Goal #4 for this 2014-2015 academic year: Address the bad apples right away.
Paul brought up the idea of how we all seem to have such a hard time clearing our classrooms of the kids who, if not cleared out, can then go ahead and ruin our classes for the entire year. I addressed this point in a comment a few days ago in the rant below, which is just a long rant about how we need to get rid of the bad apples early on so no need to read it. Just know that it is our fourth group goal of the year, for those few of us who lack really supportive counselors and admins in our buildings.
The rant:
Yes Paul I have concluded that the very common lack of a response by counselors is possibly THE most disturbing factor in this thing. It is serious and demands a response and we don’t get one. Talking to the student does not help. Talking to the parent does not help. Talking to the counselors does not help. Talking does not help. Action is required. Generally I try to find someone with a sympathetic ear, someone who gets that what I am trying to do is very subtle work involving the need for focus, rigorous work that a few bad apples can destroy for the rest of the class, and then use the power of that one person to get rid of the kid. If there is no one, then I become very aggressive with the kid as fast as I can, calling parents every day, going way overboard in my reaction to the kid’s behavior, because honestly we both know that minor offensive behavior in August and September becomes later on a disaster for all concerned. This is one of my main areas of interest in teaching, how in most schools to some degree there is a kind of wholesale dismissal of a teacher’s professional decision that there is a malefic factor in the room. Hospital administrators would be concerned if a virus in an operating room were not eradicated, so what is the difference? The comparison is not inaccurate. I have a category on Pigs (the wrong choice of words but so be it) here that talks about certain kids that MUST be removed from classes. I’m starting to rant here. Read some of the articles on Pigs and get your mettle up. You need to know that YOU ARE NOT WRONG and that THE KID IS WRONG AND MUST BE REMOVED. Ramble is continuing. Now, what to do if the people with power in the building fail and the parents fail, which they do most of the time in helping us effectuate change in their kids? What to do then? I say that on the very first day you assign a jGR grade. Then do it again on the second day. By the beginning of Week 2 of school you have five grades and the kid is flunking. You call or email EVERYBODY. The AP in charge of WL, the counselor, the parent, and (this is the mistake we make – we don’t do this) you raise hell about how this kid is failing the class and you see NO WAY that the kid will pass because they don’t have the necessary skills according to the national parent organization ACTFL’s Three Modes of Communication which, as national standards, drive your curriculum. So my answer to your question is to make it immediately and academic problem, that the kid is incapable of handling the academic part of our classes, and WE CAN DO THAT NOW BECAUSE WE HAVE jGR. We change it from a behavior problem to an academic one right away, so that within the first two weeks we can get the kid out based on grades when most of us kind souls want to keep on believing the kid will change (THEY WON’T!) and don’t even start putting any grades, like real fools, until the end of the first few weeks when it is too late. So we will focus on certain things this year, as we always do on this PLC, and let’s make this one of them. Let’s make a strong decision this year, a decisive one hear at the outset of the year, to ACT through people in our buildings and parents and when (not if, when) they fail we will be ready with a shitload of zeros and ones on the jGR on the kid and WE WILL USE GRADES NOT BEHAVIOR AS OUR EXCUSE FOR getting the not-ready-for-our-class kid OUT OF OUR CLASSROOMS. Good lord, Paul you have touched a nerve in me this morning and I am not even going to be teaching this year. I just have so many wounds of exactly the same type you have and now, like the character in Network I am saying, “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore” about these unconscious kids who have NO RIGHT, not a single right, to bring their shitty and disrespectful behaviors into my classroom.
(“So Ben, what are you trying to say?”)