By Christy Brock Miele

If you are an adult teaching teenagers, chances are you have been baffled by your students’ response (or lack of response) on more than one occasion.  Even if you’re an experienced teacher, what you have previously taught that was gratefully embraced before may not go so well with a different student group. 

 How you respond as a teacher provides a lot of information to students.   If students are resisting your leadership of the class with silence or lack of engagement, likely there is a good reason for it. 

Your job is to find out why they are resisting and adapt your plan accordingly.  The inquisitive teacher is one who responds to students, seeking to learn what’s behind their behavior, and create the next teachable moment.

Here are some general examples:

• When you’ve asked students to engage in a pose and many are doing something different than what you’ve asked, clarify your instructions because maybe they didn’t hear or understand.

• When you’ve invited students to try something new that they’ve never done before and none are taking action to try it, find out why they are not wanting to do it at this moment.  Most of the time it is a very simple solution.  You can modify what you’ve asked them to do, accounting for why they are resisting. 

-       Maybe they are cold and aren’t warm enough to relax.

-       Maybe they are embarrassed to say something in front of the group.  You can adapt so they are simply telling the person next to them.

-       Maybe they are reticent to form connections with people they don’t know so well and would rather operate in a smaller group.