Raise the roof rarely

(Mostly for newbies, especially at the middle and high school levels.)

In my last post, I suggested that I might push up the decibel level in response to students’ lack of cooperation. I need to amend that text, especially since I am writing these latest posts with starting teachers in mind. I am not suggesting yelling at students as any sort of regular practice. In fact, I want to emphasize that a teacher’s daily classroom voice should stay within normal, conversational levels. Sometimes, during exciting activities, that level might have to be normal levels with a deaf, elderly relative, but loudness jangles the nerves, as well as implying a lack of control. Humans don’t react well to yelling.

If you are already yelling regularly, you are in trouble. Loud voices work in the short-term but eventually students tune out sound blasts. Strident demands in booming tones work for only so long. What will you do next? The key to pulling down the voice level — yours and theirs — is silence. Don’t talk until the room is quiet. Wait for the quiet. The main reason teachers raise their voices is the same reason voices go up in crowded restaurants: Those teachers want to be heard.

The best way to be heard is to silence the audience. When first getting started, waiting may feel awkward. Wait anyway. Don’t talk over your students. If you do, some of them may try to talk over you and pretty soon the room will sound like a sports bar on Super Bowl week-end.

Don’t be afraid to throw a few penalties into your game. Last year, I took lunch minutes away from my class that met directly before lunch. You take my time, I take yours, I explained. Issuing lunch or afterschool detentions in other classes helps students to understand that when you talk, they don’t talk. Your school will have its own procedures for managing talking — if it doesn’t, go job shopping early this spring — that you will be able to use to keep chatting to a minimum.

Eduhonesty: That said, I have raised that proverbial roof. If a class refused to move to my new seating chart, that level of insubordination might cause a sudden verbal inferno in the classroom. Those skyrocketing decibel levels don’t belong in a daily classroom, but sometimes the provocation becomes too much. Overt prejudice has led to my yelling in class. Absurdly poor homework or classwork performance has pushed me over the edge. If 90% of the class decided to skip the homework because of a soccer game on T.V., I might erupt.

I try to keep my temper. I almost always succeed. I try to keep my sense of humor. I almost always succeed. But I’m human. Teachers are human and teaching is becoming a higher stress job by the year in my view, as testing, data and paperwork demands are added into the mix. So don’t clobber yourself if you raise your voice sometimes. Just remember that the more you use loudness to manage behavior, the less effective loudness will become.

Ask for help

As noted in my previous post, new teachers often start in the roughest schools. If you are one of those teachers, please ask for help. New teachers are often afraid to appear unable to control their classes. Even experienced teachers may have this fear. During my first year teaching, my mentor ran into trouble when one of her classes flatly refused to change to a new seating chart. She was flummoxed, asking my advice. Needless to say, I had no clue what to do at that point. Today I’d tear the roof off that room. We’d have a loud discussion about the need to succeed in a demanding world and why behavior like that guaranteed failure in the long-run.

If you are struggling to manage your class or classes, please remember classroom management can be the toughest piece of the puzzle in many schools, and learning to manage classes will be your biggest challenge. It’s doable. There’s no disgrace in not walking onto the stage ready for the challenge. But don’t be afraid to admit you are in trouble. The sooner you get on top of classroom management issues, the easier your first year will be. You might start by asking nearby teachers whose classes seem to be going well. Call parents, enlist their help, and consider taking their advice. If mom says to keep Joey away from Bubba, move Bubba to the other side of the room. Moms and dads often know about social issues that may be complicating your life.

With luck, you have a good mentor. I suggest setting up a regular meeting time with that mentor if you don’t have a set time already. The many details of teaching can end up postponing meeting after meeting. Having a pre-established meeting time will prevent some or most of these cancelled meetings. If you are a baker, bake cookies for your mentor. Appreciate your mentor. Mentors can often arrange time to watch their mentees’ classes and another set of eyes can prove invaluable.

If administration walks in and offers advice, take that advice. If administrators criticize you, ask for advice. How can I manage this? What would you like to see? What do I do about students who cannot do the work? What do I do about students who are chronically tardy? We are all incremental learners and good administrators understand this. I recommend asking administrators for funds and time to attend professional development seminars on classroom management.

Eduhonesty: My best advice for any new teachers who are reading this post: Appreciate and communicate with your kids. Praise their praiseworthy efforts. Tell them why they have to stay in their seats and do their classwork. Many students will respond to explanations like, “I want you to be ready for high school and you will not succeed if you do not do your work.” Communicating that big picture — your desire for their success — goes a long way toward getting students to go with the program.

A little Greek woman with curly hair

I remember her name, although I will not share it. She spent one year teaching. I doubt she ever taught again. My last post finished by saying, “the fine line between letting them laugh with you and letting them make fun of you must not be crossed.” My recent posts have carried a fairly upbeat flavor, assuming success and offering bits of advice. This post will be headed in a less cheery direction.

That little woman taught math on the first floor of my middle school during the year when the Principal and Assistant Principal were replaced in February. We had eighteen fire alarms that year, not including scheduled drills and one or two alarms used to cover bomb threats. Chaos reigned in parts of the school, especially after all electives, science and social studies were replaced with ISAT (Illinois State Achievement Test) preparation classes at the start of the second semester. Fights were common. I’m ashamed to say I mostly ducked and hid in my classroom, teaching and managing student issues. I kept my sweater and attendance book ready for the next false alarm.

Down on the floor below me, though, a woman with the best of intentions was drowning. Every day she prepared and presented math lessons. In the meantime, calculators were flying out her windows, books were thrown on the floor, and paper wads caromed around the room. Students even put gum in this teacher’s hair when her back was turned. Rumor had it the gum wads happened three times, but I could only confirm two incidents. I watched this class a couple of times. Years later, I remain awed by this woman’s work ethic. I’d have been out of that building by mid-year. She stuck out the full year. I can only assume she wanted to continue teaching. Teachers who leave a contract unfinished can seldom find another job.

What went wrong? ISAT prep certainly created problems, as all the fun classes were replaced with more math and English. A Principal who hardly ever stood in the halls did not help. That Principal was one of the brightest men I’ve worked under, but I am not sure he believed in mentoring. You could do the job or your couldn’t in his view. Lack of structure dogged all of us that year. A computer problem resulted in student schedules being messed up — and then sometimes changed — for months. I’m not going to do a post mortem examination of that school year. That post might turn into a longer book than Moby Dick.

Eduhonesty: I gave that teacher a piece of advice I want to share with my newbies: Don’t turn your back to the crowd. Make sure your audiovisuals are ready to project up front. Then face your students.

I’ll confess I have often turned my back to the class. I have worked at computers where I had a poor sightline into the classroom. Once you know your classes, you will know how much flexibility you have. I have mostly trusted my students and my students have mostly proved trustworthy. In the year of many fire alarms, though, I experienced a class that was only slightly more fun and controlled than your average flu epidemic. In large part, I blame ISAT prep. My first semester science fiction elective has to have been one of my favorite classes of all time. I loved those kids and the stories they wrote. Unfortunately, my second semester science fiction elective was almost immediately converted into a math class. Science became math. Social studies became English. Electives became either math or English. If students were unlucky, they might have five math classes, a daunting schedule for those who dislike or struggle with math, and mine was the last class of the day. The anger and resentment seemed palpable in that room some days, and the little Greek woman whose own elective class had been converted to a math class no doubt had similar problems.

ISAT prep academically trashed the end of that school year, engendering a rebellion that simmered into late spring. The new administration helped somewhat. Making students stand freezing in the snow for a half-hour after one fire alarm helped. Setting up more consistent, firmer consequences helped. But if you want an example of No Child Left Behind proving disastrous for the very children that the program had been intended to rescue, I think the year of the little Greek woman may be a perfect example. The pursuit of higher test scores turned into its own version of the Boston Tea Party, with students indiscriminately tossing math classes into the harbor.

Could that new teacher have rescued herself? I will never be sure. In a school suffering pervasive “widespread disorder in classrooms,” an actual category in government statistics by the U.S. Department of Education (See http://nces.ed.gov/programs/crimeindicators/crimeindicators2012/tables/table_07_1.asp for a look at this.), I don’t know that any new teacher could have held the reins on a large class at the end of a math-math-math-math-math day. I was lucky enough to have smaller classes due to my bilingual position and lucky enough to be able to default to English when the math became overwhelming, but that woman was a regular math teacher. She was stuck.

I do know this. She should never have turned her back on the kids after that first paper wad. She should have called or even visited home after the gum. The first set of administrators were providing little disciplinary back-up to anyone — they were overwhelmed — but she should never have tolerated that disrespect. I am going to assume that almost no new teachers reading this post, probably none, will walk into such a mess. But many new teachers start in the toughest schools because those are the schools that have frequent vacancies.

If you took a school in an urban, academic disaster zone, this post is for you. Your students need you to be positive, to appreciate and enjoy them. Please don’t be angry or negative if you find they are more of a handful than you expected. Should you need to curtail privileges and pass out worksheets or classwork rather than doing fun activities, do what you have to do, but verbalize the reasons. Say, “When I can trust you to listen and not throw paper wads, we will finish project presentations,” providing an incentive to improve behavior. Try to reward good behavior regularly. I suggest issuing candy coupons. I guarantee the money spent on candy and a Costco membership will be worth every penny. See my August 17th and June 6th posts on music, an even better incentive than candy.

But when the going gets rough, keep your eyes on your class. Perfect that sideways stance, the one that lets you point at the board while watching kids at their desks. If you observe misbehavior, especially deliberately disrespectful behavior, call home immediately. Put some desks off to the side or up front and move misbehaving students up beside you and/or away from their peers. Never ignore a paper wad or rude remark. That proverbial ounce of prevention might have saved the sweet woman who drowned. (And might not have. I’ve never seen a mess like that, before or after that year.)

If you stumble, make it part of the dance

Another post for the newbies:

If you fall off your stool, laugh along with the crowd. If you trip in front of the class, make a joke. Remind your students that we all have those moments. Then just keep teaching.

Bad moments can be teachable moments. As we get our feet back in order, we have a chance to tell the class in a nonpreachy way how to treat people who stumble. If a student starts to make fun of you, shut that thread down with a few short observations on kindness and other people’s feelings. You might segue into a class discussion about how to treat fellow classmates during their own embarrassing faux pas. Your clumsiness can be a great opportunity for whole child education.

Don’t accept disrespect, however. Don’t let anyone put you down. The fine line between letting them laugh with you and letting them make fun of you must not be crossed.

Being kind to the quiet

(This is another post for newbies especially, but more experienced teachers and others should find the content interesting as well.) josez

Teachers are disproportionately extroverted by nature. We picked a profession where we occupy the center of the room. In professional development seminars, presenters are often drowning in helpful contributions from the audience. Not all teachers are extroverts, of course. Some introverted people are called — and this profession is a calling — to help children learn. But a lot of talkers, huggers and hand-shakers hang out in the teachers lounge.

What are some characteristics of extroverts? (http://psychology.about.com/od/personalitydevelopment/fl/5-Signs-You-Are-an-Extrovert.htm)

•Numerous, broad interests
•Likes to communicate by talking
•Enjoys being at the center of attention
•Tends to act first before thinking
•Enjoys group work
•Feels isolated by too much time spent alone
•Looks to others and outside sources for ideas and inspiration
•Likes to talk about thoughts and feelings

Extroverts love to hear the sound of their own voices. True extroverts will talk about feelings, the state of the weather, their imaginary, childhood friends, lawn care, whether a virus could zombify America, or just about anything, most of the time. Extroverts also tend to want to help introverts.

“Quiet? Are you unhappy? Is something wrong? Are you having a bad day? How can I help you? Why don’t you join us?”

Some less outgoing teachers end up eating in their rooms because they want a few moments of silence in their workday. I am sure many spouses retire to their man or woman-caves in search of quiet as well. Extroverts are a helpful, talky bunch and sometimes we are just too much for some people.

Eduhonesty: I was going to write about decorating classrooms as part of my late-August posts for new teachers but, while surfing, I got diverted. Extroverts are easily diverted. Part of my reason for going sideways rests in the content of education classes. We are taught how to coax out answers from the quiet kids in class. We are advised to set up situations where quiet students have no alternative except to contribute. We are pushed to create group projects; we often oblige all students to present part of that group project to the class, assigning presentation points in the project rubric. We are taught to make children participate.

I’d like to suggest that we give introverted kids a break, offering five characteristics of introverts for thought: (http://psychology.about.com/od/personalitydevelopment/fl/5-Signs-You-Are-an-Introvert.htm)

•Being Around Lots of People Drains Your Energy
•You Enjoy Solitude
•You Have a Small Group of Close Friends
•People Often Describe You as Quiet and May Find It Difficult to Get to Know You
•Too Much Stimulation Leaves You Feeling Distracted and Unfocused Continue reading

Newbie, phone home!

Details, details, details. Whether new or experienced, teachers are drowning in details by the end of their first week. Meetings and email demands eat up time voraciously, even as teachers try to establish class routines and get to know their students. Parent calls can wait a few weeks, but I am going to recommend that new teachers specifically put parent calls on their calendars somewhere around three weeks to a month into the school year.

By the end of the first month, you will know who regards homework as optional, who customarily comes late to class and who does not understand the math or English or whatever you teach. If you are not sure whether your students understand class material, you need to assess more — more classwork, quizzes, and exit slips can fill in the informational gaps. Call home. Parents can be a teacher’s best allies. (They can also be vexatious blatherskites, but no best teaching efforts exist without attempts to enlist parents in fixing problems.) Parents can see that homework gets done. They can ensure that a kid studies for the science test. The very fact that you are known for calling home will make your classroom more productive.

Proactive calls can be especially helpful. When Josie’s grades start slipping, a phone call may help. When Roberto begins to seem sad and confused, a phone call may start the process of finding help for Roberto. If nothing else, phone calls ensure that parents will not be clobbered by an unexpected academic decline or disaster. You never want to have to answer the question, “Why didn’t someone warn me that she was failing?”

Eduhonesty: Sometimes the many, many details of daily teaching life push parent calls onto the backburner. Putting those calls specifically into the calendar helps make sure that parents get called. I recommend trying to call every parent that you have not seen early in the school year, regardless of student performance. If Roberto has been doing great, his parents will be happy to hear that. Positive calls also set up a relationship that will make any future negative calls much easier.

P.S. I confess I always struggled with this, but try to keep your phone log up-to-date. Administration will want you to log calls, recording who you spoke with and the gist of the conversation. Don’t say, “I’ll write it down later.” Later doesn’t always come.

IMPORTANT NOTE: You will want to be careful with your personal phone numbers. I recommend using the school phone. I did pass out my personal number to various parents last year and I have been known to use personal numbers to make unblocked calls, but teachers have ended up being prank-called and harassed when they made unblocked calls from home. You can push *67 to block your number in some cases. I’d test that block before I called, though. Passing out your number’s not a good idea.

Don’t let it get you down

By Jacquelyn Smith for Business Insider, Thu, Aug 20, 2015, 11:09AM EDT 19 hours ago

“Why you should never say these 3 common words at work”

“Your work is great, but …”

You may remember the old playground adage in grade school: “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.”

Unfortunately, says Darlene Price, “this saying does not apply in the workplace.”

Price, president of Well Said, Inc., and author of “Well Said! Presentations and Conversations That Get Results,” says words, poorly and unconsciously chosen, can indeed harm your credibility, relationships, and opportunities for career advancement.

“Words matter,” she explains. “They are a key component of persuasive communication. Regardless of the audience, topic, or industry, or whether the setting is a stand-up presentation, sit-down conversation, telephone discussion, or an online meeting, a leader uses language to influence someone’s mind in order to achieve a certain result. That’s one reason they’re seen as leaders; their words compel people to follow. ”

When you want to influence others to see something your way, deliberately choose to speak words that are empowering to others and avoid words that are jeopardizing to your message and credibility, she advises. Three common words to consider dropping: “but,” “fine,” and “try.”

Here’s why:

“But.”

“But” is a good word if you’re aiming to express “on the contrary,” Price says.

For example, “My boss went to the conference, but I remained at the office.” Here, the word “but” opposes and negates the clause that comes before it indicating a dissimilar notion.

Now, imagine it your significant other said to you, “Honey, I love you, but …” Or if your boss said to you, “You’re doing a great job, but …” “This powerful conjunction puts a damper on the preceding positive clause,” she explains. “Similarly, imagine if a potential customer heard a salesperson say, ‘Our product is fast, easy, and affordable, but … we don’t have any units in stock until December.’ In this case, the word ‘but’ creates a negative that didn’t exist before.”

Hear the difference when you replace the “but” with “and”: “Our product is fast, easy, and affordable, and we’ll have units available in December.

“If you want to keep the tone positive and motivate others to act, replace ‘but’ with ‘and,'” she suggests.


http://www.businessinsider.com/common-words-you-should-never-say-at-work-2015-8

Eduhonesty: I am writing this post for the newbies and the weary. Someone in educational administration classes has been teaching this technique of “this was great, but I wonder why you did this.” The academic coaches in my school used this structure virtually without fail last year. For example, you might receive a note that said, “I loved how you motivated your students with the superhero opener, but I wonder why you did not immediately provide feedback on their results. Immediate feedback helps students learn.” Academic coaches might waltz into the classroom at any time and, after all, they were academic coaches. Their job was to find something to improve wherever they went.

Academic coaches are there to fix you and some of them will fix you good. (O.K., that’s a bit snarky, I admit. The coaches did have the best of intentions.)

The problem with that yes-but structure is that a teacher can end up feeling that he or she is always screwing up somehow. If you are confronting those “yes-buts,” don’t let it get you down. It’s a stupid way to motivate people. Linking the good and less-good tends to water down any positive feelings that might be created by the initial praise. In the end, coaching interactions can seem like nonstop criticism because of clumsy wording like the above. Personally, I’d try giving solid positive feedback and then coming back with suggestions at a later time so that a little, unadulterated praise might happen sometime, somewhere. But that good-then-bad structure has made its way into business and education schools and not everyone teaching the technique teaches the subtleties that make it work.

I suspect this technique is especially hard on many newbies. If a teacher already feels insecure, those “buts” may make teaching competency seem unreachable. It’s not. We can all always improve, of course.

Eduhonesty: Don’t let an overload of helpful advice scare you. Try what they suggest. See if it works. If it works, show it off the next time a coach or helpful administrator enters the room. If it doesn’t work, ask the administrator or coach for advice. Then go have a margarita with friends or bake a batch of cookies with your kids.

Can they see?

Eyesight caused me a fair amount of trouble last year. My usual strategy has been to put those kids up front who could not see the Promethean board well. Last year, that strategy failed me because so many students could not make out the words on the screen. I really struggled to get everyone up front who needed that front or second row placement and, when the dust settled, I had to place a few in the third row. I ended up crowding myself as I kept bringing desks forward.

For newbies making seating charts: Before you commit to any seating structure, test your students vision. The nurse should have the information you want, but eyesight can change quickly and that information does not always percolate down into the classroom in a timely fashion. One of my daughters went from functional to pretty near bat-blind in fourth grade. She wore glasses until middle school when she switched to contacts. I’ve had students say they are willing to wear contacts, but glasses are too ugly. Girls especially tend to break, lose or hide those glasses.

By middle school, eyesight issues dog educators everywhere. In financially-disadvantaged areas, students are entitled to one free pair of glasses annually, but some students are more concerned with how they look than whether or not they can see the board. These students will not necessarily flag the teacher to their poor vision.

Eduhonesty: A vision check can be quick. Give the kids an activity to keep them busy. At this time of year, you might want to use a diagnostic math or vocabulary pretest. If you have a smart board or projection capabilities, prepare sentences to read. Throwing in a joke or two helps, as do pictures. Keep the print reasonably small. You are checking to see if they can read smaller sentences from the back of the room. It’s important to vary the script so that each student sees different words. The voluntarily-fuzzy-sighted frequently fake their way through eye checks. I shudder to think how many are driving the roads right now.

The kids who can’t see well obviously go up front. A phone call home should follow. I’ve had multiple parents say, “She is not wearing her glasses? She had them on this morning.” Sometimes, calls home can solve the fuzzy-vision problem. Sometimes they can’t.

I’ll end this post with a sad, odd anecdote. A few years back, I had a student who could not see the board from the front row. He copied furiously from his seat partner. I called home. I did not connect but got a curious message instead: “This phone does not accept incoming calls.” Dad remained inaccessible. Sometimes, mom could be reached. I called. The nurse called. We both called. The nurse sent letters. Months went by. The kid in question disappeared for two months, then returned. He had not been in school. This bright, entertaining kid spent almost the whole year copying from the kid next to him. Sometimes you can only do so much.

Lassoing Google Docs

Thanks to Matthew J. for reminding me to write this post. As the school year begins, I have suffered a viral attack on my Dell. Fortunately, I know Matthew, who seems to understand Skynet precursors like my machine. In discussing at-risk data, I noted that I had various Google Docs, but a great number of Microsoft Office documents as well. Software. I find it. I use it. The Google Docs live safely in the cloud, but Office documents lurk like barnacles in the Dell unless I deliberately put them in the cloud.

Matthew and I discussed Google Docs briefly. Google Docs don’t work like Office documents. Shared documents can become real headaches as new Google Doc users move, share and delete documents without understanding that the whole school just lost the new lesson plan template, right before the whole district received Ms. Connor’s Revolutionary War lesson plans for the week. I have lived through numerous examples of Google Docs running amok. Please see my “Refrigerators and data” post of 9/14/14 for more details. Or search the blog archives for Google Docs.

Eduhonesty: I would like to suggest that any readers who manage professional development (PD) or who work closely with PD planners should try to schedule a Google Docs PD for new teachers. Teachers may wish to suggest this PD to their administration. Older, new teachers often lack previous experience with Google Docs. Many experienced teachers may benefit from a Google Doc training/refresher as well. Because Google Docs are shared, mistakes rebound through the whole sharing community. Time loss from Google Doc mistakes can be considerable. I can’t count how many times colleagues came in to ask me to help them find Google Docs last year.

District security will be improved by teaching the fundamentals of Google Docs as well. My district has deactivated my user account since I retired last spring, but I still have these eight and eighteen page lesson plans that I printed a few days ago.* I can reach many documents through what I suppose one might call back doors. Privacy issues loom large here. Even if my colleagues merely feel aggravated, as a blogger, I may find Ms. Connor’s lesson plan intriguing. I shouldn’t have access to that document, however. Sharing occurs by mistake or poor design too often.

A Google Docs PD should be put on district calendars early in the year. Google Docs are easy to half-understand, easy to use correctly most of the time, and are becoming steadily more pervasive in education. Teachers and school districts should learn the small details that can prevent “roaming” data and privacy breaches. We need to lasso these free-range Google Docs.

*I don’t want readers to think I am busy trying to sneak into school documents. I tried my old email address, discovered I had been inactivated and was then curious as to what Google Docs had been blocked. I found some to be inaccessible and others not. My limited access seems somewhat haphazard. In any case, I always change names and small details. I made up Ms. Connor, for example.

The total number of pages in those lesson plans I printed was accurately relayed, however.

In the Age of Ultron

As Tony Stark says to David Banner, “We’re mad scientists, monsters. You gotta own it.

If you’re a mad scientist, you invent Ultrons and Visions. If you’re a teacher, you invent clever projects to make astronomy captivating – no small task in the Age of Ultron. We have a demanding audience today. They still enjoy making the volcano in science class, and watching baby chicks hatch, but it’s hard as heck to get them to make a daily record of the changing phases of the moon. They want action. They want adventure.

There’s a data monster loose in the land. This time-sucking beast can eat up most of the free hours in a week. Today’s post is for both the newbies and the weary. We’re teachers, lamplighters. We gotta own it. We are creators of web quests and Jeopardy games, builders of original board games designed to teach health and history. Our Martian backpack math lesson should not be sacrificed to administrative demands.

My luckier readers probably don’t understand what I’m talking about here, but many teachers working in academically-underperforming schools know or are about to learn. I have two lesson plans for one week in front of me from two different teachers. One is eight pages and the other is eighteen pages. In fairness, various blocks in the template on the longer plan were left blank, but my district was busy justifying itself to the state last year and lesson plan demands alone regularly consumed hours.

Eduhonesty: I strongly recommend creating the Martian backpack lesson first. Do the fun stuff and all other necessary pedagogical preparations first. When you are ready to light lamps, then go on to administrative exigencies and paperwork. In the Age of Ultron, our students have high expectations. We can’t let them down because we bogged down in government paperwork.