Here’s a link to a great article in the New York Times about the sad state of teacher salaries nationwide, especially when it’s compared with three countries that are currently outperforming nearly every other nation.
Want to guess what the teachers’ salaries are in those countries? You won’t believe it!
Here’s the link:
You and I both know that one of the keys to solid class management is solid planning. But sometimes, things just don’t work out the way you’d planned. Sometimes our lives outside of teaching intrude (lives outside of teaching? Unheard of, right?) and we just don’t manage to fill the class with a complete lesson.
What do you do?
First, don’t panic. It’s ok. If you’ve got a solid class management system in place, your students should be able to handle a few unstructured minutes here or there. Just keep moving and keep a watchful eye out on everything. Be ready to step in at the slightest sign of potential trouble.
Second. Stall. If you’ve taught your lesson to one class, and it’s run short, next class, try to draw things out. Ask more questions. Wait longer for answers. Peer thoughtfully out the window. Instruct the students to peer thoughtfully out the window. You’d be surprised how many minutes you can kill with a few stalling moments throughout a class.
Third. Students are almost always easier to manage in a less structured setting at the beginning of your class rather than at the end. If you know your lesson is going to run short, kill some time at the beginning of class when everyone is seated and conditioned to getting started. You can chat with the class about students on the sports teams and their latest opponents or matches. You can chat with the band students or the chorus students on how things are going or upcoming competitions. Chat with the students who are in clubs or who are volunteering.
Take a few minutes to “re-connect” with your students in this manner. Not only will you kill a few minutes and be able to end class in a more structured manner, you’ll be connecting with your students in a way that will help you down the road (see the previous blog post on this…)
Much of the latest conversation on effective teaching deals with differentiating your teaching for the varied needs, personalities, and learning styles of your students. These practices are designed to overcome the cookie-cutter approach to education, the sort of one-size-fits-all model of teaching. I agree that in order for our school system to become more effective at meeting the needs of every student instead of most of them, we must all do a better job at differentiating our instructional methods.
But how do we do this? How do we determine which teaching method or strategy works with which student? How do we effectively connect with our students so that we can begin to differentiate our instruction to each unique individual in our classes?
At first glance, connecting with every student seems to be a daunting task. I’ve been teaching the middle grades for 15 years, and some years I have upwards of 125 students. That’s 125 different individuals with different learning styles and different interests. The quicker I create a system for connecting with my students, the more effective my instruction will be. Not only that, but connecting with my students has greatly decreased the amount of time I spend managing student behavior and increased the time I have for direct instruction.
Here’s a simple trick I use to start connecting with my students from day one. On the first day of class, I hand out half sheets of a nice drawing paper. I have the students fold it in half to make a sort of tent-shaped structure. On one half of that folded sheet, I demonstrate for the students how to draw their name in their fanciest lettering.
Next, I show them that they will be drawing a small object or symbol that represents something about him or her. For my middle schoolers, I remind them, “Nothing naked, nothing illegal, and no violence.” I give them examples like video game controllers, footballs, horses, flowers, cell phones, tv’s, musical notes, books, trees, cats, dogs, and whatever they come up with.
The final product will have the student’s name written very largely so that I can read it from across the room. Plus it will have a symbol that reflects some aspect of that student’s personality.
Once the students start working on their name tents, I circulate throughout the room, talking briefly with each student, remarking on their work. As they get to the symbol portion of their name tag, guess what I’m doing? I’m asking questions about what he or she has drawn so that I can begin to connect with that student on a personal level.
“That’s a nice horse you’ve drawn Brittany. Do you have a horse? Oh, it’s at your father’s house? How often do you get to ride your horse? Every other weekend? What’s your horse’s name? Do you ever get to compete? Oh, you just like to ride around your father’s farm? I bet that keeps you busy.”
Next time I speak with Brittany informally, like between classes, guess what I’m asking about? Her horse. Or perhaps the other animals on the farm. Or maybe even how her stay with her father went. Then, when we get to a story that has someone who lives on a farm, guess who I’m going to ask for some prior knowledge? Brittany or any other person who showed an interest in farming or animals.
For the first week of school, I have my students display their name tents on their desks. I hand them out every day, trying to match faces to names. Not only does this help me learn everyone’s name, it’s a great reminder what angle I can take when I try to connecting personally with each student.
After that week once I’ve finally learned everyone’s name, I take the name tents and put them on one of my walls above our front marker board. The artwork looks great and the students love seeing both their names and their friends’ names. Then when I need a refresher on what is important to a specific student, I’ve got his or her name tent right there.
Connecting with every student every day is impossible. Connecting with some students every day is not. Using this simply exercise, whether it’s the beginning of the year or halfway through your year, will help give you the tools you need to make those meaningful connections with your students. Those connections will help you differentiate your instruction, which in turn increases your effectiveness as a teacher.
And you’ll find that you’re enjoying your students and your job more too!
My school just recently has purchased the EVAAS testing and tracking method of student performance. It was quite eye-opening, to say the least. While I’ve always been a good manager of student behavior and a good motivator of students, these results showed me that my top students were performing above what was expected, but my lower performing students were performing lower than expected.
My heads been spinning on how I could structure my classroom to meet all the different ability levels without loosing anyone.
Our school groups students according to their math placement. Would it not then be appropriate to group students by their reading and writing performance? Why are we so concerned with ability grouping of students in reading but not in math?
I’d love to hear your thoughts on this as I’m really stumped…
I mentioned in my last post using the Teacher vs. Student tactic to get an unruly class to cooperate. I just wanted to post a quick update on my third block and how things have changed since I implemented this plan.
I introduced TvS on Tuesday, and it’s absolutely amazing how things have changed. The entire class has become much more cooperative. The two or three most disruptive students have become quite helpful. The class as a whole moves much more quickly.
And, most importantly for me, I’m enjoying teaching that group of students a whole bunch more than I was on Monday.
I know it will require my consistency to continue to be effective, but what class management system doesn’t require consistency?
If you’re struggling with a tough class, try the Teacher vs. Students strategy and tell me how it goes.
This year has been quite challenging, which is good in a way since I need to continually work on improving my class management strategies. The last two years were so sweetly simple since I had one of those magical groups of students who really bought in to what I was teaching, and I looped with them after their seventh grade year.
But this year? This year has been a challenge. It didn’t matter to these students that I had been teaching for years or that I’d written a book on how to manage student behavior. This group of students acted like so many of our students act – uncooperative, unruly, and not wanting to learn.
This year, for the first time, my original system of class management (which you can find in my videos at HelpingTeachersGrow.com or in my materials at TakeBackThatClass.com) wasn’t enough to encourage the level of cooperation necessary for all of us to have success. For a couple of weeks, I wasn’t sure what to do.
Then it came to me (and I know this isn’t anything new to many of you veteran teachers out there!).
A new system of management that held the entire class responsible to a level of behavior that rewarded their cooperation and withheld that reward for the times students tried to get the instruction off track.
I call it… Teacher versus Student.
And it works like magic.
At the start of each class (I don’t use this with all my classes. Just the ones that need it.) I write a big T and a big S on the board. As class progresses, whenever a student is disruptive, I put a point under the T (for teacher). When the students are, as a whole, on task and working well, I put a point under the S (for student). I make sure to draw attention to the times I make a point, especially since the times the students earn a point is typically when their focused and not necessarily watching the board.
At the end of the class, if the students have more points than I do, we’ll stop a few minutes early, and I let them socialize or go outside for a minute or something else that they really want. If I have more points than they do, no reward.
This has really helped me change my classes around. I love it when the other students tell each other to be quiet or to stop messing around. When the students start to help manage each other’s behaviors, things are really working.
This little trick has turned my least favorite class into the class I really look forward to each day.
Give it a try! And let me know how it goes for you.
If you’ve struggled with getting your students to listen, you might just need to put them in a better seating chart. This short video shows you how I can make an effective seating chart in less than 3 minutes!