You had a bad night. The newborn went off intermittently like a faulty car alarm. The four-year-old had a nightmare at 2am. At 5am, just as you were finally drifting off into a groggy slumber, the six-year-old came in to tell you he’d wet the bed.

Abandoning any further attempts at sleep, you stumbled down the stairs, stuck the wet sheets in the washing machine and sorted out food for the two older children. Tidying the breakfast things away, you put the milk in the cupboard and the Weetabix in the fridge.

At some point, you’re not sure when, you arrived at school. And now you are standing in the corridor after assembly looking through a door into the canteen. There is a boy standing just yards from you. He’s wearing a hoodie. This is against school rules and you have warned him about it before. You go over and ask him to take it off. His friends all turn around, waiting to see what will happen.

Normally, when faced with this scenario, you’d pull him to one side, lower your voice and keep things discreet. But not today.

He refuses to take it off. He’ll do it when he gets to tutor time, he says. Cara was in here a minute ago, he adds, wearing one, too. Why not pick on her?

“Take it off,” you repeat, your voice a good few decibels louder.

“All right, calm down, mate,” says the boy.

But it’s too late for that. In that instant, your head - your calm, measured, rational head - has been replaced. The substitute head contains a brain comprised of molten lava. An ash cloud vents from your mouth, ears, nose and eyes.

And when it comes, the explosion is sudden, intense and deafening. Your body tenses; the roar of “Take it off!” rips out of your throat and can be heard clearly over the clanging of pans and the blaring tunes of a local radio breakfast show. They are no match for your fire-eyed fury.

The student complies. The crowd disperses. It’s awkward, that uneasy silence of what follows. No one is sure what to do or say, so you walk back to your office, heart pumping, cheeks reddened, slightly short of breath. This isn’t you, you think. This isn’t how you do things. But, clearly you have just lost it.

Enough years have passed that I should be over this incident, but looking back at it induces a feeling of embarrassment that still flushes my face red. Despite the fact that, on the scale of teacher losses of control, my indiscretion is minor, I feel ashamed and that I need to better understand what happened.

As teachers, we are continually put in stressful situations that can trigger a losing of our temper within an environment where that is the very thing we shouldn’t do. Things over the past few weeks have been especially tough - anxiety and stress have reached intolerable levels in schools. And it looks like this will continue for some time, whether we are in school or teaching remotely.

While teachers tend to succumb to rage rarely, when they do, it can be hugely damaging for all involved. I want to prevent it from happening to me again. And I want to help others prevent it from happening, too.

We’ve all experienced explosions of anger, according to Howard Kassinove, professor of clinical psychology at Hofstra University and author of Anger Management for Everyone. Even that colleague who seems incapable of ire has, at some point, exploded into a rage that would quell an army. Kassinove says that what happens when we lose our temper can be separated into three parts:

• Biological: our muscles become tense and our brains release chemicals called catecholamines, which cause increased blood pressure, a surge of energy and heightened arousal.
• Psychological: we tend to catastrophise (“That class’ behaviour is disgusting and it’s getting worse and worse!” ); lose our ability to cope (“I can’t take any more of that girl!” ); make demands (“They must not talk while I’m teaching!” ); and overgeneralise (“The Year 9 boys are bloody feral!” )
• Social: we exhibit angry behaviour, including glaring, shouting, swearing and throwing things.

Every teacher who’s reading this will have witnessed this happening to students. And if they’re honest, they will also recall times they have been in this state themselves.

Kassinove explains that, broadly, we risk losing our temper when dealing with people who insult, ignore or humiliate us. Some students can be pretty good at all three. Part of the skill of the teacher is adapting to this environment and managing these triggers by prioritising context.

If we understand that a pupil has failed to do their homework because they spent the night caring for a sick parent, we will not lose our temper as we will not take it as an insult to our authority or an attempt to humiliate us.

Likewise, if a child refuses to carry out a task because they are embarrassed about their likely poor performance, we would seek ways to help them rather than simply throw a detention their way.

It’s rare that we cannot find a reason for a behaviour, no matter how trivial - and in this way, we can manage the general triggers that affect us. As a result, we might be irritated but we won’t be furious.

But on top of the general triggers, each of us has actions that we perceive as downright offensive, which make our blood boil but might not have quite the same effect on our colleagues. For some, it is the disrespect of lateness; for some, impoliteness; others find a lack of effort infuriating, for example.

Children can be cruel. They will notice that certain things push your buttons, and they might well end up doing it for the value of entertainment. Again, teachers tend to adapt to see context as a way of managing their temper when these instances occur.

So, why do we sometimes fail to see the context, or see it and lose our temper anyway? Partly, it’s a matter of experience - we have to lose our temper in order to fully recognise that context is king if we are to avoid losing it again. But there is also a genetic factor: Kassinove says that some people simply have a shorter fuse. Mary the misanthropic geography teacher, who spends half her working day yelling at children (and sometimes colleagues), is likely to be predisposed to losing her temper.

That’s not to say that the number of times we are likely to kick off is fixed - rather, it means that, under certain conditions, certain teachers are more likely to play the Hulk than others. It’s also true that individual teachers are likely to vary in their propensity to anger owing to those certain conditions.

Don’t make me slangry

So, what conditions make a difference to how we respond to triggers for our temper?

According to research, the two major factors that can provide a fertile breeding ground for us to respond to our triggers are how much sleep we’ve had and whether we have eaten properly.

Those judgement calls around context - and our ability to handle students pushing our individual temper buttons - will be adversely affected by whether we have slanger (anger provoked by lack of sleep) or hanger (anger fuelled by hunger).

I’m well aware that being hungry makes me tetchy. My wife will readily attest to my irrationality if I’ve missed a meal. At school, I have a simple remedy for my vulnerability to hanger: an arsenal of snacks in my office.

Slanger doesn’t usually affect me. Unless I’m feeling anxious about something, I sleep pretty soundly. This probably explains why my flare-up over the insolent boy in the hoodie came seemingly out of nowhere. Put simply, I hadn’t taken into account the impact of prolonged sleep deprivation that comes with a new addition to the family. Exhaustion led to increased irritability and the unfortunate boy in the wrong uniform was in the wrong place at the wrong time.

“So, if I get some sleep and eat properly, all should be well?” you ask. Rather than take comfort that my behaviour can be in some way excused, and that I and others can better control our likelihood of kicking off in the future if we simply set the right wellbeing conditions, this information in fact makes me worry more.

Suddenly, it becomes clear here how increased teacher stress and poor wellbeing could be making us all more likely to lose our tempers. Disrupted sleep patterns from working later or stress-induced insomnia can leave us exhausted. Meanwhile, a full timetable and longer hours can mean breaks for food are missed. Unfortunately, in this period of great uncertainty, it’s likely that anxiety will disrupt both eating and sleeping patterns even further.

We talk a lot about these factors driving people out of the profession but less about the impact they might have on how we handle behaviour in the classroom or, now, remotely. That seems like a huge oversight: it appears the potential for flare-ups is only increasing.

Anger management

But is losing our temper always a bad thing? Some might argue that a bit of fire will keep the children in check. Others will argue that any loss of control is a catastrophe. I am of the view it is certainly something that should be avoided. But what’s the reality?

According to the research, aggressive (shouting, abusing, throwing objects) or passive-aggressive (sarcasm, indirect threats) behaviours are generally viewed by students as unacceptable forms of teacher conduct, especially when expressed at high intensity.

Basically, frequently losing your rag in school can be extremely damaging for teacher-student relationships. Even if you are now teaching remotely, doing this over Skype or Microsoft Teams is unlikely to lessen the negative impact.

That said, there is some evidence that good relationships can protect you from the adverse effects of losing your temper on the odd occasion. Studies indicate that students are more forgiving of teachers who lose their temper later in the academic year than those who lose it in the first term. As students get to know staff, they “appear willing to give teachers more latitude when expressing negative emotions” (McPherson, Kearney and Plax, 2003).

Overall, though, it is clear that if you want to control students’ behaviour, pressing your anger button is not the optimal route. McPherson and Young (2004) found that students are able to “acknowledge that something they did evoked their teacher’s feelings of anger”. Yet, fascinatingly, they discovered that when teachers rant and rave, students are far more likely to pin the blame for the outburst on the teachers’ life circumstances, personality traits or lack of teaching skill/preparedness than on anything they did themselves.

By stark contrast, when teachers verbalise their frustration with student attitudes in a calm, polite, direct but non-aggressive manner, students invariably accept that they are responsible for the incident that’s occurring.

It’s not just behaviour that losing your temper impacts negatively, though. There’s a wealth of evidence to suggest that aggressive teacher conduct adversely affects student motivation and cognitive learning (Myers, 2002). A study from higher education found lower levels of comprehension in classes where teacher behaviour was considered inappropriate. Whether this is caused by students downing tools or a long-term lack of trust is unclear. Yet, it would appear that a calm teacher is more conducive to positive learning outcomes.

It’s not just the students who are affected, of course, as my own experience taught me: the shame of losing my temper was long lasting. So what would be the impact on me if I’d had more frequent bouts of temper?

There is evidence that angry teachers are less likely to be effective in teaching classes, and that they struggle to form positive relationships with students (Buricć and Frenzel, 2019). A 2007 study found that teacher anger also interfered with their ability to plan effectively and distracted their attention away from classroom tasks.

Most worryingly, several studies have linked individual teachers who are frequently affected by anger with poor wellbeing and, ultimately, a greater likelihood of burnout and leaving the teaching profession (Chang, 2013; Taxer and Frenzel, 2015).

So is there any potential plus side to losing your temper? Kassinove says milder forms of anger play a beneficial part in the classroom.

“While very strong anger can cloud thinking and narrow the search for solutions to problems, milder anger - as in annoyance - can alert us to a problem and cause us to seek solutions,” he says. “For example, when a teacher becomes annoyed that two children regularly talk to each other while they are teaching, it may cause the teacher to change their seats.” The students will then chat less and, hopefully, learn more as a result.

Irritation, it would appear, is an unavoidable yet useful emotion for the average teacher to experience. Genuine wrath, however, is not just unhelpful, it can corrode a teacher’s performance and health, and should be avoided where possible.

So what can we do to help teachers in avoiding losing their temper? If your temper outbursts are rare, then it’s probably just a case of learning from the experience, being aware of the triggers, getting enough sleep and food, and doing what you can to repair any short-term damage. Nobody’s perfect, particularly in the current conditions, so don’t beat yourself up too much.

But if you are finding that you are habitually struggling to control your temper, then you really do need to take some action. You need to be aware of techniques you can use to climb down from potential volcanic eruptions.

Kassinove recommends taking “a proactive approach to working on anger” as follows:

• Talk calmly to students about your frustration. If you can clearly and politely reframe your fury as annoyance, then your students are more likely to respect your feelings. Depersonalise things and avoid raising your voice in class.
• Take care of the basics. Make sure you eat regularly and avoid sugary foods that can cause spikes and dips in your mood. Go to bed a bit earlier. Listen to your body telling you that you’re on edge and take action before you explode.
• Gain support from family, friends and trusted colleagues. Suppressing strong feelings about a difficult class or an infuriating colleague might work in the short term. But holding anger in without any kind of outlet will negatively impact your state of mind in the long run.
• Put a reminder on your desk (where students can’t see it). Kassinove advises using a sign as a way of reducing rage. A note saying things like “don’t take it personally” or “it may be unpleasant but I’m good at dealing with it” may help with keeping your cool.
• Consider counselling. If you’re still not able to control your anger, then you might need to seek professional help. We all have bad days - and bad nights - but if you’re frequently hot-headed, you might need additional support, for the good of your health and your teaching.

It’s been a long time since I lost my temper in school. Longer, still, since I became genuinely angry. Yet the memory of my screaming fit lingers, serving as a troubling reminder of the vague possibility of future outbursts.

The negative impacts of losing our temper are clearly multiple, but the thing that bothers me most of all is that, when we lose it, we let down our pupils, no matter if they are the cause of our outburst.

One of the most significant things we can do as teachers is try to role-model calmness, equanimity and effective management of the triggers that rile us. We need to get help if we cannot do that. Because if we can’t do it, how can we expect our students to?

Mark Roberts is an assistant headteacher in the South West of England

This article originally appeared in the 27 March 2020 issue under the headline “The temper trap”