From the beginning of my career, I had a real problem with classroom control. I was afraid of my older students. It took my almost my entire career until I realized that the secret of control was not to make everything a power struggle between the student and myself but to learn to understand the world through the eyes of the students I was having difficulties with and were having their own difficulties with the school environment. The secret to finding success with students, most of the time, is thinking of them as individuals and seeing them that way and responding to them that way. So much of what we do is related to emotional learning and with that comes the ability to help students get along.