Thoughts on a Wednesday

4 thoughts on “Thoughts on a Wednesday”

1. Diane N.

   October 14, 2015 at 9:01 am

   “Blurting is not an individual teacher problem and cannot be solved within individual classrooms.”
   I think that’s right. It is a major help to have the department unified about this point.
   But we also need at least administrative assent, if not support. The dept. I’m part of is pretty well together about this issue, but I think our admins only kind of get it. Not having experienced this approach to language acquisition, it sounds extreme and unnecessary to be so demanding about students’ comments and behaviors. That means that if further action is needed because a student won’t back down from interrupting the flow of class and the flow of CI, we must also gain administrative supportive behind whatever plan teachers have to prevent blurting.
   Where I am, I do not think that Two Strikes would get admin support at this time. In fact, I think they’d side with parents if they complained. Maybe if it were made the dept. approach, very carefully explained over months, then tested with a few classes, one day it’d be ok with them. As it is now, admins think of removing a student from the classroom as a sort of in-school suspension.
   Why I say that: This fall I had a renewed press to get one class that was always harder to manage last year to be on board with CI class flow (no blurting, no wrong use of English). One kid was still very resistant. After consulting other faculty & deans, I gave him independent work for 2 days in another classroom, and wanted to continue that until a conversation with him, mom, etc. could resolve the conflict. Before that meeting happened, an admin told me he would be back in class before coming to that resolution. When I said how uncomfortable I was with him returning before having agreed on appropriate behavior, I was told to “ignore” his blurting that day if necessary. I asked a coworker to spend her planning period in my classroom while I taught that class, because I wanted an adult to see whatever happened. Having a witness seemed to me to be important.
   It turned out that he didn’t come back to class that day after all. He was meeting with a dean; I’m told, crying and in part acknowledging what was going on in my class and other issues the student faces. His B-/C+ in my class was by far his highest grade. The next school day, we had a meeting with him, his mom, a dean, dept. chair, and me, and the boy has been a step or two better since. He acknowledged agreement about how to behave. A battle isn’t being waged against me anymore, at least. There’s still some passive resistance, but it’s not an active attack anymore.
   In this process, I was seen as hypersensitive for being so disturbed by his repeated, deliberate, usually negative, English comments during instruction. The comparison was made to students cussing out a teacher and throwing chairs — since I didn’t have that, why was I so upset? But his behavior felt like harassment, and it was destructive to the class. (My dept. chair called it abusive.) It was de facto setting himself up as who was in charge. It had to be stopped. Without that kind of attack, I teach so much better, and can think of how to create more compelling CI instead of just surviving the class period.

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   1. jen

      October 14, 2015 at 6:09 pm

      Yes! The old “hey it could be worse” pep talk. Really??? The fact that we can’t, literally can’t teach language bc of blurting but are somehow supposed to “ignore” it?
      Latest thing I tried today was the “$#%- it” strategy: I just sent a pile of kids out into the hallway. Like 8 of them. Very calmly. “oh, you can take your conversation outside so that in this room we can hear Spanish. Thanks. Bye.” I got unofficial “word” that I can do that. We’ll see.
      I got busted sending kids to the library. And I tried to get a bunch of colleagues to take one kids each but that doesn’t work here bc everyone is already doing triple duty, like subbing and hall duty during planning period and then we all have “study hall” kids in the back of our regular classes while we teach. So really nowhere to send kids. When I heard my French college “invite” a student “out” I asked “where did he go?” And she said “i don’t know, wandering around.’ so if she can do it then I will join in.

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2. Diane N.

   October 14, 2015 at 9:12 am

   Also – I love these creatures! Great stuff!

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3. Eric Spindler

   October 14, 2015 at 2:50 pm

   Ben, I believe I am going to try some variant of two strikes. I need to think on how to implement it and what I can get away with. As we are on Finals week (Block 4 plus starting August 13th), I won’t implement this until next week. One class in particular really needs this treatment I think. I am also trying to increase my variety and frequency of brain breaks to go with this.

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