This updated article from 2013 might be of use to some of us right now as we begin another year:
In the first weeks of the school year we use CWB and OWI, etc. to set up stories and make contact with our kids. Some in the group have suggested moving quickly from CWB/OWI, etc. to really short stories as another stepping stone into full Matava/Tripp type stories*. Whether we are doing this or not, we must absolutely and resolutely begin our school years in ways that work, personalizing and establishing rules, and I hope we are all doing that.
There is one major drawback – since most of our students’ learning patterns are ingrained with the tell and test methods of memorization and spitting back answers without having to actually show up for class as a real human being, giving and taking, the real goo and junk and negative stuff doesn’t emerge from those kids until after these first three weeks or so. Goo and a desire for the familiar easy (robotic) way of memorization starts seeping out from certain kids about now.
The kids who refuse to “go there” with us (meet the Listening Skill standard) hide/lurk among the general faces of students in the class. We have to deal with that. There we are, pouring our hearts out to those fearful kids who are figuratively hiding behind rocks, wanting to function at low level interaction or not at all because they don’t know how to do it. It’s kind of of ugly and it affects the whole room.
The fact is, in my opinion, Weeks 3 through 7 or so are the weeks in which we will face our greatest emotional and pedagogical challenges. The kind and quality of our year is being determined right now, in September and October.
This discussion won’t be important after Halloween – it will be too late. Those kids who complain and those kids who stonewall us with steely resistant faces because they don’t know what else to do, who have never been in a class where they have to give from their hearts, can poison our classrooms. Let’s not let them do that to us.
September and October are when the rubber meets the road, folks. We have to respond to comments like:
- …you don’t teach like my teacher did last year….
- …I don’t get this class….
- …why don’t we have homeword in this class….
- …my mother wants to know where the book is….
- …I want to sit with my friend….
- …You mean that you are going to talk all the time and we don’t get to do anything?…
- …I need worksheets to learn….
- …I can’t learn this way and neither can the others I’ve talked to….
So this post is to hopefully get a discussion in the comment fields going that lasts through this period of time that helps us in any small way to shut down those pockets of resistance and that pushback from those two or three or four kids in our classrooms who for whatever emotional reason cannot change, cannot bring up their vibration, from what they know school to be – memorization and work sheets – to levels that we need them to move up to for our classes to be successful.
Those kids have sucked air out of the room at a rate that for me in certain classes at this time of year (and for the rest of the year if I don’t stop them now) that is truly alarming, even debilitating to my mental health. Such kids become discipline issues if we don’t react. So hopefully the comment fields become filled up below with good ideas for dealing with these kids.
We need to keep in our minds that engaged kids are not problem kids so we have to go slowly enough so that everyone understands. There are many articles here on SLOW for those who want to search that category.
We have to check for understanding and stay in bounds as per:
https://benslavic.com/blog/checking-for-understanding-revisited/
Our version of jGR must have teeth and even fangs in it as per:
https://benslavic.com/blog/jgr-has-teeth-2/
https://benslavic.com/blog/jens-great-rubric-jgr-2/
Over the years we have discussed at least ten really good ways to deal with these kids. Now might be a good time to review some of them. The kids deserve at least one teacher who demands that they show up for life.
*Now four years later we include the Invisible stories into our options of how to get through the middle part of the year, where before it was, for many of us here, all Matava scripts.