Q. What if I don’t have enough students to fill all of the student jobs in my classroom?
A. I have concluded that only five of the jobs are truly needed. With a small class, you could do an Invisibles class with just one artist, one story writer, one quiz writer, one videographer, and one Professeur 2.
Q. What about the rest of the jobs? How important are they?
A. Some of those jobs are “filler” jobs, for example the Assistant to the Videographer, who merely counts down for the videographer. It is a job I invented to give “the-kid-who-needs-a-job-in-order-to-feel-that-he-belongs” something to do. The Retell Director can be done by someone else in Hub A. The Reader Leader is a job you can do. The Story Driver can be of great help, but is not necessary if you are on top of (literally with the floor cards) of your game with pacing yourself through the questioning levels. None of the Hub D jobs are critical. Indeed, some classes don’t have the energy to put together a nice tech team in their class anyway. But those Hub D jobs sure add to what you can accomplish at the end of the year in terms of PR for your program, not to mention enrollments!
Q. Why?
A. You just have to read the Hub D job descriptions in the Supplements on student jobs to see how all that works.
Q. So, with small classes you can just use the five jobs, and with larger classes…?
A. Your goal should be to amass as big a class management “police force” with lots of buy-in and support for you as a teacher as you can. You should definitely try to fill all the jobs if you have over 25 kids in a class and if you have enough kids who can actually do them as required. These days, with what screens are doing to our children, that is not a given.
Q. I like the idea of having more police officers on the job!
A. I wouldn’t do it any other way now. When I first started using student jobs about fifteen years ago, I didn’t appreciate that when students have a job, they are much more prone to make sure that the whole class stays in line. Jobs in my classroom now fill two pressing needs – to help me teach, but also to help me keep strong classroom management in my classroom.
