Own It!!!

I recently had a conversation with some former students that was really insightful and thought I would share here.

After the usually catching up, the classic topic between parents and kids came up... discipline. One of the kids had recently made some poor choices at school. As punishment, the kid had been grounded and had some items taken away. Of course, the kid thought this was not fair.

I tried to explain that kids have more control over their lives than they realize. Parents can only react to the behaviors and choices that kids give them. The trick is to own your life and take responsibility for your actions. If you are sick of getting in trouble, then stop making the choices that get you there. If you enjoy being rewarded and praised, then continue the behavior that got you rewarded.

I then explained that it is the same for teachers. We can blame our problems on the kids and their behaviors, or we can own our classrooms and figure out a way to improve them.
-Kids being disrespectful? Then I need to be better at modeling and giving respect to them.
-Class is too loud or chaotic? I might need to try a different management style.

So, are you blaming others (kids, parents, administration) for a lack of fulfillment in your classroom? ...But, who is in a better position to make things improve than you? How much better would your classroom be if you owned those problems and took it upon yourself to make a change?

I guarantee it will make a difference! :)

Disrespect... or acting their age?

I recently finished mentoring a student from a local university for his student-teaching experience. It was a good time of sharing ideas about students, curriculum, and the education system, but a couple of topics seemed to come up repeatedly... student behavior and classroom discipline.

Over the last few years, I have learned to differentiate between a student being disrespectful in class and one showing behavior that is appropriate for their age.
You see... it is easy to confuse the two and treat them the same, but that would be damaging to the relationship with your students and the long term management of your classroom.

Yes... sometimes kids decide to mouth off, overreact, and get themselves in trouble, but many times they are just acting their age, and things are escalated by the adults around them. Is having some boys horseplaying in the classroom or dealing with girls gossiping and being hurtful to each other the best part of my job? No, but that behavior is not from them intending to disrespect me, but more out of their not yet learning to control their impulses/behaviors in different environments.

Where the problem occurs is my reaction to the kids. I have found that the majority of the disruptions in my class come from age appropriate behavior and few come from a disrespect towards me. However, that reverses when educators fail to see the teaching moment in the students' poor choice of behavior and overreact to the situation. Treating the child's age-appropriate behavior as a personal attack on who they are as a teacher and their authority in the classroom only serves to escalate the emotional response. This often ends up with a student in the office not completely understanding what happened and with another story of an emotional, yelling teacher to tell their friends...and from there, the cycle continues. Kids behave like kids. Teachers take it personally and yell. Kids mistrust teachers.

I know... I know.... sometimes it really annoys us adults having to deal with childish behavior over and over, but shouldn't it be an opportunity to teach them a better way? Besides, according to this article, that behavior may be just what they MUST live through to be a productive adult in the future.

Once more into the breach...

I don't like repeating topics so soon, but it seems that testing is a popular topic lately. The unfortunate thing is that these tests and testing results are hard for educators to understand, much less the leaders and parents outside of the building ...and programs like No Child Left Behind only serve to confuse us even more.

The basic premise behind NCLB is that all children will meet a high level of skill in reading and math by 2014. No excuses! Now, of all the complaints about the NCLB program, several issues stand out to me, one dealing with human nature and the other with how testing results are interpreted by the government.

First, the nature of humans. We have tens of millions of children in our schools, and sometimes I wonder if our politicians and leaders confuse them for machines that just need the right programing. Too often they fail to take into account the outside influences that impact our children and blame those shortcomings on the schools and the teachers (For example, concerns about their neighborhood/community, financial status of the family, medical problems for themselves or a family member, lack of parental support, social expectations from peers, etc). All of these affect the school day of our students but are just brushed under the rug in regards to test results. A couple of test days out of 180 schools days is not a good gauge of our students' abilities, especially if that day is influenced by one of those examples mentioned above. Besides, when was the last time you ever saw a large group of (individualistic) human beings all do the same thing, on the same day, in the same way?

As for interpretations, it's not as simple as saying, "Since 86% of your students passed the test, you're a good school," or "Only 54% of your students failed the test, so you are a bad school." A school's student body is broken into many different categories such as gender, ethnicity, economic status, special education, and English language learners. These groups are then graded individually. So... a school could be doing well with 86% of the students passing the math test, BUT if one of those individual groups fail (male special education, female economically disadvantaged, African-American females, Caucasian males), then the school is considered to have failed as a whole. If that happens two years in a row, you are now a school that "needs improvement." Schools earn this title regardless of a large majority of the students passing the tests at the required levels.

So when I hear about things like this from the Feds and this from the State, I can start to hope that level heads will prevail when it comes to the education and future of our children.

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Before I sign off, let me clarify one thing... I'm not saying that we get rid of all accountability for schools. That would be a swing too far in the other direction. I just hope we can come to an agreement on a high standard of education for our children and stop moving the bar like some carnival game that you can never win.