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Goals for 2014-2015 – 4
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26 thoughts on “Goals for 2014-2015 – 4”
I did a 6-week sub gig at the end of last school year in high school French for a teacher out on maternity leave. It was five sections of French 3, 4, and AP. The week before starting the job, I was determined to forever overcome my hesitancy to address discipline problems from day one. I promised myself that, come what may, I would immediately stop talking, in mid sentence if need be, and point to rule that had just been broken. I also promised myself that, this time, I would not forget that for the entire first week, my job was to norm the class to my rules, NOT TEACH FRENCH. I treated the 6-week sub gig as a micro school year -in essence just a training camp for me to practice some CI teaching skills and improve my communication/management skills.
I was helped by something that Ben mentions in Stepping Stones: the idea that if you’re stopping to address undesirable behaviors about every one minute during the first few classes, then you’re doing it right (I don’t remember offhand exactly how Ben puts it, but the gist is, you’re going to be address behavior A LOT, very frequently, the first week of so of class -and that’s normal).
I learned two things during my sub gig:
1. It works. Once I got into the TL on day one, I was stopping just about every other minute to address some type of rule infraction. About 90% of the behavior-issue kids were on track and adjusted to the rules by the end of day one. By frequent stopping they were allowed to experience what went against the rules and what didn’t. The other 10% were the ones who kept needing reminders the rest of the first week, but they eventually got on track too. But if I hadn’t stopped immediately to address these issues starting on the first day, the reverse would have probably been true -only 10% of the kids in each class would have “accepted” to live by my rules, probably less.
2. The rule infractions have to (in my opinion) be addressed with overt good-will. This ties in to a conversation we had on here at some point around the end of last school year. Ben proposed that when a teacher is “neutral” in a school, kids perceive this as mean. Previously when I stopped teaching because of a rule infraction, I would assume a neutral tone and facial expression. But I could tell that this neutrality put kids on the defensive. Even though I wouldn’t mention offending students by name, they would defend themselves (“But I wasn’t…”).
During my sub gig I went out of my way to evoke kindness and good will each time I stopped for behavior infractions. I was amazed how well this worked with two students in particular: the students were two girls sitting in the back of one class who kept whispering to each other as I was trying to do CWB on the first day. I must have stopped for them around 10 times on the first day alone to point to my rule poster at the rule which says “One person speaks and the others listen.” Then I would make passing eye contact with them, and the other students, with a smile on my face. But those two girls knew it was for them. And they were not happy that I was not allowing them to whisper while I taught. One of the girls rolled her eyes a few times and the other just assumed a frown. The battle between me and these two chatters continued for the first few days and I kept stopping and pointing to the rule poster. Sometimes they would start chatting immediately after I resumed teaching, and I would immediately stop again and say “Sorry, we have to look at rule number 1 again for a second.”
But, I think it’s my smile that made the difference. I did not get annoyed at all with these two girls. They were not interfering with my teaching, because I wasn’t trying to teach them French the first week. In fact, they were helping my teaching by providing a perfect stage for me to norm the class to my classroom rules. Every time I stopped teaching I had a big smile on my face. I was legitimately happy that I was learning to not let a group of students walk all over me. I felt my spine growing by the second. I was happy to feel myself in the middle of becoming a more effective teacher and stronger person.
By the end of my sub gig these two girls were participating in class and greeting me at the start of class as they came in the room. I passed them each frequently in the hallway and they would each smile and say hi to me, one of them in French. I think they respected (even unconsciously) that I did not treat them badly because of their failure to cooperate and that I did not refer to them by name when addressing the behavior in class. And I think they could tell that their behavior issue did not cause me to like them less or hold something against them, because even though I was having to stop class for them they saw a smile on my face.
I know the above is not news for most people. But I wanted to share my surprise at the effectiveness of 1) immediate and unrelenting action for misbehavior and 2) treating misbehavior with good-will, NOT neutrality.
This is worth my month’s subscription right here. Thank you for detailing your experience, Greg. I am not naturally a bubbly, smiling type of personality but this resonates as true and something I must pursue this year — partly b/c I’m at a new school and I’ve been told these kids don’t know how to act in a CI language class.
… in fact, they were helping my teaching by providing a perfect stage for me to norm the class to my classroom rules….
…I think they respected (even unconsciously) that I did not treat them badly because of their failure to cooperate and that I did not refer to them by name when addressing the behavior in class…..
The devil is in these two details. We address every instance of misbehavior in the instant it happens and we do it lovingly. The results speak for themselves. Thank you thank you thank you, Greg, on behalf of all of us who must fight this battle with teens, and that is going to be ALL of us. You done good, boy!
not news for most people
It is a timely reminder, Greg. That is a lot of what we do here is remind each other of what is important, even though we already know it. It is like Lombardi’s “This is a football” speech. Thank you.
Greg, I will be implementing the poster and laser pointer approach. For me, the issues mentioned in the book have been the missing link for me. Thanks for the extra encouragement and the caution about neutral makes sense to me, even though I hadn’t heard it worded that way before. I hope to report back after August 18. The first day at our school, our principal wants us to talk about “future stories” and do some “getting to know you” stuff on the first day. I had day one all planned out but you know how it goes…oh well, at least the administrator wants to focus on building relationships. I actually have Circling with Balls on my teacher evaluation plan for later in the semester.
So Tim I think that the first minutes of the first day of class should be with Circling with Balls. I don’t know when you plan on doing it, but, and this is just my opinion, CWB allows you to get to know them while you do as Greg describes below in terms of laser pointing to the rules. Give us a report. We’d like first week reports from everybody. Send them to me as Reports from the Field and I will publish them as articles. Why? Two reasons: 1. We all want to support each other here; supporting each other throughout the year is the main purpose of the PLC, and 2. We won’t need to have discussions about discipline later in the year if we have them now. To be blunt, enforce the rules and get jGR kicked in in the first few weeks or kiss good bye to your idea of having a firm and focused classroom this year. Like what Greg said below. Everything he said. But don’t do what he said in September if your classes start in August. That will be way too late.
I agree with Ben 100%. Call CWB your “getting to know you” activity and do it first thing, first day. CWB normed my class from the first moment of school last year and I am hoping it does the same this year.
They were not interfering with my teaching, because I wasn’t trying to teach them French the first week. In fact, they were helping my teaching by providing a perfect stage for me to norm the class to my classroom rules.
This, once again. Brilliant!
BRAVO! Thank you for the precise details. It really helps to know that you stopped so much. Unrelenting! Love it! 🙂
Wow, Greg! Simply…wow! I’m so glad to hear about your success. I have often felt, and been reminded by observers, that classroom discipline is a weakness of mine. The “good” classroom managers in my building tend the be the “meanest” or “toughest” teachers who also taught core academic subjects. I wanted to be more like them, but I also found myself hampered by the same couple of questions:
1) I teach in a very small district with a lot of languages competing fiercely for enrollment numbers. If I am considered “mean” will students still choose to take my class?
2) How do I maintain my naturally sunny, positive and supportive demeanor while also being “mean” enough to be a good classroom manager?
3) Is being “mean” really the only way to be a good classroom manager?
Your post really answered all of those questions for me. Good will is essential to great classroom management. Classroom norms need to be taught with love and understanding. Take each early transgression of the rules as a request for clarification. Just like when a student signals that they don’t understand what we are saying, we lovingly provide answers EVERY SINGLE TIME.
Thanks, Greg!
Thanks James and Ben. I think my principal will really “get” the “getting to know you” aspect of CWB. I bought my cardstock weeks ago and am ready to go.
Your principal can be told to look for three things going on with CWB:
1. Focus on the kid, personalization. Tell the admin. that your class is based on knowing the kids. Explain that you teach kids the language in that order and not the reverse.
2. Setting of rules in place. Read some past articles on the Classroom Rules so you can be ready to explain how the Classroom Rules work, how they are the result of defining and redefining and testing and retesting rules for about 14 years now, and are not casual rules of a useless generic variety but have real teeth in them.
3. Rigor, as explained in the rigor posters. This would be a service to her, because most admins don’t know what rigor even looks like in a foreign language classroom. The equate rigor with forced output(which is just stupid) and fail to grasp that rigor is about quiet focus on the sound of the language as the posters describe. Find the posters on the TPRS Resources link of benslavic.com.
Tim your principal can be told to look for three things going on with CWB:
1. Focus on the kid, personalization. Tell the admin. that your entire class is based on knowing the kids and that if the class is about them then you will get maximum buy-in from them all year, as opposed to the textbook buy-in piece. Explain that you teach kids the language in that order and not the reverse, that the kids come first. Tell him to look for that in the observation.
2. Setting of rules in place. Read some past articles on the Classroom Rules so you can be ready to explain how the Classroom Rules work, how they are the result of defining and redefining and testing and retesting rules for about 14 years now, and are not casual rules of a useless generic variety but have real teeth in them.
3. Rigor, as explained in the rigor posters. This would be a service to her, because most admins don’t know what rigor even looks like in a foreign language classroom. They equate rigor with forced output (which is just stupid) and fail to grasp that rigor is about quiet focus on the sound of the language as the rigor posters describe. Find the posters on the TPRS Resources link of benslavic.com.
Perfect. I got the thumbs up. I am ready to roll. All I need are desks and administrator-approved adhesive for posters and new desks to arrive.
Greg, this is awesome. I’m inspired. In this thread about starting with CWB, I’m planning to do the “persona especial” thing that Bryce Hedstrom described in Denver, and on his web site https://www.dropbox.com/s/8mg16feiybo25vy/LA%20PERSONA%20ESPECIAL.pdf . It seems to me to be another version of CWB, basically the same idea in another slightly different form. What do you think about that, Ben and others? Can I embed CWB into Persona Especial and call it the same idea?
I actually got confused by the similarity at some point last year. They really are close, aren’t they! The PE difference is (to me) that the kids are clearly held accountable for knowing about their classmates.
Victoria Gellert had an idea that added to this (it’s on my blog today): she asks kids to turn in three things about their summer that no one else knows and she puts one bit of information from each kid on a grid that looks something like a bingo game. Everyone gets a copy. The class reads one or more of the statements each day, for five or fifty-five minutes. They guess whose it it and she circles around the information, adding a little more to each student. Then they mark it off on the paper. Victoria says that kids are interested in advance to meet the others from what they can read.
I like all these ideas! (I especially like adding the grid, because then no one would get left off due to teacher forgetfulness.)
I think we can do whatever works for us, Angie 😉
I did something similar last year that I called “La Vedette du Jour” (Star of the Day), because I couldn’t get any momentum with CWB. So it was my version of CWB, sort of, but I didn’t start it until well past the beginning of the year. I based it on a few answers from the questionnaire and just focused on one kid. Each one ended up being a little story that was partially true and, especially in some cases, hugely fanciful. I tried to keep it as simple as I could and as repetitive as I could, but I think I could do better there. We got kind of involved in the developing stories and went out of bounds too often, I’m sure. Anyway, I typed them up for us to read, too, so that was another layer.
I wasn’t consistent about doing this activity, though, and I didn’t get close to focusing on every kid. It was my first year teaching French and I wanted to try other things, and I was feeling frustrated by seeing the kids so seldom. I was pretty scattered in the types of CI I was delivering. I do want to do this again this year, though, and make my way to each kid. I just have to be good about keeping it simple with lots of reps.
Thinking again about this, PE and VdJ are really not versions of CWB. They are too focused on one kid to do right away in the first days and weeks, and CWB is all about the beginning. If CWB’s function during those first couple of weeks is as the context for getting the classroom management down, providing all those opportunities to stop and smile and point to the rules, then it’s really different from the other two activities.
I think I finally understand how to do CWB and what it’s all about. I think last year, I just didn’t get it. Thinking about this comparison helped me out. It’s funny how sometimes things don’t sink in until they sink in 😉 No matter how many times they’re explained and demonstrated.
Isn’t the persona especial a lot of output? Maybe I don’t understand how it works. The vocabulary looks great and necessary.
PE Output was why I had to stop last year in Russian 1, and I didn’t try Victoria’s step in upper levels, so they all knew everything already there. It was just too much for my kids to get the vocab and be able to write something. Maybe I should just have them write something about classmates in English…but then we’re spending class time doing something not Russian. Good SEL though.
I am going to have my lower level class write out two things about their summer in German or in English (if they are not able to do it in German) and then I put them into the grid and translate if necessary.
WOW! As always, thanks Ben! Also, thank you too, Greg! This was where things fell apart for me. It was my first year using CI/TPRS and I wanted too much too fast. I didn’t norm my classes as I should have. I really thought that I had done a good job, but about 6 weeks in, I knew that I had done an absolutely awful job at getting my students to understand what was expected. Then I got frustrated and then I got angry. So it all fell apart. I tried to start again a few times, but without any heart. I stopped teaching with love and kindness. UGH.
I will do better this year. And SLOW is my Number One goal. I will speak so SLOWly that it’s painful and then maybe a little bit more SLOWly. I start September 4th. I’ll let you know how it goes.
Deena 🙂
Seeking advice from the group: There are 3 students who have been a problem in their class this school year. Since their whole class chose to continue taking Chinese, I will have them again in the same class together.
I am thinking about calling these 3 students and their parents shortly before the school year begins in August, while I’m feeling my best about them, to set a tone of “we’re not going to be like that this school year, and your parents know I mean it.”
Wise? How to do this and what to say? I SO prefer emails to phone calls, but email doesn’t work for this, I don’t think.
Hi Diane,
I love your proactive idea. I agree that it warrants a real conversation, not an email. Though you might groan, I’m suggesting a face to face conversation over a phone one. All parties present- you, kids, parent. If you really wanna turn up the heat, add an admin for good measure!
You speak from prepared notes about the behaviors you expect (jGR?) and the ones that won’t be tolerated. You explain that you are having this meeting in the interest of protecting all your students’ right to learn in an environment most conducive to learning…you reiterate the primacy of careful listening in a WL classroom.
You have a stiff drink afterwards.
To be clear -Separate conversations for each kid/his parent(s)
Thanks for your thoughts, Alisa. I agree, in person is more powerful (I hadn’t even thought of it though I’ve done that midyear with a couple kids in the past). Good ideas!