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9 thoughts on “Confront at The Level of the Attack”
Great post, Ben. It has also taken me a while to draw the line and take the stand. My response uses different words but delivers the same message. When a student says something like “We need to play a game/watch a film/do a worksheet”, I reply, “We need to speak German in this class. We need to communicate as human beings, and you [pointing with laser pointer to “Interpersonal Communication Rubric”, i.e. Classroom rules] need to be meeting these standards.”
I will be posting progress report grades this weekend, and I can tell already that “Mr. Nice Guy” will need a bit of slapping around. Deep down inside I know that the long-term good of my students is best served by holding them to the standards, but it can be tough to fight against years of “don’t rock the boat” and “don’t bruise their psyches” training and modeling. What brings me back every time is the reminder that God destroyed Pharaoh by letting him have his own way. (Can you tell that I was an Old Testament major in seminary?)
On the other hand, as CS Lewis puts it, “All that are in Hell, choose it.” By analogy, Ben, you are showing that those of us who wind up in “classroom hell” ultimately have chosen it.
…it can be tough to fight against years of “don’t rock the boat” and “don’t bruise their psyches” training and modeling….
Yes, but just saying it that way and getting to read it so expressed is so healing for me. I’ve always wanted my students to like me and so feared them on some level. That model of the nice teacher may have worked in…. oh hell, it never worked.
The model of the mean teacher is on the other end of the scale, but, for some reason, that model has been absent from our schools.
And so the pendulum swings, while we in our group try to keep it from swinging by finding that balance of kindness and firmness that you describe above.
Of course, the new twist in classroom hell choice is that before we were at such a distinct disadvantage – we didn’t have a way of teaching that required kids to behave. And that applies to TPRS before jGR in my opinion.
Now we finally can say that we can require a certain behavior from kids and they have no choice but to do it or fail or get out or crawl under a desk where in the past they would stand on the desk figuratively and have their way with us.
And, for me, it goes back to May of 2011 when you made the historically important (this may be just my opinion but for me it is what started the trip out of my own classroom hell) connection between observable behaviors in the classroom and the standards.
That was a great moment in the history of what we have all been developing in the past years together here. Every time there was confusion about that thread, you came in with some research and commentary that kept us on task. It culminated in jGR for me.
And now we have this odd combination of a hammer for both classroom discipline and for leading our kids effectively and in a very fast way – compared to before light years faster – to real acquisition of the language.
For me it all seems to go back to the false hope that if we ramp up the content busywork (that is, hide behind it), we won’t have to interact and respond at that real level, to go to the mat over those key interactions, at the non-verbal level, which lie behind the smile of the overachiever student who wrestles us so effectively, never to play offence but be reacting and putting out fires all year. Teachers are so afraid to call something for what it really is, because it not seen as a core component of their standards (this is where we are lucky as language teachers), or they see it as a waste of time, because it gets in the way of their learning goals.
Like Robert, I think it makes all the difference to have rules on the wall, and in our gradebook as behaviors that support language learning. This brings all the undercurrent to the surface, where we can have some control over it, rather than letting the students control that world, which is what they’re used to. My rule #7, which I borrowed from Bob Patrick, is “good will attitude.” What I love about this rule, is that it overrides any possible exception to any of my rules that students can think up, because it goes straight to their intent: If their intent is to harm or distract, then they are out of line, period.
Just the other day, I heard one too many tiny but potentially destructive comments directed toward a student whom I know has been teased a lot. I looked straight at the offender (who thought his comment would, as usual, go unacknowledged by a teacher), pointed my laser at those words “good will attitude,” and said “If you can’t be nice to your classmates, I will throw you out of my class, do you understand?” He didn’t try for one second to worm his way out of it. He and the class knew that I had his number, and all he could say was “Yes. I’m sorry.” We must take command of the non-verbal communication in the room, and until we do, students will be having their own compelling conversations in class, and paying no attention to us.
…we must take command of the non-verbal communication in the room….
So, this example of confronting this kid is what we need to do. It is so easy to blow off confronting those small insults that we hear sometimes throughout the day, but it is exactly the little insults throughout the day that lead to teen suicide and such. Can you imagine going through school with no one to defend you?
I wish I had started the year out like this. I have always been easily bullied and I won’t continue that behavior. jGR is coming into place monday and parents are going to be getting called. Thanks for that post.
The beauty of bringing jGR in with parents, and I know I’ve said this a hundred times in the past month but I’m all for repetition, is that we get to say things like, “I am calling because of a shift in the standards that I must follow since it is my professional responsibility to do so. So your child has been blurting too much in class and doing so goes against not only my classroom rules but the national standards. I would love to discuss this with you, as it will effect your child’s grade – I really want you to see the connection between the standards and your child’s behavior in my class. We use a rubric that is based on 5 points and your child has a 2, which is __% of his grade and so no matter what he gets on quizzes it is going to pull his grade way down. Currently your child has a __. Let me just read this to you over the phone if you don’t have the time to meet with me just so you know what a 2 is.” (And then you can have the text below in front of you to pull sentences from while you explain to the parent why the kid’s grade is in such serious jeapordy unless they especially make the change in bold below):
2 (C/D) ATTENTIVE BUT DOESN’T RESPOND; DOESN’T USE “STOP” SIGNAL – this is the kid who may get a good grade on a quiz but makes me work way too hard. They just aren’t involved. They don’t get how to play the game yet. They occasionally blurt out words in English or talk to their neighbor in English, both of which destroy the goal of the class, to stay in the target language as per the 90% Use Position Statement of the American Council of Teachers of Foreign Languages, which is the national parent organization for foreign language teachers in the United States. But usually they just stare at me in spite of my being practically on my knees begging them for a more creative and energetic response to all the hard work I am doing. These are not co-creators of stories.*
1 (D/F) NOT ATTENTIVE: NO EYE CONTACT OR EFFORT – these are not creators at all of anything. They suck air out of the room. They do poorly on tests. They give nothing to the story. Their chances of failing the course are high.
(*You may want to play this card with certain parents as well: “One might object that that is just the way some kids are, and are that way through no fault of their own. Fine, but my job, the main clause of my school’s mission statement in fact, includes how my job, my mission, is to “build productive citizens” ready for work in the 21st century workplace. I take that seriously. So if I let those same kids’ stonefaced behavior or blurting go, thus not aligning my assessment with the national standards, I am not properly doing my job for my employer and I should be fired.”
Note: As usual I am being overly verbose here. Perhaps I should restate the above more simply, since the points I am trying to make here are nothing short of seismic in their importance in my own mind for classroom discipline:
1. It needs to be made expressly clear to the parent that this is not something you want to randomly impose on their child, but what the standards demand. Making this point with parents and administrators* is removes the possibility of opposition, the Me vs. Them factor, in parent meetings. The child HAS to change not because I am being a jerk teacher, but because my hands are tied by standards.
2. I must not inflate a 2. This cannot be said enough. I would bet that some of us have inflated a 2 already. We cannot. It is much better to lower the weight of jGR than inflate a 2. (I posted grades in the class last week and gave yet another lecture on what a 2 was, explained how I lowered the weight from 50% to 30% so that I wouldn’t end up with over half my kids failing the class and having to make all those phone calls, and when the kids went up row by row to look at their grades posted by student i.d. # on the wall, not one kids confronted me. Those who were cardboard cutout students and who blurted too often had their nice tasty D sandwich, and I made my point.
So sticking to jGR is part and parcel of enforcing the Classroom Rules (resources page of this website/posters) and the two now function trio-ifically with my Three and Done Policy (see categories) to create an unheard of level of discipline in my classroom. Tying grades to standards and focusing on “observable behaviors” and the students’ ability to negotiate meaning in the TL has been the game changer, and I again thank Le Chevalier de l’Ouest for his leadership on that. When something big like this happens here, and I am eternally grateful like the three martians green guys in Toy Story, I will say it over and over – that’s just how I am, so Robert and jen, you rock the house. My weeks are now about 80% less stressful because of you. Oh, and I wanted to say one more thing to both of you and any and all others who helped drive the discussion to the final product of jGR, if I haven’t made it perfectly clear already – THANK YOU!
*only 27.65% of administrators are half wits, according to a study published in 2011 by the Society for Ferreting Out Idiots in American Education (SFOIE).
I am feeling confident now as I am entering grades for progress reports, that if I give them a low grade on interpersonal communication (based on jGR and Participation Grade form – John? Chris? who posted that? – I LOVE it!) I have my ass covered. BECAUSE I took a week to PRACTICE it, then I had the kids grade THEMSELVES, then bring home the Classroom RUles and the Part. grade form and discuss with parents and have parents sign it. – I am giving the first week’s grade as the one the kids gave themselves and the parents signed (which, kudos to the kids!, was low!!) but this past week was the second week, and they improved! So, they will see the low grade, and an improved grade! (except for the senior who walked to the front of the room to get a tissue and “crop-dusted” his friend in the front seat – while I was writing on the board!!! <for those who don't know that term it means to fart as you walk by someone – intentionally!! ….they were surprised that I knew the term! –points for ME that day! but BOY! that one senior is always trying to "get one past me"
I would say you should penalize students for TRYING to get one past you. For me, that kind of behavior is covered under “good will attitude” and “eye contact” at minimum. One of my students doesn’t look at me during class, he WATCHES me for the moment I am not looking at him, at which point he tries to get away with something. I simply called him on it outside of class, told him his grade is in the dumps because of it, and will continue to be so as long as I think he is playing games with me. I’m not trying to toot my own horn here–I have plenty of issues that I have not taken care of yet. But I think it is helpful for us to see very specific examples of how we are dealing with these student behaviors. We have to have action plans for every kind of violation.
(ok…still giggling over the crop-dusting)
mb…this part is BRILLIANT…and I think that it could be key to introducing this type of rubric to students.
“BECAUSE I took a week to PRACTICE it, then I had the kids grade THEMSELVES, then bring home the Classroom RUles and the Part. grade form and discuss with parents and have parents sign it. – I am giving the first week’s grade as the one the kids gave themselves and the parents signed (which, kudos to the kids!, was low!!) but this past week was the second week, and they improved! So, they will see the low grade, and an improved grade! ”
with love,
Laurie