Fourth Response/Journal: Classroom Environment and Discipline
Share with us one of your biggest challenges concerning class environment/student discipline in one of your classes. Then, share something that you have done to improve the environment/level of discipline in the classroom. You've now been with your class a year (and you've obviously survived), so tell us something you've done that you feel good about.
posted by Brady Kelso @ 10:27 AM
2 Comments:
One of my biggest challenges concerning class environment/student discipline has been the lack of on-task behavior and responsibility among my students. This is something I had struggled with all year. For example, I had been trying to teach my students that when they come into the class, the first thing they do is to take their seats and begin working on the warm up assignment. For months I struggled with this. Some days I would have half of the class come in and begin working. Other days I would have three or four students do this. It was never the entire class (or at least ¾ of the class), which meant that when several students weren’t on task, there was a domino effect of students being off task. The same goes with the responsibility of working and respecting the students in the class. Many of my students could not handle the responsibility of working in groups and therefore had to work independently.
To improve the environment/level of discipline with my class, I implemented a strategy that I learned in my credential program. I was taught that we should not write the names of the “bad” students up on the board, but rather write the names of the students that were the “example” students. After greeting my students as they came into class, I would stand by the board and then begin writing the students’ names up that were on task and being respectful. The students quickly picked up on this and noticed that if their name was not on the board, they needed to change the way they were behaving. This worked particularly well when my students would come in right before lunch and I would tell them that they were not going to lunch unless their name was on the board. I would also use tactics that got the students motivated by saying that the first 5 names up on the board got to go to lunch early, or got some other reward like no homework. Throughout the day, I would add checks to the students that were on task and responsible with their work. For the students that got distracted, or forgot that they needed to be responsible, I would erase checks, or even erase their name from the board.
Along with this, I created classroom money that the students earned. They earned money based on how many times their name was on the board, how many checks they had by their name, and their grades over a two week period. Every other Friday was pay day. Once I would pay my students, they could use the money to buy things from me such as water bottles, (since our class is in a bungalow with not air conditioning), Hot Cheetos, pencils, etc. There were even instances where the students were able to buy a free week of homework and get credit for it (those were my ‘A’ students that had the most money). Today I am still using this system in my classroom. It has worked extremely well. The level of discipline and respect has increased. My students know what is expected of them when they enter the class and are given assignments to work on. They also have become more responsible for their work because they know that they get paid for it.
Classroom environment, lessons planning, and discipline issues are all closely related. It seems like common sense, but I didn’t really appreciate how close the relationship was until I developed better classroom environment and planned better lessons.
You want challenges? I got challenges—everything from being called a bitch (which earned me a new nickname among colleagues), to a drug-induced nervous breakdown (a student’s not mine, though I came close). For most of my classes, being consistent and providing a safe environment was enough. Eventually the students figured me out, and I figured them out, and we moved on to the good stuff. However, there was that one class. The class from hell. My 5th period.
With this class my discipline repertoire was run dry. I tried everything I had ever heard of any teachers doing anywhere (so long as it was with in my moral compass, which seemed to be expanding slowly). To be honest, I never really got this class where I wanted them. But a few things I did helped. The first: I stopped yelling. I discovered the power of silence, and saved my voice. The second: This is silly, but worked for some reason. I taught them what mantra meant, then I said our class mantra would be: “Mr. Ried doesn’t wait for us, we wait for Mr. Ried.” It never failed, whenever I’d be standing in front of the class silently waiting, two or three students would say the mantra, and the class would quiet down. So, I guess the thing I learned with that is, sometimes stupid simple things work.
Specifically speaking, there was one thing that I did relating environment directly to discipline. My administrator set up my classroom for me. Groups of six, facing each other, many not even facing the front of the class. “This is how your desks will be. It’s good for group work.” This bothered me considerably. It was a ready-made forum for distraction and chaos. And it didn’t work for me. Students were always talking to each other, even when it wasn’t group work time, and those not facing the front, didn’t bother to face the front when I told them to. So, I did a little research, and wrote a little something and submitted it. “Well as long as they’re not in rows. We don’t want that.” I rearranged the room so that students were set up in an amphitheater-type setting, where groups and partners could easily be formed when the time came, but when it wasn’t time, they were facing the front. This single change to my physical classroom environment made all the difference. “Ahh, sick it’s like we’re in college!” Yes, Alberto it is. Now sit down and face the front please.
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