The Basics of Teacher Team Building – Part 3 – Your Social Interactions

YOUR SOCIAL INTERACTIONS

*What we say to people and children and how we say it can have a tremendous effect on behavior!

How would you feel about a person whose only interactions with you involve placing demands on you?  No compliments, any small talk, no joking around, no questions, just demands.  You would probably feel the same way that a soldier feels about his commanding officer (not very positive).  On the other hand, how would you feel about someone who is always joking around, but never serious?  You might feel that the person is irresponsible, or that they do not take their job seriously, other that they can be pushed around easily.  The point here is that our interactions with other people, especially our children, need to be balanced and in order for us to achieve this balance we must be aware of the different kinds of interactions as well as how often to use them.

DEFINITION OF SOCIAL INTERACTIONS

Generally speaking, a social interaction must involve a minimum of two people (or a child) and is characterized by one person saying or doing something (staff for instance), which is followed by another person or child reacting in some way.  Interactions do not have to be verbal; in fact, some of our most important interactions are entirely non-verbal (think about it and look around the room).

As you can easily see, an interaction can be as simple as giving a “thumbs-up” to someone and seeing him or her smile at you and giving a “thumb-up” in return.  This is perhaps the simplest form of interaction but it may still be meaningful to the person or child who gets the “thumbs-up.”  These types of interactions are simple interactions because each person or child only engages in one behavior and then the interaction is over.  This type of interaction makes up a large part of the exchanges we have with our co-workers every day.  For example: “What’s up?” or “Same-old, same-old.”  (ASK)

On the other hand, an interaction can be highly complex as in having an intellectual discussion with someone or playing a game of tennis.  These interactions are called Sustained Interaction characterized by a “back and forth” kind of participation between one person and another and may last from minutes to even hours.  You see these interactions continue beyond a few moments.  It us easy to see how important it is to know the difference between these two types of interactions, especially when someone wants to engage you in a sustained interaction and you were only looking for a simple interaction!

*You cannot have a meaningful relationship with a person or a child without sustained social interactions.

Social sustained interactions are what many people are referring to when they talk about spending “quality time” with another person or child.  Interactions are strictly for the mutual enjoyment of two people.  Gossiping with our co-workers or sitting and chatting with our friends are good examples of this type of interaction, which are very important in our daily lives.  A good question to ask yourself is “how many times per day do I engage in a sustained social interaction with ____?”

One thing should be clear is that interactions can have a positive or negative tone to them.  Most of us would probably prefer positive interactions but in some cases when interactions are few and far between, we may be grateful for any interaction at all regardless of the tone it takes.

During the day with children you serve, you may not always have opportunities or the time to engage in sustained interactions with an individual.   However, there is ALWAYS time for simple interactions and this is highly preferable to no interaction at all.

*Remember that children have a limited number of ways in their bag of tricks for attention but not the staff.

Next time, we will look at “WHAT ARE THE GOOD QUALITIES OF A TEACHER?”