EP170 Five ridiculously unhelpful things I've said to students
Angela Watson's Truth for Teachers
Angela Watson
4.8 • 1.3K Ratings
🗓️ 18 August 2019
⏱️ 18 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Our automatic reactions — the things we say to kids without even realizing the words are coming out of our mouths — are usually things we've heard from other adults. Often our parents or our teachers said those things to us.
We can make a conscious choice to change the script by examining the ineffective and unhelpful things we say to kids. In this episode, I'm sharing 5 of the phrases I'm most embarrassed about using in my classroom, and what was more effective for me to say instead.
Share your thoughts on the episode and collaborate with other listeners in our NEW private group on Facebook! Click here to join: https://www.facebook.com/groups/truthforteachers/
You can also leave a comment on the blog post/transcript for this episode here: https://thecornerstoneforteachers.com/truth-for-teachers-podcast/unhelpful-things-teachers-say/
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Welcome to episode 170 of Angela Watson's Truth for Teachers. I'm your host |
| 0:07.0 | Angela Watson and I'm here to speak life, encouragement, and truth into the |
| 0:12.0 | minds and hearts of educators and get you energized for the week ahead. |
| 0:15.6 | Today I'm going to share five ridiculously unhelpful things that I've said to students. |
| 0:21.3 | Visit truth for teachers.com to get the transcript or |
| 0:25.0 | find our new truth for teachers podcast community on Facebook. You can share your |
| 0:29.7 | thoughts on the show there and reflect with other listeners in our private group. A big thanks to |
| 0:35.4 | Advancement Courses for sponsoring today's show. Advancement Courses offers over 200 |
| 0:40.7 | online PD courses in 19 different subject areas for both graduate credit and |
| 0:46.0 | CEUs for K-12 teachers. |
| 0:48.7 | And right now they're donating 10% of every purchase to fund donors choose projects. You can submit your donors choose |
| 0:56.0 | project to them for a chance to get funded until September 27th. To learn more, |
| 1:01.2 | visit advancement courses.com slash truth. |
| 1:05.0 | Have you ever been really upset and had someone tell you to calm down? |
| 1:11.0 | That happened to me the other day and it drove home just how spectacularly |
| 1:16.7 | unhelpful it is to tell a person who was upset that they need to calm down. |
| 1:21.7 | Telling me to calm down when I am rightfully mad about something |
| 1:25.3 | just enrages me more. |
| 1:27.2 | It has the total opposite effect of what's intended. |
| 1:31.1 | And as I reflected on that interaction, I realized that the person who told me to calm down was simply parroting a normal phrase that we use, at least here in America, when people are upset. |
| 1:41.0 | It's just a default reaction for many of us. It's not really an |
| 1:44.5 | intentional word choice. When we say calm down, what we really mean is, I don't |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Angela Watson, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of Angela Watson and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.