such as maintaining a clear routine and organization, implementing behavior management strategies, identifying their emotions and practicing mindfulness, and taking care of their well-being with proper sleep and diet.

Sources

Education Week: Teachers Are Not OK, Even Though We Need Them to Be