I can't believe it, but I actually finished my students' report cards today. Each student's report card has 81 boxes, plus a space for written comments. I have 31 students. So that means that in the last 48 hours I have filled in 2511 boxes!
Back when I was in elementary school, I think we just got one grade for math, one grade for writing, etc. But in the brave new world of standards-based report cards, such simplicity is long gone. I have to give my students 19 different grades in math alone, one for each of the 19 math standards my district has deemed to be most important. There are actually 44 math standards that fourth graders in California are supposed to master, but we only give report card grades for 19 of them. Here is a sampling:
* Uses algorithms to add/subtract multi-digit numbers
* Knows the definition and value of prime numbers
* Decides and explains when a rounded solution is called for
* Uses and evaluates parentheses in equations
* Finds the length of horizontal line segments on a coordinate graph by subtracting the x-values
* Finds the length of vertical line segments on a coordinate graph by subtracting the y-values
For each of these standards, I have to assign a grade from 1 to 4 - 1 meaning that the student is working below grade level, 2 meaning close to grade level, 3 meaning on grade level, and 4 meaning above grade level.
This method of grading leads to many conundrums. For example, there are no standards about fractions on our report card. None. Yet fractions are an important topic in the fourth grade math curriculum. When I calculate my students' overall math grade, should I factor in their grades on work related to fractions?
Our district has standardized trimester assessments we give shortly before we fill out report cards, and data from these assessments are supposed to help us assign grades for each standard. Yet this trimester's math assessment has only 31 questions. Let's say there are three questions about using and evaluating parentheses in equations. If a student gets 2 out of 3 of those questions right, that's only 66%, which puts them below grade level for that standard (at least according to our old grading scale). Let's say the student got 80% on an algebra test I gave about using and evaluating parentheses in equations. How do I weight these two measures?
Also, our district assessments are not cumulative. Each trimester, different standards are assessed. But just because a student didn't show mastery of the algorithm for long division in March, though, doesn't mean he hasn't mastered it by June. Our district assessment we give in June does not have any questions about long division, however, so we have to figure out our own ways to reassess standards from earlier trimesters.
One of my favorite standards to assess is, "Uses a variety of strategies for reading comprehension." What does that even mean? Of course my students use different strategies for reading comprehension. We practice predicting, summarizing, questioning, and lots more with everything we read. But how can I reduce their use of reading strategies to a single number? What does "on grade level" mean when you are talking about how well someone makes predictions about texts? Or there's the standard, "Understands words with multiple meanings." Well, of course my students understand words with multiple meanings. They know that "bat" can mean a flying animal or something with which you hit a baseball. But how well my students do on assessments of their ability to understand words with multiple meanings just depends on whether they happen to be familiar with the words on the assessment. I can't possibly teach them every word in the English language with multiple meanings.
The district's answer to questions about the ambiguity of the standards when applied to reading is that students should be assessed on their mastery of these standards using "grade level text." But take the standard, "Recognizes events of the story and the motivation of characters." Some students can recognize a character's motivation in one story in our fourth grade anthology but not in another. Maybe they have a personal connection to a character in one story and that makes the character in one story easier to understand. How can I accurately state the student's ability to determine characters' motivation in all 4th-grade-level stories?
I have to think through these issues for 81 different boxes! And remember, this is elementary school. No one's life is going to be determined by what grade she got for "Uses and evaluates parentheses in equations" in fourth grade.
For better or worse, I've never had a parent question me about a grade I assigned. I kind of wish a parent would ask me to justify how I arrived at a grade. But the parents of students in my class are so deferential to teachers. "La maestra" is a title with real authority and respect in Mexico, and they really think that I know best when it comes to their children's education. Plus, the report card is so overwhelming, that many parents don't really know how to interpret it, never mind what questions to ask.
But, despite these issues, the important thing at the moment is that I'm done with report cards! I've never finished them 4 days before they were due before.
Sunday, June 10, 2007
Thursday, June 7, 2007
Day -6: A Haiku
My students are finishing up their poetry books (finally!), and one boy wrote this haiku:
The moon is shiny.
It looks like the letter "C."
It may taste like cheese.
***
I found out that Wilfredo didn't go on our field trip to the park yesterday because he didn't have food to bring for lunch! I talked with him and explained he should never, ever not go on a field trip because he can't bring lunch and that I can order a free lunch from the cafeteria for him. But still ... I feel sad for him. He found out that there was a party and that there would have been plenty of food for him, so he started off the the day a little bummed out. He's so resilient, though. By 9:00 he said, "We're a great team!" when he and his partner found lots of prepositional phrases in our little Prepositional Phrase Hunt. Our school district continues to provide free breakfast and lunch to families during the summer, which really helps out people like Wilfredo. I wonder what he did eat for lunch yesterday.
The moon is shiny.
It looks like the letter "C."
It may taste like cheese.
***
I found out that Wilfredo didn't go on our field trip to the park yesterday because he didn't have food to bring for lunch! I talked with him and explained he should never, ever not go on a field trip because he can't bring lunch and that I can order a free lunch from the cafeteria for him. But still ... I feel sad for him. He found out that there was a party and that there would have been plenty of food for him, so he started off the the day a little bummed out. He's so resilient, though. By 9:00 he said, "We're a great team!" when he and his partner found lots of prepositional phrases in our little Prepositional Phrase Hunt. Our school district continues to provide free breakfast and lunch to families during the summer, which really helps out people like Wilfredo. I wonder what he did eat for lunch yesterday.
Wednesday, June 6, 2007
Day -7: "Que te portes bien en la otra escuela"
Today my fourth graders went to the park with their first grade reading buddies for an end-of-the-year celebration. It was very, very cute. The moms of both the classes surprised me with a potluck they organized themselves, complete with vegetarian pupusas and vegetarian taquitos (since I don't eat meat) and many kinds of salsa and flan. I made a summer date with the pupusa-maker to come over to my house and teach me how to make them!
Another thing that made me smile a lot today were the letters that our first grade reading buddies wrote to me. They thanked me for bringing my students to read with them, for being kind to them, etc. And then they offered me advice for my future life as a doctoral student:
"No se olvide de terminar la tarea." (Don't forget to finish the homework.)
"Pórtate bien." (Behave yourself.)
"No olvides a prestar atención a tu maestra." (Don't forget to pay attention to your teacher."
And my favorite - in English - from a student who has a really, really hard time at school, who's been retained, and who other kids get frustrated with sometimes: "Good luck at your new school. I hope you have a lot of friends there."
I was thinking about what to write back to them. I was thinking of promising that I would do all my homework and always pay attention to my teacher. But then I realized that might not be true! Maybe a big difference between first grade and 19th grade (which my students and I figured out is the grade I will be in) is that by the time you're in 19th grade you know when you can get away with not doing your homework and not paying attention - while still learning what you need to learn.
Another thing that made me smile a lot today were the letters that our first grade reading buddies wrote to me. They thanked me for bringing my students to read with them, for being kind to them, etc. And then they offered me advice for my future life as a doctoral student:
"No se olvide de terminar la tarea." (Don't forget to finish the homework.)
"Pórtate bien." (Behave yourself.)
"No olvides a prestar atención a tu maestra." (Don't forget to pay attention to your teacher."
And my favorite - in English - from a student who has a really, really hard time at school, who's been retained, and who other kids get frustrated with sometimes: "Good luck at your new school. I hope you have a lot of friends there."
I was thinking about what to write back to them. I was thinking of promising that I would do all my homework and always pay attention to my teacher. But then I realized that might not be true! Maybe a big difference between first grade and 19th grade (which my students and I figured out is the grade I will be in) is that by the time you're in 19th grade you know when you can get away with not doing your homework and not paying attention - while still learning what you need to learn.
Tuesday, June 5, 2007
Day -8: 60 Is the New 75
No, I'm not talking about ages. I'm talking about percentages.
Used to be that in order to score Proficient on my district's standardized trimester assessments in language arts and math, students had to get 75% of the questions on the tests right. About a month ago, however, some district administrators decided to change all that. Now, for this last trimester, students only have to get a score of 60% or higher to be considered Proficient.
Here are the old assessment guidelines we used:
0-59% = Far Below Basic/Below Basic
60-74% = Basic
75-89% = Proficient
90-100% = Advanced
Here are the new guidelines:
0-19% = Far Below Basic
20-39% = Below Basic
40-59% = Basic
60-79% = Proficient
80-100% = Advanced
It's a pretty drastic change to make midyear! The change in the guidelines was allegedly made to better align district assessment results to state standardized test results. But students' scores on state tests don't correlate at all with the district tests evaluated using the new guidelines.
Last year, when my current students were in third grade, 12 of them scored Far Below Basic in Language Arts on the state standardized test. But according to the latest district trimester Language Arts test, none of my students are considered Far Below Basic. In third grade, only one of my students scored Proficient on the state Language Arts test. But according to the latest district trimester Language Arts test, 10 of my students are now considered Proficient.
Of course I expect some students' state standardized test scores to be better than they were last year, but I can almost guarantee my students' state scores will not improve as dramatically as their district scores might suggest.
The state Department of Education shifts what percentage of questions students must get right to score Proficient each year, depending on the difficulty of test questions and other factors. They don't make it easy to figure out what the cutoff for that magic score of Proficient is. I went through all of my students' test results, though, and wrote down the percent of questions they got correct and their performance levels. As best I could figure out, for the 2006 3rd grade Language Arts test, here are the guidelines:
0 - ~36% = Far Below Basic
~37 - ~53% = Below Basic
~54 - ~72% = Basic
I can't tell what the cutoffs were for Proficient and Advanced because I only had one student score at these performance levels. He got 78% correct, which was reported as Proficient.
Even though my data are incomplete, it's clear to me that the district's new guidelines do not align at all with state guidelines. The state has lots and lots of well-trained people thinking about what should count as Proficient and using real statistical models to ensure reliability across grade levels and years - or at least that's what I assume. Our little district cannot hope to reproduce this.
Last year, a question on a district math assessment read as follows: "Four boys shared 38 pennies as equally as possible. How many pennies did each boy get?" The only possible answers listed were 8, 10, 12, and 6. What do you think the correct answer is? At least there aren't any questions as bad as that one on this year's assessments. But still, I hate how standardized test scores gain this mythic status as unbiased, objective, and reliable, when how students do depends totally on how hard the questions are and the scale used for their scores.
Letting a student who scores 60% on a pretty easy test be considered Proficient during this last trimester does not seem a step in any kind of right direction. Especially when that same score of 60% on the same kind of test was reported as Basic on that student's report card earlier this year. What parent wouldn't assume that their child improved markedly when seeing the jump from Basic to Proficient? But really it's just the bar that moved, not the child.
Ever wonder how all students are going to score Proficient in Language Arts and Math by 2014, as mandated under No Child Left Behind? Here's your answer. Just lower the bar.
Time magazine actually has a cover story this week about No Child Left Behind, which talks about this same problem at a national level. State test results often don't correlate with national test results. Students in California score 15 percentage points lower on the national reading test than they do on the state test - which is nothing compared to students in Alabama, who score 48 points lower on than national test than the state test. So just what does Proficient mean? And who gets to decide?
Used to be that in order to score Proficient on my district's standardized trimester assessments in language arts and math, students had to get 75% of the questions on the tests right. About a month ago, however, some district administrators decided to change all that. Now, for this last trimester, students only have to get a score of 60% or higher to be considered Proficient.
Here are the old assessment guidelines we used:
0-59% = Far Below Basic/Below Basic
60-74% = Basic
75-89% = Proficient
90-100% = Advanced
Here are the new guidelines:
0-19% = Far Below Basic
20-39% = Below Basic
40-59% = Basic
60-79% = Proficient
80-100% = Advanced
It's a pretty drastic change to make midyear! The change in the guidelines was allegedly made to better align district assessment results to state standardized test results. But students' scores on state tests don't correlate at all with the district tests evaluated using the new guidelines.
Last year, when my current students were in third grade, 12 of them scored Far Below Basic in Language Arts on the state standardized test. But according to the latest district trimester Language Arts test, none of my students are considered Far Below Basic. In third grade, only one of my students scored Proficient on the state Language Arts test. But according to the latest district trimester Language Arts test, 10 of my students are now considered Proficient.
Of course I expect some students' state standardized test scores to be better than they were last year, but I can almost guarantee my students' state scores will not improve as dramatically as their district scores might suggest.
The state Department of Education shifts what percentage of questions students must get right to score Proficient each year, depending on the difficulty of test questions and other factors. They don't make it easy to figure out what the cutoff for that magic score of Proficient is. I went through all of my students' test results, though, and wrote down the percent of questions they got correct and their performance levels. As best I could figure out, for the 2006 3rd grade Language Arts test, here are the guidelines:
0 - ~36% = Far Below Basic
~37 - ~53% = Below Basic
~54 - ~72% = Basic
I can't tell what the cutoffs were for Proficient and Advanced because I only had one student score at these performance levels. He got 78% correct, which was reported as Proficient.
Even though my data are incomplete, it's clear to me that the district's new guidelines do not align at all with state guidelines. The state has lots and lots of well-trained people thinking about what should count as Proficient and using real statistical models to ensure reliability across grade levels and years - or at least that's what I assume. Our little district cannot hope to reproduce this.
Last year, a question on a district math assessment read as follows: "Four boys shared 38 pennies as equally as possible. How many pennies did each boy get?" The only possible answers listed were 8, 10, 12, and 6. What do you think the correct answer is? At least there aren't any questions as bad as that one on this year's assessments. But still, I hate how standardized test scores gain this mythic status as unbiased, objective, and reliable, when how students do depends totally on how hard the questions are and the scale used for their scores.
Letting a student who scores 60% on a pretty easy test be considered Proficient during this last trimester does not seem a step in any kind of right direction. Especially when that same score of 60% on the same kind of test was reported as Basic on that student's report card earlier this year. What parent wouldn't assume that their child improved markedly when seeing the jump from Basic to Proficient? But really it's just the bar that moved, not the child.
Ever wonder how all students are going to score Proficient in Language Arts and Math by 2014, as mandated under No Child Left Behind? Here's your answer. Just lower the bar.
Time magazine actually has a cover story this week about No Child Left Behind, which talks about this same problem at a national level. State test results often don't correlate with national test results. Students in California score 15 percentage points lower on the national reading test than they do on the state test - which is nothing compared to students in Alabama, who score 48 points lower on than national test than the state test. So just what does Proficient mean? And who gets to decide?
Monday, June 4, 2007
Day -9: Mission Museum
Today was my fourth annual Mission Museum. As the culmination of our unit on missions, we invited families to come see students' models of missions, reports on missions, and diaries about mission life.
Making models of missions has been much-maligned in California by history educators, and I understand why. Craft stores sell kits for building each of the 21 missions out of styrofoam, and it is hard to see what educational purpose is served by just assembling styrofoam pieces. But my students and their families really love building models of missions! Many of my students' parents have a limited education in Spanish; having finished only fourth grade in Mexico is normal. Plus, many have only limited English skills. By the time their children are in my class, they often cannot help their kids with homework - in English or in Spanish - because they don't know how to do it themselves. Many students' parents, however, work in construction, carpentry, or related trades, so building is something at which they are experts. Our mission building project becomes, for many families, a total family effort, in which parents' "funds of knowledge" are valued. I encourage students to spend as little as possible on their mission models and tell them that I value their creativity much more than the accuracy with which they reproduce the exact proportions of the missions they are studying.
Another criticism of building models of missions is that it glorifies missions and does not help students think critically about the role of missions in California history. It seems wrong to value building pretty white churches over teaching about the enslavement of Native Americans at these pretty white churches. But I think there's no need to give up the latter while doing the former. Almost all of the my students wrote diaries in the voices of Native Americans who wished they could escape from the mission where they were living, who longed for the village where they used to live, and who, in some cases, were plotting an uprising against their captors.
About 20 parents came to my classroom today to see students' work. Many of them dressed up for the occasion. Students were so proud to show off their missions. We put out papers for our museum visitors to write comments, and every students' comment sheet was full with really thoughtful feedback from their peers and from parents. Students would come back over and over to check how many comments they had gotten and read what they said.
Every time I invite parents to come see students' work, I always vow that I should do it more. It's so easy, and the students and parents love it. Somehow, though, I never manage to pull it off as often as I hope.
Here are pictures from our mission museum. Students and their families really had ingenious ideas for building - lentils for a pathway, folded construction paper for a roof, aluminum foil for a reflecting pool. Look closely!
Making models of missions has been much-maligned in California by history educators, and I understand why. Craft stores sell kits for building each of the 21 missions out of styrofoam, and it is hard to see what educational purpose is served by just assembling styrofoam pieces. But my students and their families really love building models of missions! Many of my students' parents have a limited education in Spanish; having finished only fourth grade in Mexico is normal. Plus, many have only limited English skills. By the time their children are in my class, they often cannot help their kids with homework - in English or in Spanish - because they don't know how to do it themselves. Many students' parents, however, work in construction, carpentry, or related trades, so building is something at which they are experts. Our mission building project becomes, for many families, a total family effort, in which parents' "funds of knowledge" are valued. I encourage students to spend as little as possible on their mission models and tell them that I value their creativity much more than the accuracy with which they reproduce the exact proportions of the missions they are studying.
Another criticism of building models of missions is that it glorifies missions and does not help students think critically about the role of missions in California history. It seems wrong to value building pretty white churches over teaching about the enslavement of Native Americans at these pretty white churches. But I think there's no need to give up the latter while doing the former. Almost all of the my students wrote diaries in the voices of Native Americans who wished they could escape from the mission where they were living, who longed for the village where they used to live, and who, in some cases, were plotting an uprising against their captors.
About 20 parents came to my classroom today to see students' work. Many of them dressed up for the occasion. Students were so proud to show off their missions. We put out papers for our museum visitors to write comments, and every students' comment sheet was full with really thoughtful feedback from their peers and from parents. Students would come back over and over to check how many comments they had gotten and read what they said.
Every time I invite parents to come see students' work, I always vow that I should do it more. It's so easy, and the students and parents love it. Somehow, though, I never manage to pull it off as often as I hope.
Here are pictures from our mission museum. Students and their families really had ingenious ideas for building - lentils for a pathway, folded construction paper for a roof, aluminum foil for a reflecting pool. Look closely!
Saturday, June 2, 2007
Day -10: The Priest's Son
Last year, I tried a new writing project at the end of the year. I had my students assume the role of a person living in one of the periods of California history that we had studied, and I had them write a diary in the voice of that person. It was a fun and revealing exercise, giving students a too-rare chance to really exercise their imaginations. I would turn the lights off, have the students help me with sound effects as our time-travel machine warmed up, and then narrate events we were traveling backwards through. "We're traveling back before cellphones were invented, before computers were invented, before there were cars, before there was electricity. We're traveling back before California was a state," etc. And then I would ask students a series of questions, guiding them as they tried to imagine their lives in the past. "The sun is rising and you are waking up. What do you hear? What do you see around you? Who is with you?" And so on.
This year, the time I have for teaching social studies each week has been cut in half (down to 45 minutes a week from at least 90 minutes a week in past years) due to our school's "Program Improvement" status. (Schools that fail to meet standardized test score targets must implement a variety of changes, and in elementary schools, those changes mean that everything but language arts and math instruction is basically eliminated - or at least drastically reduced). I felt like I didn't have time to do the historical fiction project on the same scale this year, plus my students have learned about fewer time periods than in past years. So I decided to have everyone set their diaries during the mission period this time around. Some students assumed the roles of Native Americans living at missions and some assumed the role of Spanish priests or soldiers.
Alex wrote this diary, and though he has some misconceptions about the sex lives of priests (misconceptions, I guess, which are shared by some priests themselves), he gets the important parts.
P.S. What students really liked about the historical fiction project last year was that I bought parchment paper (the kind you use for baking) and cut out rectangles that they used for the covers of their diaries. They loved crumpling up the parchment paper so it would look old. It is hecka hard, though, to hole-punch parchment paper!
This year, the time I have for teaching social studies each week has been cut in half (down to 45 minutes a week from at least 90 minutes a week in past years) due to our school's "Program Improvement" status. (Schools that fail to meet standardized test score targets must implement a variety of changes, and in elementary schools, those changes mean that everything but language arts and math instruction is basically eliminated - or at least drastically reduced). I felt like I didn't have time to do the historical fiction project on the same scale this year, plus my students have learned about fewer time periods than in past years. So I decided to have everyone set their diaries during the mission period this time around. Some students assumed the roles of Native Americans living at missions and some assumed the role of Spanish priests or soldiers.
Alex wrote this diary, and though he has some misconceptions about the sex lives of priests (misconceptions, I guess, which are shared by some priests themselves), he gets the important parts.
I see a bed, a cruz on a wall, a cemetery. No one is with me. The room looks old world, really old. I hear the bells and the people speaking to me. I hear birds. I see the old pictures. I'm going to the church because I am the padre. I am a priest. I am 20 years old. My family is in Spain. I came here to become a priest like my father. My name is Jesus.
It's in the middle of the day. I fed the animals. I helped the Native Americans with chores. When I first came here it was a disaster. I planned to marry a beautiful Spanish woman and to be the best priest ever. I will learn to pray more to believe in God. Make the Native Americans believe in God. God has the power. There's only one god, not a bunch of gods. You people should believe in God. That's my dream speech. I want a nice house in Spain. Sometimes I want to go back to Spain, meet my family there, make a new life there, become the greatest priest in Spain. People will respect me. The day is fainting away. It's time to sleep and dream sweet dreams. Good night.
P.S. What students really liked about the historical fiction project last year was that I bought parchment paper (the kind you use for baking) and cut out rectangles that they used for the covers of their diaries. They loved crumpling up the parchment paper so it would look old. It is hecka hard, though, to hole-punch parchment paper!
Thursday, May 31, 2007
Day -11: On Discipline
My mom told me that a friend of hers who sometimes reads this blog said, "It's amazing that she doesn't have any discipline problems!"
I definitely don't mean to give that impression. I definitely do have discipline problems, if that means students who give me headaches, who interrupt/annoy/upset/hurt other students and/or me.
I am not a natural classroom manager. Thinking up curriculum ideas is easy for me, as is building relationships with students, seeing gaps in students' understanding and then planning interventions to fill in those gaps, making connections between content areas, trying out new instructional strategies, and lots of other parts of teaching. Not easy as in a cakewalk, but easy as in, while it's intellectually demanding, it builds on natural strengths of mine. Classroom management I do by sheer force of will. I will myself to establish a limit and enforce it. I try to will myself (when I'm feeling well-rested, anyway) to enforce those limits calmly without getting visibly angry, but I am not very good at that. Juan definitely knows he can get an emotional reaction from me if he pushes hard enough.
I remember when I was interviewing for my first teaching job 14(!) years ago (OK, it was just a summer program, but still), I said that I thought engaging curriculum was the foundation of good classroom management. I still believe that, in part. If students find the work they are doing meaningful and interesting, they are much less likely to get into trouble.
The only problem is ... that has been taken away from me. I have so little control over the curriculum I teach now, that I can't rely on my curriculum to limit discipline problems. But I still do my best. For whatever I'm teaching, I try to think up a meaningful end-product that students will show to some audience, even if it's just to each other. I can feel the difference in students' energy and focus when they are rehearsing a play they are about to perform for another class or even just putting finishing touches on their biographies that (after we share them in partners) I'm just going to pin up on the wall. I can't think up a great final product for every random grammar subskill I have to teach, but nonetheless, I try to tie isolated skills to a meaningful context whenever I can. I try to vary the pace of the day, too - mixing in lots of opportunities for whole group instruction, work in small groups, work in partners, and individual work, and I think this balance help some students get in the socializing time they need.
The part of classroom management I'm best at, as is probably apparent from the kinds of stories I write about in my blog, is the relationship-building part. I do think having strong relationship with students and their families is an essential precursor to good classroom management. Obviously, I don't have to eat lunch with students or go to their first communions, but building relationships with my students is actually my favorite part of my job, so it's no hardship for me to do that - though it does take time. But when a student knows that I know his parents well, that definitely affects the students' behavior.
I think another key to classroom management is a well-established set of routines and procedures. I might not be quite as good at this as I'd like to be, in fact I was lecturing my students just today about how they really should understand the rules for our end-of-the-day homework time by now! But I know clear expectations and predictability make a huge difference.
About a week ago, I felt like the end-of-the-year behavior slide was setting in, that restlessness that students and teachers alike feel as vacation approaches. I felt like I had been battling with students too much, so I cracked down. The most extreme example of this crackdown was last Wednesday when my class was walking across the playground to visit our first grade buddies, and I made us turn around and go back to our classroom without ever going to buddies because students were playing around in line and (potentially, anyway) distracting other classes. This consequence, while obviously not the fairest since all students were punished, worked (or at least stopped the problem and refocused the class on learning for the moment) because I gave it very dispassionately, and instead of giving a long lecture, I talked briefly about my decision and the reasons for it, and then moved on and started students on a math activity instead.
Our school uses this uniform system of consequences. The first time a student is doing something inappropriate on any given day, the student gets a warning. The second infraction during that same day is a 5-minute timeout. The third time is a 10-minute timeout. The fourth time is a timeout in another classroom plus a phone call home. And the fifth time is getting sent to the office. During my little crackdown this week, I started giving more consequences for small things like whispering when it was time to listen silently, etc. It has worked to allow me to teach more, for the most part, but it does get tiring to enforce.
A week into the crackdown, though, and its benefits are wearing off. Eventually students see that getting sent to another room for a timeout isn't all that bad (at least in some students' eyes). Juan has come to accept that consequence with little protest. He will always start crying, though, if he reaches "Level 5" and I send him to the office, which I've done three times this year, I think.
Each year I become a little stricter, and that's for the best, I think.
Everyone (i.e. their past teachers and their P.E/science/music/computer teachers), say that the class I have this year is challenging in terms of discipline issues, so I'm curious how my classroom management would feel with a new class next year.
There is a part of me that hates being the enforcer of limits, that knows how cool my students are as people and wants them to be engaged all the time, that blames myself if they are more interested in goofing off. But when there are 31 kids in one room who are often supposed to be doing the same thing at the same time (no matter how much I try to differentiate), the teacher has to be a strong enforcer of limits or nothing gets done. That's the one part of teaching that I wasn't sure I could do, and it has not been easy for me to learn how to do. So in some weird way, learning to be at least a passable enforcer of limits is something I'm proud of. And I can count on Juan to test just how good I am at navigating the love and limits dance each and every day!
I definitely don't mean to give that impression. I definitely do have discipline problems, if that means students who give me headaches, who interrupt/annoy/upset/hurt other students and/or me.
I am not a natural classroom manager. Thinking up curriculum ideas is easy for me, as is building relationships with students, seeing gaps in students' understanding and then planning interventions to fill in those gaps, making connections between content areas, trying out new instructional strategies, and lots of other parts of teaching. Not easy as in a cakewalk, but easy as in, while it's intellectually demanding, it builds on natural strengths of mine. Classroom management I do by sheer force of will. I will myself to establish a limit and enforce it. I try to will myself (when I'm feeling well-rested, anyway) to enforce those limits calmly without getting visibly angry, but I am not very good at that. Juan definitely knows he can get an emotional reaction from me if he pushes hard enough.
I remember when I was interviewing for my first teaching job 14(!) years ago (OK, it was just a summer program, but still), I said that I thought engaging curriculum was the foundation of good classroom management. I still believe that, in part. If students find the work they are doing meaningful and interesting, they are much less likely to get into trouble.
The only problem is ... that has been taken away from me. I have so little control over the curriculum I teach now, that I can't rely on my curriculum to limit discipline problems. But I still do my best. For whatever I'm teaching, I try to think up a meaningful end-product that students will show to some audience, even if it's just to each other. I can feel the difference in students' energy and focus when they are rehearsing a play they are about to perform for another class or even just putting finishing touches on their biographies that (after we share them in partners) I'm just going to pin up on the wall. I can't think up a great final product for every random grammar subskill I have to teach, but nonetheless, I try to tie isolated skills to a meaningful context whenever I can. I try to vary the pace of the day, too - mixing in lots of opportunities for whole group instruction, work in small groups, work in partners, and individual work, and I think this balance help some students get in the socializing time they need.
The part of classroom management I'm best at, as is probably apparent from the kinds of stories I write about in my blog, is the relationship-building part. I do think having strong relationship with students and their families is an essential precursor to good classroom management. Obviously, I don't have to eat lunch with students or go to their first communions, but building relationships with my students is actually my favorite part of my job, so it's no hardship for me to do that - though it does take time. But when a student knows that I know his parents well, that definitely affects the students' behavior.
I think another key to classroom management is a well-established set of routines and procedures. I might not be quite as good at this as I'd like to be, in fact I was lecturing my students just today about how they really should understand the rules for our end-of-the-day homework time by now! But I know clear expectations and predictability make a huge difference.
About a week ago, I felt like the end-of-the-year behavior slide was setting in, that restlessness that students and teachers alike feel as vacation approaches. I felt like I had been battling with students too much, so I cracked down. The most extreme example of this crackdown was last Wednesday when my class was walking across the playground to visit our first grade buddies, and I made us turn around and go back to our classroom without ever going to buddies because students were playing around in line and (potentially, anyway) distracting other classes. This consequence, while obviously not the fairest since all students were punished, worked (or at least stopped the problem and refocused the class on learning for the moment) because I gave it very dispassionately, and instead of giving a long lecture, I talked briefly about my decision and the reasons for it, and then moved on and started students on a math activity instead.
Our school uses this uniform system of consequences. The first time a student is doing something inappropriate on any given day, the student gets a warning. The second infraction during that same day is a 5-minute timeout. The third time is a 10-minute timeout. The fourth time is a timeout in another classroom plus a phone call home. And the fifth time is getting sent to the office. During my little crackdown this week, I started giving more consequences for small things like whispering when it was time to listen silently, etc. It has worked to allow me to teach more, for the most part, but it does get tiring to enforce.
A week into the crackdown, though, and its benefits are wearing off. Eventually students see that getting sent to another room for a timeout isn't all that bad (at least in some students' eyes). Juan has come to accept that consequence with little protest. He will always start crying, though, if he reaches "Level 5" and I send him to the office, which I've done three times this year, I think.
Each year I become a little stricter, and that's for the best, I think.
Everyone (i.e. their past teachers and their P.E/science/music/computer teachers), say that the class I have this year is challenging in terms of discipline issues, so I'm curious how my classroom management would feel with a new class next year.
There is a part of me that hates being the enforcer of limits, that knows how cool my students are as people and wants them to be engaged all the time, that blames myself if they are more interested in goofing off. But when there are 31 kids in one room who are often supposed to be doing the same thing at the same time (no matter how much I try to differentiate), the teacher has to be a strong enforcer of limits or nothing gets done. That's the one part of teaching that I wasn't sure I could do, and it has not been easy for me to learn how to do. So in some weird way, learning to be at least a passable enforcer of limits is something I'm proud of. And I can count on Juan to test just how good I am at navigating the love and limits dance each and every day!
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