Continuing posts for the newbies, mostly at the middle school and high school level

New teachers often hesitate to seek outside help with disciplinary issues. They understandably worry about making a bad first impression. For any teachers out there who are afraid to call in the cavalry, this post is for you.

You must ask for help with some issues. Actions at the start of the year establish precedents. Inactions also establish precedents — and you can end up struggling with misbehaviors for the rest of the school year if you roll over in September.  My young colleague who rationalized that “dumb-ass” was not “really a curse word” and let a student in her class effectively off the hook after an example of outrageous disrespect?She was let go the following year, mostly due to subsequent disrespectful student behavior. That kid who cursed at you? That kid MUST receive a consequence. His or her fellow students need to see you will not be a pushover. Parents or guardians should also receive a phone call.

Maybe you are afraid that reporting misbehavior will be interpreted as being unable to manage your classroom. That fear has to be ignored when the cause is sufficient. Frankly, if you never feel comfortable asking for help from your administration, the problem is your administration — not you — and you may want to look for another school district.

Regardless, disrespectful and disruptive behaviors must be shut down as much as possible and as early as possible during the school year. That sometimes requires reporting a problem even if you would rather not have the Dean know that “Matt” called you a @#%@%. In science fiction terms, you do NOT want to live in the parallel universe where “Matt” got away with calling you that name because you will be absolutely miserable in that universe, as “Matt” keeps pushing to find the boundaries and get another laugh at your expense.

You should have a referral form to use in case of trouble. If it’s like many other forms, the misbehaviors on the following list call for immediate referral to the Dean or other administrators in the disciplinary pipeline:

♦ Drugs
♦ Fighting — this includes serious verbal altercations as well as physical assaults
♦ Harrassment, intimidation or bullying of other students
♦ Horseplay meant to disrupt class or horseplay that does not stop when you say stop
♦ Some forms of insubordination — this can be tricky…
♦ Possession of weapons or look-alike weapons
♦ Profanity or serious verbal disrespect toward the teacher
♦ Refusing to identify yourself (This tends to be hallway issue.)
♦ Skipping class or extreme tardiness
♦ Smoking
♦ Vandalism

In a sense, most of the above behaviors are often easier to manage than less serious infractions. Recreational drug use is simply unacceptable. Possession of weapons cannot be tolerated. Kicking over a desk or gouging a crown into its surface cannot be ignored or excused. That crown requires an immediate referral. If the idea of the crown did not immediately ping your gang activity warning bells, you might also talk to colleagues about gang activity in your area.

The flip side of what I have written above is that a new teacher’s instinct not to write referrals may be spot on. Too many referrals can put you in the spotlight, and you want to avoid that. Beyond the items on the above list, disciplinary referrals tend to become more discretionary, and I’d suggest avoiding referrals when possible. Fairly or unfairly, referrals can raise classroom management concerns, and they also give away some of your own personal power. Kids sometimes view referrals as a version of, “Wait till (another authority figure) gets home (to take charge)!!

One five-minute tardy will probably not be worth the paperwork, especially since administrators tend to be too busy to manage what they perceive as trivial problems. Three tardies in a week make a different story, though. Attitude should be a determining factor in the referral process. Was the behavior deliberately disruptive? That’s probably a referral, but you might want to handle disruptive behavior yourself. Did the student intend to swear? Sometimes words just slip out. Did the horseplay spill over into class from the passing period? You may be able to address that horseplay with a short reminder about the rules and a small consequence such as cleaning the classroom before school. Littering and pencil doodles on desks call for natural consequences such as desk-cleaning duty. Afterschool and lunch detentions act as deterrents for other behaviors.

Misbehaviors I would recommend tackling on your own before issuing referrals include the following:

♦ Academic dishonesty
♦ Bothering other students short of bullying
♦ Breaking school rules (a few rules call for immediate referrals, especially when safety issues are in play)
♦ Cursing not directed toward you that is not bullying
♦ Disruptive behavior that continues after you bring the behavior to a student’s attention
♦ Horseplay
♦ Huggy kissy stuff — PDAs
♦ Littering
♦ Property misuse
♦ Tardiness

Eduhonesty: I’ll pick up this thread again in the next day or two. I’ve launched into a huge topic and a complicated one. My advice might be quite different for District 43 than for District 182, for example. Who are your administrators? How much experience do those administrators have within your district? Who will help?

I will end today’s post with a familiar piece of advice: Ask your mentor teacher or other experienced teachers within your district how to manage your disciplinary challenges. I favor lunch and afterschool detentions myself, but whatever you do, don’t let deliberate disrespect go. You may want to call home, talk to parents or guardians, and issue your own consequence — rather than discussing disrespect with others outside the classroom — but your “Matts” must be stopped before their behaviors escalate, both for your sake and for theirs.

On vacation out here, but I thought I’d offer a quick post for today. The pin on the bottom says, “Gardening is cheaper than therapy and you get tomatoes.”I am grateful to my readers, the kids I met this year, and all the people who keep struggling to get education right. I am so glad for all of you, for the people who know that fish don’t belong in trees, and who are trying to make school work for our many kids, all our kids with their different talents, interests and inclinations.

THANK YOU.

(Readers, please pass this on to new teachers and others who might be interested if you have a few minutes. I’d call this the first summer post for newbies.)

I found an article in my Facebook feed titled “24 ACTUAL Things Parents Said to Teachers That Will Make Your Head Spin.” The article includes “He’s only bullying people because he’s more developed than them” and other funny quips and comments.  http://offbeat.topix.com/slideshow/16097/slide1?no_cover=1

One comment stopped me, though. Can I call mom if I see her girl hanging out with boys?

Yes, I can. I absolutely will. Feel free to ask me. I may call you anyway.

I have taught middle school for most of my teaching career. Seventh grade can be especially hazardous. The year starts well. Marie is listening and doing her work. Then in November, Marie’s gaze starts scooting over toward Danny. Sometimes by December or January, I have almost entirely lost Marie in a seething sea of unpredictable hormones. Marie may break into tears if Danny talks to another girl in the lunchroom. She is likely to be distracted, trying to text him across the room if I am not watching.

When Marie skips class to sneak off to an empty gym with Danny, I am not doing my job if I am not calling home. One year, our middle school had five pregnant girls toward the end of the year. The nurse was beside herself. Another year, I ended up trapped between the social worker who wanted the abortion, the Catholic mom who did not, and the girl who wanted to finish school and was too scared to have that baby.

This post is especially for new teachers who are not yet calling home on nonacademic matters. I recommend you call. You might pick an academic concern — For example, “I noticed she has not been taking her book home lately.” You can use that as a focus for the conversation, slipping in that perhaps Marie’s interest in Danny is distracting her, causing her to lose track of academic responsibilities. Obviously, you can’t call for every little flirtation.

But teachers often see trouble coming before anyone else understands what is happening. Put yourself in mom’s shoes. You would want to know.

Toward the goal of teaching as much as you can as fast as you can, a well-designed seating chart can be a teacher’s best friend. The right seating chart forestalls many problems. Conversely, the wrong seating chart will kill you by degrees.

If Claudia is sitting next to her boyfriend, the game’s probably half lost. Claudia and her boyfriend will be distracting each other as soon as your back is turned. If Ezekiel’s sitting next to the girl whose cuteness renders him mute, the game’s mostly lost. The talking probably won’t start for awhile, but you’ll be lucky to capture a few minutes of Zeke’s attention during class. Exceptionally chatty girls should never be placed side-by-side unless no alternative exists. Students need to be strategically deployed with the end goal of nipping social conversations in the bud.

Some teachers begin school with alphabetical charts and that approach has advantages. Setting up structure immediately helps create a classroom tone conducive to learning. However, having emphasized the importance of seating charts, I am now going to recommend that teachers wait a few days before assigning seats. I usually let students pick their seat partners and classroom position for a couple of days at least. I learn who wants to sit near the front of the room and the teacher and who doesn’t. I learn the group and friend dynamics within my classroom. I learn where the conversations are going to break out. I learn who the quiet kids are. Sometimes, I may catch the first whiffs of bullying, giving me a chance to shut down harassment before it starts.

Once I understand the dynamics of my classroom, then I build my seating chart. I separate talkers. I use quiet students as buffers. I bring students who may need special help up front so I can help them without making them conspicuous. I separate students who are not going to focus on learning when they are seated near each other.

Charts are an art. I suppose I should add a few caveats here. Not all talkers need to be separated. On occasions, I have left friends together because they work together unusually well and help each other enough to compensate for a slight uptick in chatting that may result from that placement. If Claudia just arrived from Honduras last year and her boyfriend is translating for her and helping her learn English, I may try out the seating arrangement with the two together.

The end goal is learning.

For the newbies: Don’t let the kids talk you out of your plan. If you thought Mary and Kayla needed to be separated, you were probably right, despite Mary’s entreaties. As soon as you start flexing rules or plans, some students will begin trying to make you flex all the rules and plans. The time loss can be considerable and the benefit to you nearly nonexistent.

The text of the following email is from my former math department chairperson, an example of a reasonable use of small groups. Consider this a teaching tip for new teachers, I guess. After the big rainstorm when five kids in the class did not come to school, using the internet to reteach may work well. This requires careful planning to set up review sessions for other students at the same time.

“The link below provides a series of tutorial videos that would be appropriate to assign to students to watch who were absent. You could document that as an intervention and say that it was provided for students to view on their own time or make time available during the school day for students to view it while you move forward with other students.

http://www.virtualnerd.com/pre-algebra/ratios-proportions/scale-models/scale-model-examples“

Eduhonesty: A few issues are embedded in the above post. Five absent students? If that sounds like too many from a rainstorm, I’d like to observe that, in my former district, bad weather could easily create such absenteeism. Especially if students walk and mom and dad have already left for work, those students may decide to stay home. When older kids are responsible for getting younger kids to school, everybody will stay home. Despite recent Yahoo articles about the perils of children walking to and from school alone, the fact is that many, many children walk to school all the time, especially those who don’t qualify for free bus service.

Among other targets the state set for us this year, schools in my district had attendance targets. My homeroom won the special treats for best attendance a number of times and we enjoyed the special cookies and little water bottles. Attendance numbers were posted on cheery boards in the hallway. The very fact that we received treats in a year when measures against recreational eating felt almost Draconian speaks volumes, though.

Attendance fails, especially at the high school level, create academic fails and my district has been struggling with the problem as long as I can remember. Other impoverished and urban schools fight the same battle. I thought my chairperson’s post with this link offered a helpful suggestion that could be used for grouping. Individual students can also be sent home with helpful links. When possible, links can be emailed or texted to parents.

Music soothes the savage student, not to mention other students and their teacher. My iPhone has synced itself into a mess of contemporary music this year. I don’t even know what I have.

I do know that music works for me, but I also recommend caution to new teachers out there. Letting students go to YouTube can be risky. Often, students don’t even know they are making inappropriate choices. Many are oblivious to curse words and unacceptable topics. Others know full well that f-bombs are about to fall, but they want to see how the teacher reacts.

I duck the content problem through song lists. My students write down songs they would like to hear. I vet the lyrics and listen to samples before I make purchases. (I do buy the songs. Stealing material off the internet would set a poor example.) Sometimes I have to explain why a song did not make it onto the classroom’s latest CD. We can’t play a song about partying and getting wasted, I explain, even if the language is clean. It’s useful to look for videos, too; I never would have bought that song from Shades of Grey if I’d seen the music video first, a mistake on my part, even if the lyrics passed scrutiny.

I’ve written before about the scary quality of some lyrics our children are listening to today, but this post focuses on a different topic. I get great mileage from my CDs.

“If you are quiet and working, I will put on music,” I say. I wait for compliance. Sometimes students help me.

“Be quiet! She won’t put on the music!” They say to classmates.

I strongly recommend music lists.

“The greatness of art is not to find what is common but what
is unique.”

~ Isaac Bashevis Singer (via Bob at bob@lakesideadvisors.com)

I think that applies to greatness of teaching as well. What makes “Josue” unique? That’s the question and, locked in that question, we find the key to helping Josue fulfill his own personal quest. The best teachers cultivate those sparks of uniqueness, those flares of divergence.

The divergent are often a handful in the classroom, but I have fewer — if any — real disciplinary issues with this group when I go with the grain. If “Manny” can’t follow, I try to let him lead. If Josue wants to take science toward skateboarding, I try to find the applicable science that relates to the skateboard. Of course, some days you just have to force kids to go with your flow: Order of operations is neither malleable nor optional.

Eduhonesty: For new teachers, I offer this advice: Try to enjoy them for who they are. Love them if you can. Support them as much as you are able. And go with the grain of the wood as often as possible.