Internship Post 1

Program Standard:

5. Learning Environment

5.2 Managing Classroom Procedures through Transitions

5.4 Managing Student Behavior by Establishing Expectations

Interpretation:

 The program standards 5.2 and 5.4 set out, respectively, to define how a teacher should best establish classroom management through procedures to facilitate transitions, and how to manage student behavior through setting reasonable achievable expectations for student behavior in the instructional setting.

Evidence:

One sure-fire way to have the wheels come off the bus, metaphorically, in one’s classroom is to remove or suddenly change procedures that a class is familiar with. I learned this lesson recently with my particularly rowdy fourth period class. In a bid to gain an extra ten minutes at the beginning of class to use for our day’s review activity, I jettisoned the do now my students usually do, and which serves to both review the previous day’s lesson and to put the students in “work mode.”

Never have I ever experienced a more object lesson in the importance of procedures, and sticking to them. When Wong wrote in The First Days of School about the importance of procedures in establishing the classroom as a learning environment so that it doesn’t devolve into chaos, I had thought that the occasional break from routine might be welcome and helpful to student learning (1). And while I would still argue that my assumption was true in some cases, I now know it is certainly not true in all or perhaps even in most cases.

The review activity I had chosen was to have students rewrite song lyrics to tell the story of history topics they had covered recently, in preparation for their coming test. I decided to omit the do now for all of my classes. This was perfectly fine in my first two classes of the day, which are fairly studious groups. My fourth period class, however, is rather raucous – they have a very different  make-up and “personality” as a class, and because of that they generally need more structure and procedure than the other two classes. While fourth period did manage to do the review, they did it in a much messier, less academically sincere, way than the first two classes did, and it was (I believe) to their detriment, because their review consequently had less academic substance to it.

Here is a student work sample from fourth period, to help you understand how little substance the kids put into this:

I spent a lot of the class period corralling students who had wandered away from their assigned groups, and encouraging/coddling students who were refusing to do the assignment. In some ways, the wheels came off the bus in that class, and by the end of it, I felt rather harried and frustrated. I realized that this group of students could not handle a procedure shift, and needed a more regimented, structured, procedural review than the other classes, in order to actually get something out of the review that would help them on their test. Wong had been right all along - the structure and procedure was what allowed them to learn, by setting clear boundaries and limits on what was acceptable behavior in the classroom (1).

Summary:

Generally speaking, a little variety is the spice of life, and can be acceptable with some groups of students. But for other groups, variety in the procedures of the classroom can be disastrous and frustrating. A teacher must use their best judgement to decide which groups of students can handle a procedure change, and which can’t, and to then adapt their lessons as needed to accommodate the needs of each group.

Next Steps: In this case, these are lessons I learned from my experience with my fourth period class:

·       Never omit procedure for a class that needs structure and procedure, even if it costs you time. You’ll end up losing at least as much time corralling the kids, as you would on the procedure you want to omit.

·       Always reinforce procedure – do it often, do it with repetition, and do it sincerely. Because if you don't, it won't work when you really need it to.

·       Have a method for quieting students down quickly. Something simple like turning the lights on and off, or clapping your hands three times. Something, anything, to get attention quickly so that you can proceed with class. I prefer to say "Flat Tire!" And have the kids respond with "Shhhhh!" And yes, skeptics, believe it or not this does work with high schoolers.

·       Work hard to develop a strong rapport with difficult students – this increases the likelihood that they will obey procedure, and will stop being an obstacle to other students’ learning and to your teaching. This is the only reason I was able to successfully get fourth period to finish the review - but with a stronger rapport, maybe I could have had a more organized, meaningful review with that class due to less wandering off, and less refusal to do the assignment.

References:

(1)    Wong, Harry and Wong, Rosemary. (2001). The first days of school. Mountain View, CA: Wong, Harry K. Publications