Research to Practice: Self-regulation and “Wayside Teaching” in the Middle Grades

By: David Virtue, Merlaina Davis, Kaitlyn Fletcher

Merlaina Davis recalled a day early in her first semester of internship when students entered the seventh-grade language arts classroom noticeably stressed. She learned that students were having their first “math check-ins,” a benchmark assessment administered during the school day. One student approached Merlaina, sat down, and talked about how anxious she was about the test. She decided to give the student a pep talk, and it seemed to help calm her a little bit. Merlaina assured the student that the test would not define her or her capabilities, and it would help her see her strengths and weaknesses in math. While Merlaina wished she could have done more to ease all of her students’ stress and anxiety about the math check-in, she was pleased that this informal interaction opened up a pathway for her to get to know her students better as individuals and understand what their needs are.

While she was interning in a sixth-grade science classroom, Kaitlyn Fletcher had to have a quick conference with a student about an outburst during class. While the lead teacher continued the lesson, Kaitlyn quietly and calmly invited the upset student to the hallway to de-escalate the situation. Kaitlyn used “I statements” to convey how the student’s behavior made her feel. Kaitlyn said, “I was concerned by your actions in class. I felt nervous because they were unnecessarily aggressive. I don’t think you meant to come off that way, but I think it scared your classmates too.” The student acknowledged the misbehavior and apologized, and Kaitlyn then redirected the conversation toward preventing future outbursts through self-regulation. Kaitlyn recommended, “What if we take a five before we express our frustration?” Kaitlyn explained that the student could walk into the school’s “calm-down space” and set a five-minute timer. She reminded the student that they had practiced breathing techniques, and she noted that deep breathing had seemed to help her settle down in this instance. The student nodded and told Kaitlyn that she thought these were good ideas. Kaitlyn asked the student if she was ready to go back to class, and she nodded again, so they returned to class and resumed right where class left off.

Regulating Social and Emotional Behavior

Merlaina and Kaitlyn engaged in practices that helped students regulate their social and emotional behaviors. In a recent Research in Middle Level Education Online article titled “Self-Regulation Challenges and Supports in Middle Level Education: Health Education Teachers’ and School Counselors’ Views,” Babinski et al. (2023) explored health education teachers’ and school counselors’ perspectives on the self-regulation challenges their students face in school and the strategies they used to help their students develop social and emotional competencies. They framed the study using the concept of co-regulation, a “process by which caring adults … promote children’s social-emotional and behavioral competencies through strong, positive relationships, scaffolding skill development, and supportive environments” (p. 3). The researchers conducted interviews and focus groups with 24 middle level educators to learn how they described the contexts for students’ challenges and the strategies they employed to support students through co-regulation. They noted:

The most frequently mentioned strategies were those that educators implemented during day-to-day co-regulation interactions or “in the moment” in response to the students’ emotional or behavioral distress. These interactions, often implemented one-on-one with a student, were aimed at providing the student with an opportunity to calm down or think about their behavior and the potential consequences. These approaches seemed to be based on teachers’ experience in working with students, rather than an integrated framework for providing co-regulation support. (p. 11)

These day-to-day interactions included things like encouraging self-reflection, problem solving about actions and consequences, and clarifying the importance of making good decisions. The health education teachers and counselors in the study also described helping students calm down, take a breath, and regulate their emotional response to an upsetting situation (Babinski et al., 2023).

Co-regulation and Wayside Teaching

Co-regulation strategies like the ones Merlaina, Kaitlyn, and Babinski et al.’s participants employed are examples of wayside teaching. John Lounsbury (n.d.) coined the term wayside teaching to describe “the teaching that is done in dozens of one-on-one encounters during class time—subtle reminders, probing questions, individual challenges extended, earned commendations—and in out-of-class contacts in the hallways or elsewhere” (para. 4).

Sara Davis Powell (2010) described 12 attitudes, approaches, and actions educators enact when they engage in wayside teaching:

  1. Knowing your students.
  2. Practicing little gestures that matter.
  3. Revealing your personal self.
  4. Creating and maintaining an inviting classroom.
  5. Promoting a culture of acceptance and compassion.
  6. Helping students find their voice.
  7. Learning to listen.
  8. Speaking carefully.
  9. Teaching skills that help students become autonomous, not anonymous.
  10. Building resiliency.
  11. Encouraging imagination and creativity.
  12. Infusing humor. (p. xiii)

In the vignettes shared above, Merlaina and Kaitlyn enacted multiple attitudes, approaches, and actions from Powell’s list. They listened and spoke carefully to their students; they taught students skills to become autonomous and resilient; and they modeled a culture of acceptance and compassion through their actions. Importantly, they also got to know their students better and revealed a little bit about themselves in the process.

Becoming a Wayside Learner

Wayside teaching is a powerful framework teachers can employ to help students learn how to regulate their social and emotional behaviors. But how does a one become an effective wayside teacher? In the book Teaching Well with Adolescent Learners, Strahan et al. (2023) observed that “successful teachers are great observers of their students” (p. 1). They continuously and consistently learn about the status of their students’ social and emotional well-being, and they astutely notice changes in students’ moods and behaviors. Like Merlaina and Kaitlyn, they recognize and seize teachable moments (Virtue, 2007), remaining ever open to opportunities to provide guidance, instruction, encouragement, and support.

The teachers in Babinski et al.’s (2023) study tended to base their approaches to wayside teaching on their own experiential knowledge acquired through working with students rather than any formal framework for supporting co-regulation. Thus, becoming a successful wayside teacher may require first becoming a successful wayside learner.

To learn more about the study by Babinski et al. (2023), readers can visit Research in Middle Level Education Online at listen to the Middle School Research to Practice Podcast, Episode 8.

David C. Virtue is the Taft B. Botner Professor of Middle Grades Education at Western Carolina University, the editor of Research in Middle Level Education Online, and the co-host of AMLE’s Middle School Research to Practice Podcast.

Merlaina Davis is a first-year teacher at Canton Middle School in North Carolina.

Kaitlyn Fletcher is a first-year teacher at Central Davie Academy in North Carolina.

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