This comment should have been a post. It is important in terms of rules, jobs, procedures, and beginning the year:
Abbey Parks is a teacher from Detroit who just arrived in DPS at John F. Kennedy High School and is gaining mastery of the method very rapidly. She said something new here at the workshop, brand new in my opinion, that is worthy of mention here:
At the beginning of the year, instead of telling the kids that the fist slap (or whatever you use) is how they show us if they don’t understand (or to slow us down), she asks the class to come up with their own sign so that each of her five classes has a different way of slowing her down.
But the breakthrough thing (nobody in the worskhop had ever heard of it at least) is this:
When a student makes the slow down/stop/clarification sign (let’s just call it a stop sign), in that moment the entire section of the class that is sitting near the originally signing student must also make the sign. This draws the attention of the teacher to the need expressed by the child who started the motion, but without calling attention to the child, avoiding any shaming.
Another thing Abbey does is to give a noisemaker to one (responsible) student who then, in those moments when applause is needed/earned, starts the applause. The teacher then is not the only person to initiate applause, there are two people.
This also sends message that we are in community, that there is safety in admitting that one does not understand, that it is ok to not know and to ask for help.