Today Meg brought up the topic of what to do when the kids don’t respond to Plans A through D. I wrote up a Plan E for addition to the Classroom Management book and share it here:
Plan E – Removal
If the misbehavior continues, if the side conversations continue, if we have called home multiple times, issued lunch detentions, etc.?it means we didn’t execute Plans A through D properly in the first two weeks of the academic year. No blame. It happens to all of us.
So what to do when we are “stranded” without a plan, surrounded by disrespectful kids in the middle of the year and we’re not sure what to do next? One thing we can always do is move on to Plan E – removing the kid from the room.
There are two ways to do this:
Option 1:
Bring the offending student to any other teacher in your department who is currently teaching that period and just drop them off. Keep it all within your department. In Denver Public Schools, whenever I saw my colleague at the door – it didn’t happen very often because word got around –I just walked over to the door, invited the kid in (it didn’t matter if it was the same language) the teacher would just leave to go back and continue teaching her class with the problem gone, and the kid would get a big wave and a smile from my biggest football player, who usually sat in the back.?
Then I would just say, “Oh thank you for joining our class! You can learn some French today! Do you see Reggie back there? He’s hard to miss, isn’t he! Reggie – wave your hand!” (Reggie waves his hand.) ?I would continue: “OK, [name of student] so just go back and sit next to Reggie. He will help you as you finish class with us today!”
Then the offending kid had to go back to Reggie, who very much enjoys his status as Sergeant at Arms, and tells the kid to sit down and not interrupt because I am teaching and Reggie is trying to learn French. Some of my Reggies really would get the evil eye/scowl thing going on with the kid, as in “Hey shut up! I’m trying to learn here.”?
Option 2:
Of course, you can just make a single reciprocal arrangement with a colleague. But in this option, instead of inviting them to learn French when the offending kid is ushered by the teacher to your classroom, she brings them to you with reading and translation work.
Be certain to expect a lot of translation volume from those kids. Soon they will be begging for re-entry into your classroom.
This exclusion over weeks cannot be faulted by any administrators, because the child is doing translation work and therefore is learning. You have made an accommodation. You have differentiated. ?
A few details about exercising options 1 and/or 2:
(a) Don’t be afraid to do it because you feel intimidated in your building– you have this right in an out-of-control situation that is usually tied to the school culture that has been allowed to happen in your building and not anything you are doing – and when you have tried everything else you owe it to yourself and the class to just do it.
(b) If the child in the first option is learning another language, then you can’t do this more than one or two periods (but that is sufficient).
(c) When the offending child is doing mountains of translation work (option 2 above), it would be a mistake to end the practice after a few classes. Hold off for a minimum of one week once the begging sets in.
Doing one or both of the two options of Plan E as described above are extreme but they work. They are what you have to do. Consider your options. You must turn the tables or ultimately lose the respect of the entire class as the abuse by the student (that’s what it is – abuse) is being allowed to go on.