really, i should blog about soccer, as it is currently the best and most exciting part of my life right now. but i have a thought about rules, consequences, classroom management, and perhaps MTC's role in molding us all as classroom managers.
Throughout my year and a half of teaching, I've changed rules and consequences many times, trying to find rules and consequences that fit my style and would make my classroom what i want it to be. I can't have a silent classroom, but I can't stand having to wait to speak until everyone else is finished. I don't really care if students eat. Or do I? Starting off a new semester with dreams, as always, of being strict, I know that I won't be able to hold up to that struggle of bam-consequence, bam-consequence, bam-consequence. And I don't want to have a classroom of persecution, of enmity, of concealment and slyness and general strife.
So I wonder. Maybe we all had great teachers in school, who were really strict who made a great impact on our lives. We probably did. Thinking back, I remember Madame Corbiere, strict, maybe, but not nearly the teacher that Madame Kahus was. Mrs. Becker was strict, perhaps exacting is a better word, and she was very good. But I think we are equally likely to have had a great teacher who wasn't especially strict. Several of mine jump to mind, headed by Mahar and S.B. So what's the deal?
There are a couple things that could have been going on here. The first is that they were strict, but were so fair and firm in their decisions and were generally such good teachers that we didn't realize their strictness as such, but rather simply as the appropriate structure for the class. That may be true for S.B., but definitely was not the case for Mahar, and I imagine is the case much less often than one would hope.
The second is that it may be that a relaxed teaching style - relaxed in terms of rules and consequences - is appropriate for other student populations and not for ours. This, I imagine, is far more likely. I heard that one of the first years taught a year at a prep school and gave out a detention. A single detention. I wonder what that must be like.
But I wonder if it is possible to take a different view to CM than that which we have all tried to take. I know that the MTC folks are all hard-line rule-consequence-consistency-people, and believe me, I think that's fine. In fact, I'd wager that almost every time it is the method that affords the first year teacher the best chance of survival. And even if you aren't strict, you need to be consistent. But I wonder how many people there are that just can't fit that model, who could otherwise be great teachers. I wonder how many people can't come up with rules that work for them, ever. I can be a good teacher. With certain classes, I am a good teacher. With other classes, I'm not. I was a terrible teacher for my first block last semester, absolutely awful. I have a feeling I'll be a poor teacher for my first block this semester, although I'm not going down without a fight, detentions and referrals blazing. But I am a great teacher in my second block. My kids learn, understand, work with each other to help, and I am able to totally bend their behaviors to fit whatever it is we need to do in the classroom. I am undoubtedly in control, which is great, but I run that class by being strict about just a very few things and by being extremely, overbearingly positive all the time. I took Wong's idea of shaking kids hands at the door, every day. I love it. It make such an enormous difference. I treat those kids like human beings, and they respond fantastically. Whenever I try to treat my first block like human beings, however, they respond rather less humanely. It's so frustrating to see something work so well with one group of kids and so disastrously for another.
I just wonder how training for MTC could help teachers to pare down their rules and consequences and find those that are really and truly suitable for their teaching style. Maybe stress that not all classes will respond the same way, and that it could be helpful, or even necessary, to have one set of rules for one class and one set for another, especially when teaching different grades. Another reason why it's important for summer school teachers to observe other classrooms and, if it's at all possible, to make summer-school classes bigger.
Oh, and my fourth block. They like to sing when they work.
3 comments:
This has been a struggle of mine since the beginning...how to be relaxed and still maintain order. It's funny, but the best consequence I have to offer (or at least the one that has the most impact), is when I raise my voice. One would think that a student population of over aged high schoolers would hardly scoff at the sudden disappointed/angry voice of Ms. Betit (all 5 feet of her), but it seems that this and this alone is my best defense. Deep down they are so desperate to succeed and please the few good teachers they have, that the sudden irritation of one is enough to right an entire room.
This brings to mind Sassy B. - few are the times that I made her truly mad, but when I did the burning shame of disappointing the person who's opinion mattered most to me was enough to set my course straight.
I am not a huge fan of the consequence ladder...but an advocate for the calculated, wither inducing, teacher stare.
As much as I want to comment on the actual blog, I'm going to pretend that I didn't read past the first line. Yes, you should blog about soccer, I know you're proud of your boys, and you should be (and I want to read about soccer.)
I love that you shake the hands of the kids as they come into the room. Think about what it is that makes people care about what another person says or thinks, you will find that a person is more likely to respond when they have a relationship with the other person. Also if there is respect in that relationship. My guess with kids who don't immediately respond is that they don't have the experience of being respected and giving respect they need to learn that (not that you have time to go back to that level as a high school teacher). Teaching children to care( book), and reponsive classroom strategies are disigned for elementary age children but in the practices I think you will see exactly the things you are talking about in classrroom management. The underlying issue is that not all kids come to the classroom knowing how to respect or be respected. They recommend a plan that spends the whole first six weeks of school really focusing in on these skills, this I know is not feasible in high school, but I think some of the strategies could be modified to assist in a high school enviornment. Certainly the underlying philosophy would be a helpful template to consider.
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