On the topic of training kids about exactly what behaviors you expect in your classroom (i.e. your classroom rules/norms), I did something that was a first for me today. I didn’t just explain the rules, I modeled what I wanted from them.
I am working this year in a school with kids whose family’s are 95% below the poverty line. They are almost entirely non-communicative – I have never been in such a school before.
I have noticed this year that behaviors such as reciprocality, sitting up, squared shoulders, clear eyes, being ready at any instant to either let me know that they understand (through their eyes) or that they don’t (fist punch move – credit: Jason Fritze) are not as easy for them as I would want. Why can’t some of them do that? And why do I just assume that they can?
It is because many of them, most of them, have never been required to do that behavior before. It hit me just today that, now into the fourth week of the school year, I have been assuming that they could do a behavior because the kids in the other two schools I have done comprehensible input in could do it. But those kids were from very different cultural groups.
So the breakthrough I got a few days ago was this: I had to go the exreme of acting out in front of them the behavior that I wanted. The way it happened was I had asked a question, something like “How many girls were there?” and got a bunch of stares. (Usually if they don’t respond it’s because they don’t get it and I have to slow down, but most of these kids got it easily because they all speak Spanish. But I was still getting a lot of looks and stares.)
So…. I tried the new idea – the “modeling the behavior I want” card. I asked the question, “How many girls?” then I sat down in an empty desk and just stared at where I was just standing, kind of playing the role of both me and the student. I sat there and did that “I am not going to participate in this class” thing. It made the kids nervous. I dragged it out so that they could get the full effect of their behavior on me during class.
Then I modeled the same thing with squared shoulders, nothing on my desk, clear eyes, etc. and I suggested a cute answer: “14 girls!”. Then I got out of the desk, became myself again and, with conviction and energy and a slightly stronger vocal intent, I said clearly and slowly in English that the first behavior, the stare at me, WAS NOT A PERMISSABLE BEHAVIOR IN MY CLASS.
Why did I say that? Isn’t it obvious that just staring at me is not an acceptable behavior? Yes, to me it is obvious, but to these 35 9th and 10th graders from real poverty and really bad middle schools, IT IS NOT A GIVEN THAT THEY UNDERSTAND WHAT BEHAVIORS ARE ACCEPTABLE AND WHAT ARE NOT. They are children and do not know because it is entirely possible that no adult has ever demanded that kind of attention from them either at home or in a classroom. That is what poverty does, but I’ll leave that alone.
That was the breakthrough for me today. If I want a certain behavior from a group of kids, I learned today, I can’t just assume that they know how to do it even when I explain the rules as I did in the first three weeks of the year. I had to model the behavior that I wanted.
Now, the very next time I see a kid spacing out – probably tomorrow – I am going to stop class, model the behavior of showing them what not to do and what to do, as in the above example, and in two weeks I will have no problems.
As I said to them today, I have worked far too hard to learn to teach this way, which is a way we can use to really and truly learn French for real, to have even one student sit in my class with a bored look on their face. I simply and emphatically will not allow it. I will walk over to the kid with the glassy eyes and I will stop, stand at his or her desk for a moment, find an empty desk nearby, model the right and the wrong way, tap the offending kids’ desk as I go back to continue the lesson, and cheerfully model the behavior I want until I get it. If not, I go to the phones and the administration because this elective course was a choice for the kid and not a requirement. We bring such discipline problems on ourselves by failing to act now on kids who either need to be taught right from wrong or be shown the door!
What was I thinking? I needed to MODEL the behavior I want, not just say it.