Posts Tagged ‘helping teachers grow’

When all else fails…smile!

Wednesday, June 4, 2008

Here I am, like so many of you out there, suffering through your final days of the year. Here in North Carolina, we’ve already had our end of the year tests and our grades have already been turned in. Typically, this is the time of the year when our students start unraveling, sometimes more than just a bit…  Now my homeroom students this year have been just fantastic.  I wish I could keep them all day.  We could work on a loosely organized project for hours and have a great time together.

But some of my other classes…Well, they can get a bit trying.  I often find myself getting a bit uptight at these changes in my students’ behaviors. I want to jump all over them and fuss at them and tell them how disappointed I am with their behavior.

But then I remember. It’s the end of the year! We’ve only got a few days left together! As long as they aren’t being unsafe or hurtful to others, then perhaps I can take a different approach. Perhaps I can try just smiling and laughing and *gasp* relaxing a bit with them.

If figured it was worth a try.  And wouldn’t you know, they actually became better behaved.  Instead of taking my more relaxed attitude as a sign that they could continue to behave inappropriately, most of my students showed better behavior.  Their behaviors actually improved.

I really like being able to relax with my students at the end of the year.  All too often we get caught up in all these last minute tasks that take so long to accomplish that we get a bit grumpy.  But if we can just remember that our students will remember us more for how we are on these last days of school that we were throughout the last 180 days, it might make it a bit easier to…relax and enjoy these last moments with our students.

Darren

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We’re done with our testing!

Friday, May 30, 2008

Well, after a very long week of taking North Carolina’s standardized tests, we’re finally done. I am so thankful to have a great homeroom this year. What always ends up happening with our testing is that as the school finished up at different times, we are stuck with our homerooms for extended periods of time.

Now typically, this isn’t a big deal. We can move around the class, do class work or finish up projects. But with this testing, we have to be very quiet and stay in our seats. Ugh! It makes for a boring and very slow passing morning.

We finished up just a couple of hours ago, and my homeroom made this process so relatively painless. I hear horror stories from other teachers about how their students behaved, both during and especially after the test. I’m just glad my homeroom is as well-behaved as they are.

I know part of that is due to the standards I’ve established for classroom behavior. But another large part is that those kids are just so darn good!

I’ll be sad to see this batch go…

Darren

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What would help you most in the classroom?

Tuesday, May 27, 2008

I’ve been teaching long enough to know what helped me be successful as a teacher.  But what helped me might not be the same thing that would help you…

So, a question for you.  What would help you most in your classroom?  What is your greatest challenge in your classroom?  What brings you down and drains your energy in the classroom?

In other words, how can I best help you grow as a teacher?

I’m busy creating my curriculum for the six week seminar due to be released in August, and I want to make sure I include aspects of teaching and classroom management that will be most helpful to you.

Leave me a comment and let me know what you think.  I very much look forward to hearing from you!

Darren

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When should I start with my new Classroom Managment Plan?

Thursday, May 22, 2008

I was recently checking out the boards over at teachers.net (great source for troubleshooting school issues of all types) and ran across a thread that really grabbed my attention.  The teacher had had a pretty rough year.  The students didn’t respond well to her and she was thinking about quitting.

Many of the other teachers on the boards gave her solid classroom management advice along the lines of what you can find here- create a plan, teach and model it, implement and reinforce it consistently…  She was wondering how her students she was working with would respond to her new efforts at implementing a classroom management plan.

This reply by poster marjoryt really put things into perspective nicely.  Here’s what she wrote:

How bad was my first year of teaching? I was asked not to ask to
return – that’s how bad! (Basically – they didn’t want me again.)
The problem was ENTIRELY classroom management.

My next job was in an alternative school – I had studied everything
available on classroom management and went with Wongs’
recommendations (sorry, Tom, but you weren’t around in 1998). That,
coupled with a strong principal, put me on a good path – I actually
got BETTER every week. During that second year, a few students
would say, “X says he was in your room last year, and he did 1, 2,
3, 4 and got away with it.” My reply was always, “Different year,
different school, different attitude – do you NEED to be bad in my
classroom?” I didn’t deny it, but wasn’t about to slip into bad
habits. Amazingly enough, my then current students agreed that we
had a good relationship going – no need for attitude.

In my 3rd year (second year in the alternative school); in walked 3
students from my first year. They saw me and were immediately
prepared to resume business as normal (causing me grief). This is
what you are imagining now. Here’s what I did:

1) Welcome to my classroom again.
2) I’ve learned from you! I do things DIFFERENTLY now!
3) I know you’ve grown up some physically and intellectually – we
want the old, bad behaviors to be in the dim, distant past.
4) Allow me to show you how things run in this classroom – you can
settle in quickly and start enjoying success almost immediately.

And, that’s what I did – I told EACH student exactly how the
classroom worked – as if they were each a brand new student who
didn’t know me from Adam’s housecat.

When they behaved normally, then I poured on the praise, just like a
new student. If/when they misbehaved, then I treated them exactly
as a new student and corrected them exactly the same.

Get your ducks in a row as far as curriculum and activities, and get
your ducks in a row for managing the environment. Your principal
knows you had some issues last year; talk to him/her about your
plans to head problems off and listen to any ideas proposed.

Great advice.  The students really take their lead from us.  Whatever we reinforce, both consciously and unconsciously, the students follow.

I wrote her and asked if I could include her response.  She agreed and even expanded on the story a bit.  I’ll save that story for a little later.  It’s too good to pass up, hearing how a full-time chicken farming mother went back into the classroom, struggled, was nearly fired, and discovered how she could manage her students effectively.

You can do this!

Darren

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Classroom Management through Sarcasm

Tuesday, May 13, 2008

I’ve worked with middle schoolers long enough to recognize that their behaviors have rubbed off a bit on me.  I tend to be sarcastic with my students, and some times, this just isn’t helpful.

I’m trying to be better about stopping my knee-jerk sarcastic reaction to a student who asks me, “What are we doing?” after I’ve explained carefully twice exactly what we’re doing.  It would be so easy to bite into that kid with a sarcastic response like, “If you’d been listening you would know!”

But comments like these tend to damage both the student’s sense of safety in my class as well as bring a bit of negativity into the classroom.  Many of us struggle with students who are very negative all the time in our classes.  It is important for us, as the only adults in the room, to model positive behavior rather than succumbing to our inner desire to lash out.

Try to recognize when that sarcastic comment is getting ready to erupt from between your lips.  Take a quick breath, and then calmly repeat your instructions.  Ask that student if he or she understands your instructions. And then let them off the hook.

If you notice a trend that many of your students don’t appear to be listening when you’re speaking, this is an entirely different issue and needs to be addressed.  I’ll try to get to this in future posts, as the trick I use works like GOLD!

Good luck!

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Success with Class Management

Monday, May 12, 2008

Welcome back to Monday!  I hope your weekend was relaxing and recharging, because we’ve got more work to do before the year’s out…

I just read a very nice comment from a reader and I thought I’d post it directly here since many times the comments are overlooked by the browsing public.  Here’s the comment quoted from this blog, but you can read it yourself by simply scrolling down the page to read the post titled “Why? Because I told you so…”

“Hello Darren, I have been receiving your mails and have been putting them to use. I am not a trained teacher yet, but I can tell you i already know what Teachers go through. I believe I go through worse. I teach at a supplementary school where there are virtually less or no rules. However with all the tips iIve been receiving and putting to use, I believe I already have my class under control. I already know what I want with them and am slowly but ‘definitely’ getting there. I especially love this one about students asking you ‘why?’. I can see it is already working for me. All I have to do is just say it! However, I will probably have something on ground for those extremely tasking children. You can never say! So Darren, am really looking forward to more of your Golden tips. Thank you in arrears, for now and in advance! Cheerio”

What a nice reminder for me of why I’m working in teacher education!  I’ve used these tools and tips for years to much success, and it fills me up knowing that others are out there feeling more effective in the classroom after receiving a little guidance.

Thanks again for that great comment, and I hope to hear from more of you as you too experience increased success in the classroom.

Darren

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Poetry and Class Management

Friday, May 9, 2008

I finally finished my poetry unit with my students.  I’ve struggled with poetry instruction through the years and am just now getting to where I feel relatively competent with my poetry lessons.  And I feel that I’ve been able to sell my students pretty well on why we’ve needed to be working on poetry for the last three weeks.

Luckily our media center has many fun books of poetry that are easy for the kids to get into and relate to their own lives.  I make all these available to the students for selection during our Silent Reading class time, something we do every day.

The unit culminated this week with time spent in the computer lab.  The first two days were spent exploring some previously screened poetry websites to find some fun poetry online.  Then the students began writing their own poetry.  I required four original poems from my classes:  a haiku, a cinquain, an acrostic, and one of their choice.  They then edited their poems with MS Word to make them look pretty and fancy.

I timed out this unit to coincide with Mother’s Day, and we worked on poems that dealt with moms.  So today, we finally printed up our poems and put them safely away in nice “vanilla” folders to keep them from being lost.  Hopefully they are bringing their original poems home to their moms for some sweet Mother’s Day moments.

Printing up the poems over a series of three days created a difficult organization scenario.  Luckily, I’ve always been one of those teachers who is quite organized.  Otherwise, I would have drowned in a sea of poetry!

As it was, I was successfully able to mange the students’ behaviors while keeping up with all the different copies and different classes.  Throw into the mix a different schedule since today, Friday, is our Fun Friday time, and we were a bit rushed.  But, like any good Friday, the time flew by and the students finished the unit.

Whew!  It’s time to relax.  And in honor of the completion of my poetry unit, I’ve written a haiku.  Just for you!

students board the bus
teachers smile and wave goodbye
who is happiest?

Darren

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A little pre-emptive class management

Monday, May 5, 2008

Today I took my students to the computer lab for a little poetry work.  I’d planned accordingly and had a good list of websites ready to go.  Even still, I knew that time spent in the computer lab can be some of the most challenging for a teacher.  I’ve had many days when I left the lab totally exhausted.  Today I was not going to suffer that same fate.

Thanks to a big technology grant at our school, I get to use a lap top, document camera, digital projector, and an interactive whiteboard.  Using all these goodies, I was able to show my students exactly what we’d be doing once we got to the lab.  I told them ahead of time that I’d cover this all again once we got to the lab, but that I wanted them to see where we were going while I had everyone’s attention.

Step by step, I clicked on each program, showed them where we were going to click to find our information, and walked them through the entire lesson that would take place a little later once in the lab.  This process took about five minutes.  Once finished, I asked for questions and clarified any misunderstandings.  I then reminded them of my typical classroom behavior expectations as well as my specific expectations for the computer lab in addition to reminding them of the consequence for not meeting these expectations.

That done, we marched off to the lab and proceeded to have a great time!  The students were remarkably on task.  There were very few students who didn’t know what we were doing or how we were doing it.  Students were good at helping each other out when one saw that another was struggling.

And at the end of the day, I felt good.  It seemed like the students produced some nice poetry (Mother’s Day cards!).  And I wasn’t nearly as stressed or tired as I have been after a day spent in the computer lab.

Ah, the joy of a little pre-emptive class management…

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Why? Because I said so… Class Management Reminders

Thursday, May 1, 2008

Too often I hear from teachers who are afraid of being the bad guy in the classroom. We all want to be liked by our students, and we think that if we discipline our students, they won’t like us.

Actually, it’s exactly opposite! All too often, teachers who act afraid to upset their students end up creating class environments that are unruly, uncontrollable, and not conducive to learning. Our students really do want to learn. They want to feel safe. A classroom out of control doesn’t learn well and often isn’t safe.

I tell my students at the beginning of the year that my classroom is not a democracy. Majority vote does not rule the class.

I rule the class.

I am the benevolent dictator. After a brief explanation of what that means, I remind them that it is my job to educate them. Occasionally I will ask them to do things they won’t want to do. I won’t reason with them. I’ll give them directions, ask for questions, and then expect them to follow my directions. Every time.

And, of course, I have consequences established for those times when a student fails to follow directions- more on this in later posts.

For the most part, though, especially if I’ve done a solid job of selling my lessons, the students understand that when I “ask” the students to do something, I’m really simply telling them nicely.

When a student asks you why he or she has to do something you’ve “asked” them to do, just tell them…

“Because I said so.”

And that should be enough.

Darren

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Can you get your class quiet? Ninja Class Management Strategies

Monday, April 28, 2008

One of the most important tricks any teacher needs is the ability to get their class quiet, quickly and respectfully. Now for many of us, we know this is easier said than done. But this one skill is so important, it separates the struggling teacher from the pro- more than almost any other skill.

Just imagine the principal walking into your room. He or she tells you that he needs to tell something to your class. Can you get your class quiet immediately? Do you have the rapport and respect from your students to get them settled without resorting to yelling?

There are a hundred ways to regain control of your class.  I recommend finding three or four that work for your students and fit your personal style.  Then rotate between these whenever you need to.

Want a couple?

If you take your students to lunch, remind them at the beginning of class that the longer it takes for them to get quiet, the longer it will take you to finish your lesson.  If necessary, you might need to stay in from lunch until the material is covered.  Then, if they continue speaking, I tell them, “That’s one minute from lunch.”  I repeat as necessary until they get quiet.

Here’s another:  It’s similar to the lunch time trick, only I use the threat of homework.  “If it takes us too long to finish this classwork because of your talking, I guess we’ll have to do this for homework.  I really don’t want to do that.  Do you?”

One more:  “We can’t leave here until this is finished.  And I’m not writing any tardy slips…”

Whatever you use, don’t threaten and then not follow through.  If you create expectations for behavior with a consequence for not meeting those expectations, you darn well better be able to follow through.  Otherwise the whole system falls apart.

Having the ability to quiet your students quickly adds so much to my enjoyment of my days spent teaching.  I feel comfortable letting my kids discuss issues in class knowing that I can get things focused in a hurry if necessary.  We can occasionally joke around and laugh together, knowing that when it’s time to work, we can get focused.

This one class management skill will help you enjoy your day and your students more than almost any other management technique.  Leave me a comment about the ways you get your classes quiet.  I’m sure there are tons of methods out there just waiting to be shared!

Darren

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