Chapter 2: The STEW Process

This book looks like it could be a quick read. I could probably get through it all in three or four hours, but I’m forcing myself to stop so I can digest it for this blog.As I’m looking through the pages ahead, it seems this book is mostly going to offer ideas for exercises to build relationships in a classroom. So, the “meat” seems to be mainly in this chapter as it kind of justifies through studies all the reasons for those exercises.

The second half of chapter two touches a lot of items – a brief discussion of maintaining relationships after the building phase which honestly comes off as banal (find commonalities, remember your emotions are contagious, etc.) The resolution phase is a little more interesting. The resolution phase is a little ill-defined, but Mendes seems mostly pre-occupied by using interactions to resolve/prevent conflict via the STEW process, which is this:

S – State the Facts

T – Tell your thoughts about an event

E – Emotion about that event

W – Express your wants and wishes. Welcome the other’s thoughts.

So, I’ll try an example from my own life, in how I could have applied this to my son last night:

Coby, I asked you to do your math homework on Monday night. You told me it was completed, but now I see you only answered one question (S). Homework is crucial to doing well on tests and getting a good math grade. (T) I’m concerned about your grade and disappointed you told me it was done when it wasn’t (E). I want us to be a team so that you do as well in class as you can. (W)

It took me about five minutes to think of that, so I don’t know if this STEW process is as off-the-cuff as the writer would have me believe. In reality, I was a lot less calm than that, but I suppose that’s the point of learning this process.  And he emphasis at the end,  the essential attributes in exchanging such as these – self-awareness, which is understanding your emotional response; self-management, which is managing that response, and interpersonal sensitivity, which is more empathetic understanding of another person’s thoughts and emotions.

All of this calls to mind Palmer’s “Student From Hell,” where Palmer grew increasingly frustrated with a student’s perceived disinterest. After talking to him, he realized that the student had overcome incredible obstacles financially and socially to even be in that classroom. He learned the emotions of the student in that classroom (like others) “are not brain-dead – they are full of fear.”

From this point on in the book, the chapters are more about activities and exercises than theory, so I’ll try to point out the items that most catch my interest.