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Report from the Field – Erin Bas
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11 thoughts on “Report from the Field – Erin Bas”
Erin! Welcome to my world. I could have written your report myself.
I’m so sorry! Aack! With no advice to give you, I can only commiserate, my dear. Believe me, you are not alone…
Umm…have you called all the parents?
Erin,
I, too, got rid of the desks and I love it!!! All of my classes, except one, are on-board with the jGR and quick quizzes and even the brain breaks. My 4th period class is my smallest with 28 students and it is the most challenging. It sounds just like your 8th graders but mine are mostly 10th graders! Maybe we can put our heads together to come up with some ideas on how to turn the classes around.
Today I talked to my neighbor, the Italian teacher, to see if I could send one of the most obnoxious students to his room with a Spanish textbook and notebook paper. He said sure but it is his biggest class (42) and my student will just have to sit. I said, “great! He can copy pages from the book and make no noise”. Of course, if the kiddo resists then I will send him to the Adminz to deal with. I have already spoken with his parent and his counselor with no change. He is just a very immature and obnoxious kid. Maybe his removal will help the others see that I mean business.
I have gotten a lot of great ideas from the PLC and maybe some others will chime in and help us out! Hang in there đŸ™‚ -Louisa
Erin,
That’s a bold move to get rid of the desks. But it sends a strong message that you value human interaction above bookwork.
As for paper and pencils: I think that with middle schoolers, forgetting supplies is just a fact of life. If you are able to have paper and a few loaner pencils on hand, it solves your problem. Sure, they need to learn responsibility, etc etc. but you have to pick your battles.
Forgetting things is a fact of life for all students. Regularly at the end of class I scan the area around the seats and have to call a student back for something. Most of the time it’s something they want to take with them: a notebook, a bottle of water, etc. One student leaves his commuter cup about every other day. Pencils and pens I simply put on my cart in the center of the room. Then, when a student asks to borrow a pencil, I direct him to the ones on the cart. A couple of days ago, one of my seniors (!) asked to borrow a pen. When he picked one up off the cart, he exclaimed, “Oh, I left one in this class, too!” It was his own pen, so he got it back.
I agree with John that you have to pick your battles. In California another wrinkle is that the State Constitution guarantees every student a free public education, so technically students are not required to bring those materials with them. For me, it is a lot less frustrating to simply hand a student paper and pencil than to berate them for forgetting. When it comes to handouts, I tell my students: “The state of California says you get a free education, but it doesn’t say that I have to support irresponsibility/flakiness. So, you get the first copy free. Additional copies cost ten cents per sheet.” The money goes toward things that benefit the class, and now that piece of paper has value, and kids are willing to pay the ten cents without complaint when they do lose something. Some of students will have purchased two or three extra copies of the soccer table before the year is out. (It’s available on my school website, but most find it more convenient to ask for a copy from me.)
“I had a dream (nightmare) that they were awful enough that I tried to call parents in the middle of class and couldn’t. Woke up feeling annoyed & powerless, and that’s no way to be.”
Anyone who hasn’t taught will think that’s an exaggeration. “For crying out loud! You get summers off, don’t you!?” says the idiot from the cheap seats.
Anyways. You’re a hero, Erin.
I’m not sure if I’m going to be able to put aside the desks this coming semester because I’m going to also be teaching a History class. We’ll see if I have the back-bone to get students to move the desks themselves at the beginning of class.
Erin, perhaps try some community-building brain-breaks with those crappy 8th graders. One I learned I call “Circle Up “. We all stand and form a circle. Students have to greet each other, “Hello. How are you?” “I’m fine.” But they have to greet each other in an abnormal voice (high pitched, low, excited, sad, etc.) One student starts by turning to the person to their right, and it goes all around. Any student that speaks in their normal voice has to sit in the middle of the circle (not out of the circle). Everyone can be apart of deciding whether or not a student spoke in their normal voice.
Diane N. posted lots of additional “brain-break” activities on the forum. I really like the ones that get kids up and moving and are community-building.
Oh, and I often feel the same anxiety. It sucks. I have to always remind myself to be joyous and that no matter how much the class-lesson flopped, the more important thing is that I am interacting with the students and helping them be more humane and joyous themselves.
Hi Erin, I teach grades 4-8, and I think that they are often different from high school students (though others have commented. Is the 8th grade the oldest grade in their school, too? That adds to it. Developmentally they are experiencing all kinds of things. I think some of them are really testing the adults around them for the first time.
Some solutions for me have been:
– No class-period long stories with live actors. Short scenes, more like One Word Images, work very well though. Usually seated actors, even for short scenes, also helps.
– PQA only for 10-15 minutes and stop BEFORE they lose it. In fact, almost nothing is done for more than 10-15 minutes.
– Do things with more structure but find ways to allow student ideas into content nonetheless. I recently did a Mad Libs-style story – pre-written story, their ideas for the blanks. Worked very well and became the basis for some reading activities.
– I find the difficult ones respond with at least some additional respect (ex, silence, and less complaining) since I have explained why I’m teaching as I am. I’ve fed them an SLA research quote (posted by Eric Herman in the Forum – SLA quotes is, I think, the title). This is for the kids who thrive on memorization but not the expectation to listen and respond and be creative and lighten up. Reading quotes by Krashen, et al has given a bit more weight to what I’m asking them to do.
Hello Erin,
It sounds like you have a couple of cases of bad, bad chemistry. Over the years, we have all had groups that don’t want to “jell”. They stubbornly stay stuck where they are and refuse to engage. It’s very, very frustrating!! The first thing you can do is forgive them, and yourself, for that. When I have a group like that (and I have two this year), I have to forgive them several times a class period!! Forgive them, for truly, they know not what they do. And even if you point it out, they refuse to see it. If you don’t practice forgiveness, you will go crazy.
The next thing to do is to look for their strengths. What are they good at? What do they enjoy? You only need one thing to start. Build your plans for this group on that one item. Do they like music? Working in groups? Use this strategy two ways….to create one activity per week that you can count on being well-received and another that you can use as motivation aka bribery aka PAT whatever you would like to call it.
I agree with the idea of having a class set of pencils and scrap paper for activities. This group has learned to work the system ( if I am not prepared it messes with the teacher’s plans and I don’t have to do anything!) and by providing these things you are stopping that in their tracks. They have 7-8 other teachers during the day and many more years to develop “responsibility”; you can’t teach them anything if they aren’t on board.
These groups, at this age, need a routine. They need short, very short, activities with few directions. They cannot work more than 8-10 minutes (maybe even 5-8) on any one thing before distracting each other. Consider four different opening activities: do one every day for a week, rotate for a month and repeat. Do the same thing for a closing activity. Now you are down to 30 minutes of classtime to plan for….3 short activities.
Language is extremely intimidating to some groups. They don’t want to even try something that is new and that they are not good at yet. Often, they fight us to even find something that they are successful with so that we can work with it. Hang in there. You are caring and trying…it doesn’t get better than that. It really doesn’t.
One last thing….get to know them as people rather than students. Quiet acknowledgement of a new haircut, a creative outfit, a sketch on the notebook, a mention on the announcements of the game winning basket, etc, goes a long, long way in breaking down the walls that these groups put up.
Ok…that is enough rambling. I can promise that you are reaching more of them than you think you are.
with love,
Laurie
There’s a lot of wisdom in the comments above, but Laurie’s is pure gold. I’m printing it out.
Thanks to all for the words of advice and encouragement. I have been reading & pondering this weekend, and I greatly appreciate all the support I get from this blog.
I’ve been hitting the 8th graders hard with their IPS grades & quizzes, and that has gone a long way towards helping the behaviors. I have called home for a couple as well, and given assigned seats. They need the structure.
Philosophically, I tend to balk at providing supplies for students outside the stray pencil that’s left in class. When I first started teaching, I had a box of notebook paper that I kept on hand for those that forgot. The result was that everyone stopped bringing paper, and I quickly ran out. So much of my time, effort, and treasure already goes toward the classroom and my own professional development. I can’t keep 34 eighth graders in paper, too. I have just resolved to rely more on worksheet-formatted activities, which will have the added benefit of feeling more “official” and structured to the kids.
Laurie and Diane have spoken some important truths about pacing. In my high school classes, I’m used to going in with a nebulous “plan” and riffing for long stretches of time as we build a story as a class. I can’t do that with my younger students. Friday, I had a very successful lesson in which we talked about Blaine Ray’s “Dirty Baby” story. We circled each picture, then I had them describe each picture to a partner in Spanish. Then they read the story aloud in English to a partner before we did some R&D as a class. Finally, they had their quiz. I didn’t realize at the time, but after reading what Laurie said, the lesson was broken up into several different activities. We had a break in the middle for water/bathroom time, which kept interruptions down. I am going to take the “Extended Reading” on the back and turn it into an embedded reading for today, which I think will give lots more opportunities for activity change-ups.
Once again, thank you to Ben and to all who have replied to this! For all my frustrations, I am still having one of the best years of my teaching career.