jGR is a Game Changer

6 thoughts on “jGR is a Game Changer”

1. Jennifer

   November 9, 2012 at 8:40 am

   So, according to my school’s grading scale. A 70 is a D and below that is F. I used to have the lowest level of jGR worth a 7/10 points (in the online gradebook) but now I’m making it a 6. The end.

   I have this one class where it is especially necessary to stop going to light on the jGR. I need some constructive critism of the below-mentioned scenarios to help me figure out what to do with 2 girls in particular:

   One girl comes from a poor home situation. She lives with her aunt and uncle. I have spoken with the aunt twice about the girl’s behavior and its relation to jGR. It’s one of those situations that the woman doesn’t really know what else to do. It’s her first time raising a teenager, and an angry one at that. In class, this girl wants to keep her head down on the desk. I call her name and tell her to sit up. She does so grudgingly. Eventually, it’s down again. Her excuse is that she’s tired. It looks to be the truth. I know that this doesn’t matter. I don’t want to have a battle of wills with her in front of the class because I don’t know how I’d win. I don’t know if I should send her to the office because, honestly, she’d get a lunch detention and kids don’t seem to care. I’ve seen her sitting in In School Suspension with a smile on her face. Even telling her to sit up is one such battle. The class waits with baited breath to see who will win. I do for the moment, of course, but everyone sees her with her head back down eventually….and then what….

   Girl #2 is quite the same. This is her 3rd attempt at Spanish 1. When she looks at me, her eyes and facial expression seem to declare, “Go ahead. Start with me. Let’s see who wins.” She wants confrontation. She’s absent often. She just doesn’t care and sits next to Girl #1. They like to behave the same. I will tell her something, she’ll nod as if she understands and will get right to doing what I need and then flashes that look aforementioned.

   I am coming down on the jGR but I think these are 2 girls that do NOT care what their grades are.
   What do you think I should do?

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2. judy

   November 9, 2012 at 9:24 am

   Of course they don’t care. It’s quite possible that they have much bigger problems than an F in Spanish 1. A couple years ago I had a student who could have posed for the portrait you just drew. I tried everything, talking to her, she didn’t talk, calling her out, she didn’t care, using her as a barometer, the only time she answered a question was when her neighbor whispered the answer to her. And even then she had trouble repeating it because she understood nothing. I met the mother who was hopeless and there was so much suppressed anger from the girl directed at her mother that I saw she was incapable of doing anything. Eventually I learned that she had been raped by her older brother when she was 11 and was trying to decide whether to kill him or herself. For some reason, I was the 1st person that she opened up to. As a result she was removed from her home.

   Yes, we want our students to be quietly attentive and to progress. But this world is far from perfect and sometimes we have to put things into perspective. I once had a student who, on good days, would sit in the back and put his head down on the desk and sleep. That suited me just fine, because those were the days I could have a good class. At the end of the year I learned that he was a drug dealer, the only reason he bothered to come to school was to peddle his goods.

   I think that often we can sense the attitude other kids have towards the student who is causing problems. In the case of the girl, she had two friends who were very positive in their class attitude and very protective of her. I knew that if I came down hard on her, I’d be alienating two of my biggest fans. In the case of the boy, the others students were afraid of him, and when an experienced shop teacher, a big muscular guy in good standing with his students, said that he was uneasy with him, I decided that it wasn’t up to little old me to confront him. All of his teachers eventually convinced the administration to make sure that he did not return to our school.

   In both cases the students cared nothing about their grades. No matter how good the rubric is, it can’t solve all problems.

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   1. Jennifer

      November 9, 2012 at 9:50 am

      Thank you for this reality check. I have the kind of mentality that a fix-all doesn’t exist, too. I’m just glad to hear this thought coming from someone else. It gets lonely in my head when all the voices go to sleep. Haha.

      So, are you saying that it would be best just to let these 2 do their “thang” as long as it doesn’t disrupt? It may give other students the idea that this is ok. That’s my concern if I choose to let them just keep their heads down or sit with a look of defiance on their face. I don’t want the other kids to start thinking they can jump on that bandwagon. (I should mention that this class in general is not a great one at all. Very reluctant to reciprocate communicatively so that’s one reason I’m really slamming down the hammer with jGR.)

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      1. Diane N.

         November 9, 2012 at 12:26 pm

         Jennifer, can you assign seats? It seems that moving these two girls apart would also help.

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         1. Jennifer

            November 9, 2012 at 12:58 pm

            Seats were originally assigned in that class and they were still like that. Then, because the other kids can handle being near to friends I let them move. Maybe I can try but that sets up a confrontational scenario, too if I have given them the privilege and am now taking it back….

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3. judy

   November 9, 2012 at 11:41 am

   That’s why I said that it was important to me to be able to read the vibes coming from the other students — and teachers. I didn’t decide on my own. In the case of the girl, the other girls were so obviously protective of her while they were participating and being very positive elements in the class that I thought that they knew something I didn’t and decided to trust them. The girl was never a disturbance, she just obviously was not following and rarely made an effort. And she was not a leader, far from it.

   In the case of the boy, I was getting danger signals, both from the students and the other teachers. I chose to pick my fights. I was very manipulative. If he was angry because he had failed a test, I told the class that if they were attentive while we corrected it, I’d give half a point for each correct correction. Once he figured out that he might get a passing grade if he listened to the answers, he was manageable in that class. Looking back, I may not have taught him much, but I learned a lot from him. Later I was able to deal calmly with other students because I coud see they were not at all in the same league.

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