From Control to Connection: How I Fell in Love with Teaching Again

By Jill McPherson

From an early age, I knew I wanted to work with children. I was the child who loved holding babies, the teenager who relished babysitting that parents sought out because their children requested me. I engaged with them, played with them—I was the babysitter my younger self would have wanted.

I pursued a degree in Child Psychology and it became clear to me I was meant to be a teacher. Over the course of my 29-year career, I taught in various roles and districts from  a one-room schoolhouse covering grades 1 to 9 on the Alberta prairies to a range of teaching experiences within the elementary system.

The Inner Conflict of Classroom Management

Like many new teachers, I began my career with enthusiasm and love for the profession. However, I quickly faced an unexpected challenge: the tension between fostering a nurturing learning environment and enforcing discipline became a persistent struggle. Was I a facilitator of learning or a dictator of behaviour? It became apparent to me that the teachers were expected  to prioritize control over connection.

Over these years, one thing continued to occur… the inner conflict I would experience when I used. The classroom management strategies that I learned in Teachers’ College  sometimes worked but often there were those one or two students in the classroom who would not conform. I remember thinking: I am the teacher, I am the boss – right? They have to respect me, right? And when they did not, in those moments, I sooo disliked my job. So many times, I would ask myself why I became a teacher? Was it worth dealing with this disrespectful behaviour? Why can’t I just teach? Why do I have to be the bad cop all the time? Why can’t they just behave?

My mind would search for someone to blame. I was using the strategies but when they didn’t work, was I failing as a teacher? Some suggested I needed to be stricter or more intimidating. But as a 5-foot-tall woman, the idea of using fear as a classroom management tool seemed laughable. I envied the 6-foot male teachers who could command instant silence with a deep voice and a few stern words. I knew there was more to it.

The education system is deeply rooted in punitive justice. Even when strategies appeared to succeed, they left me uneasy. I entered teaching because I loved children—so why was I speaking to them in ways I would never want to be spoken to? I began to recognize I was leaving work feeling depleted, in large part because I was prioritizing controlling behavior over truly connecting with my students.

My Ah-Hah Moment

One day, I was sitting in the staff room listening to a colleague vent about a challenging student. I offered some thoughts, and another teacher, overhearing our conversation, asked if I had training in Nonviolent Communication. I had never heard of it. She lent me a booklet from her training, which included six CDs. That evening, I started listening on my drive home.

Emotional moments followed as I realized I had found what I had been longing for my entire career—a way to communicate with students that fostered both connection and collaboration.

At the time, I was teaching music and drama, racing from classroom to classroom with my cart. Before NVC, I would stand outside a room listening to the teacher instruct students on how to prepare for my arrival, mentally preparing myself for the challenge of managing a room full of energetic children. But after beginning my NVC journey, my internal question shifted from, “How am I going to control all these bodies?” to “How am I going to connect with these fellow human beings? Young people who have feelings and needs just like me.”

This paradigm shift rekindled my love for teaching. It was no longer about managing behaviour but instead about questioning my own deeply ingrained beliefs about authority and control. Letting go of the hierarchical, domination-based paradigm was challenging, but the more I valued connection over compliance, the less I needed traditional disciplinary strategies.

From Consequences to Curiosity

As I became more proficient in the language of NVC, I transitioned from simply using it to truly living it. I began teaching it explicitly to my students rather than just modeling it.

In drama, I replaced published scripts with “real play.” Students brought real-life conflicts into class, and together, we practiced NVC to navigate them. Disagreements on the playground? Sibling conflicts? Frustrations about school? All were welcomed and explored through an empathetic, needs-based lens. In music class, our “song of the month” always centered on
feelings, needs, and human connection. While learning musical elements, students were also deepening their self-awareness and empathy for others.

NVC gave me the tools to guide students through conflict, shifting the focus from right and wrong to underlying needs. Conflict arises when two individuals are employing strategies to meet their needs in opposing ways. Instead of imposing consequences, I helped students listen to each other with curiosity, seeking to understand what need the other was trying to fulfill. When students felt seen and heard, their defensive strategies dissolved, and collaborative solutions naturally emerged.

The Magic of Feeling Seen

The moments I love most are when conflict shifts from blame to shared understanding. How often do we punish kids for lacking the self-awareness and communication skills that we’ve never actually taught them?

As soon as students in a conflict situation feel truly seen—once they receive empathy and know that their needs matter, that they matter—their walls came down. And once they verbalize what they heard the other person needed, they naturally came up with their own creative solutions.

I have used real-time conflict as part of my drama lesson, dividing students into small groups and “real playing” how to navigate “Someone Took My Ball” through the lens of NVC. No need to be right. No need for punishment. Just a shared commitment to understanding and collaboration.
Moving Beyond Fight, Flight or Freeze

Once I stopped taking challenging behavior personally I was able to hold space for students in a new way. I could step into the role of a “compassionate, curious witness.” I would ask myself: What is this student feeling? What need are they trying to meet with this behavior?

Conflict often arises when we focus on strategies rather than underlying needs. But when I shifted my approach—meeting students at the level of their needs instead of engaging in a power struggle over their strategy—everything changed.

For instance, one of the most common challenges teachers face is a student refusing to participate. I remember inviting a Grade 3 class to gather on the carpet, only to notice one student remaining at his desk. When I gently called him over, he simply shook his head, refusing to join.

A refusal like this can stem from a variety of unmet needs. Some students may need a moment to transition, seeking a sense of ease. Others may resist as a way to assert autonomy and control. Some may crave recognition—to feel seen—while others might be protecting themselves from social discomfort, fearing judgment or failure.

Time and again, I found that when I replaced the goal of controlling behavior with the intention of creating connection, everything shifted. When I helped students recognize their own needs, they became more open to finding new strategies, ones that didn’t rely on defiance or avoidance. More often than not, simply having someone acknowledge their feelings and name their needs was enough to diffuse the tension. I also realized that simply recognizing a student’s need was often enough for them to release undesirable behaviour. Acknowledgment mattered most; actually meeting the need was secondary.

The benefits didn’t stop there. As my students developed greater self-awareness—when they felt truly seen, heard, and valued—I noticed something remarkable. Their ability to empathize with others grew. No longer stuck in fight, flight, or freeze, their defenses softened and their vision expanded beyond themselves. Their capacity for collaboration blossomed. And time after time, even the youngest children amazed me with their creativity in co-creating solutions that worked for everyone.

My job as a teacher isn’t to be the judge or the punisher. It is to facilitate learning and communication, to guide my students toward what’s really on the other side of conflict: deep connection.

Jill McPherson is an NVC Consultant dedicated to supporting educators and administrators to become self-aware, empathetic facilitators capable of promoting effective listening, creative collaboration and compassionate connection.