8. Avoid temper fit. One mark of emotional maturity on the part of a teacher is that he or she does not yield to the temptation to become angry, yell, and especially to cry. Any experienced teacher has dealt with youngsters who specialized in trying to produce some such reaction on the part of the teacher. What greater satisfaction could one give such a student than to “play the game his way?” Miss E was a beginning teacher of high school English. She was young, somewhat naive, and a bit of a “culture nut.” Two senior boys had a way of engaging in conversation about the poem under study, and their remarks seldom reflected credit on either the poem or the poet. Miss E construed these remarks as a reflection on her teaching (exactly what the boys intended her to do) and frequently burst into tears of frustration. She lasted one semester. Her replacement, a much more stable person, treated the situation as a joke, and in short order, this is what it had become. When the challenge to goad Miss E to tears disappeared, the fun was gone. Incidentally, the question as to why students will act in the way just described is a difficult one. There are always some who will act this way, and the successful teacher learns to work with them. The system that will work best has to evolve, but the system that is least effective is undoubtedly that of pitching a temper tantrum or bursting into tears