Behavior Narration

The last couple of weeks have been a little crazy with transitioning from Teach For America institute to actually starting my first week at my school, where we've managed to keep busy despite the fact that chilluns don't arrive for another two weeks.

Institute ended with a mix of feelings. I definitely felt that I learned a lot, but I'm left having to be hopeful that the same can be said for the kids in our class. Our final round of assessments were less than conclusive, which was disappointing, and we continued to struggle to keep the class under control, with particular trouble in the afternoon on the last day when kids went pretty much ape$*%# all over each other and the classroom.

Keeping kids under control -- or "Classroom Management" as it is lovingly referred to within the education community -- is a tricky thing, and it's amazing to see all the different methods and systems that are put into place to make sure that children do what you want ... errr, what's best for their education, and thus for them. Teach for America gave us a system to use this summer in our classroom that we called the Behavior Management Cycle, which was meant to prevent (or at least stem) major behavior problems in the classroom.

The first step is setting clear expectations. This is actually harder than it sounds, because, even for simple tasks like passing papers or lining up to go the bathroom, you have to state exactly what it should and should not look like (which requires thinking about all of the ways that they could potentially thwart your desired vision -- e.g. folding papers into an airplane and floating them to people, slamming chairs into desks and then playing leapfrog the whole way into the lunch line, etc.). And THEN you often have to model how to do these things and how to NOT do these things. And THEN you may even have to have the students model it for you! So teaching the kids to do a simple procedure like those listed above can actually take just about FOREVER.

Step 2, which is my favorite, is Behavior Narration. In behavior narration, the teacher actually begins remarking upon the students who are following directions and acting appropriately, "narrating" what s/he sees these students doing. The hope is that students who are not on-task -- and thus not being given the precious mentions in the narration -- will quickly adopt the positive behaviors you are looking for. This sounds bizarre, and I initially really hated it. I think it especially sounded awful, because this summer I just heard a bunch of brand new teachers (including myself, of course) using it, and we sounded more or less like robots.

"I see McNulty is on task and ready to learn. I see Kima and Bubs have their eyes on me and are sitting in active listening position. Bunk has put his pencil away and is waiting for instructions. Thank you Bunk."

Dumb, right? The crazy thing is that it actually seems to work. It's kind of disturbing to sit in the back of a class and watch an entire row of students sit up straight because the teacher just narrated that one of their peers is sitting up straight. Makes me concerned that our species has some major weaknesses that an invading ultra-intelligent organism might exploit to great effect ...

"I see that Andy is taking me to his leader and is ready to survive the great destruction of mankind. I see that Nathan and Jessie are bowing down and worshiping our superior race and won't be incinerated by our hi-tech ray guns. Thank you, Nathan and Jessie."

But anyway, it really does work. And thus I love it ... just need to get it to feel more natural and to actually remember to do it before the class devolves into a total $#*!storm and I have nothing positive to narrate! That's a whole OTHER problem, though.

The final step in the cycle is the implementation of consequences, which in an ideal situation would be used very sparingly and would also have some kind of impact on the student behavior. I hated our consequence system -- mostly because I usually taught last during the day and many kids were already pretty far along the consequence ladder and had kind of given up on the day, but also because our final rung on the ladder was a call home to parents, which was COMPLETELY toothless, because A) We were told by the school that we needed permission (which we didn't have time to get for 3-5 kids each day) to call home and B) because neither we nor the office staff had phone numbers for most kids ... which tended to include the biggest troublemakers and C) Some of the kids didn't have working phones at home anyway. We tried to bluff our way through these obstacles, but a sassy few kids finally realized we had no real way of calling home and let us know that our threats to do so had no impact on them. These same kids pretty much laughed when we told them that we would walk home with them to deliver the news of their bad behavior -- "You're gonna walk home with me? YOU? In MY neighborhood?" Chuckle chuckle. And they were right. We had no intention or way of doing this anyway, since we had to board our little Teach For America bus and be shuttled off somewhere right after school let out. I wonder if I would have if we HAD been able to stick around longer.

NYtimes article on TFA

Article about TFA on nytimes.com. This passage in particular resonated for me:

Lilianna Nguyen, a recent Stanford graduate, dressed formally in high heels, was trying to teach a sixth-grade math class about negative numbers. She’d prepared definitions to be copied down, but the projector was broken.

She’d also created a fun math game, giving every student an index card with a number. They were supposed to silently line themselves up from lowest negative to highest positive, but one boy kept disrupting the class, blurting out, twirling his pen, complaining he wanted to play a fun game, not a math game.

“Why is there talking?” Ms. Nguyen said. “There should be no talking.”

“Do I have to play?” asked the boy.

“Do you want to pass summer school?” Ms. Nguyen answered.

The boy asked if it was O.K. to push people to get them in the right order.

“This is your third warning,” Ms. Nguyen said. “Do not speak out in my class.”

Of (Dead) Mice and Men

The other day I was leading the students up from the lunchroom for their daily "washroom break." More than almost any other task, I dread this, primarily because it combines two embarrassingly difficult tasks: leading students silently and in two single file lines (boys and girls) through the hallways, and maintaining order among these single file lines while groups of three are released into the washrooms (what the kids -- and maybe the grownups, too?? -- tend to call bathrooms here) to "use it" (again, what the kids call doing their business; e.g "I gotta use it!"). This day my single file lines were decidedly sloppy and noisy, but it wasn't until I heard a chorus of squeal/shrieks from the boys' washroom that I really got a bad feeling.

When I walked into the washroom, I found Brody, McNulty and Ziggy scrambling against the walls by the urinals, trying to get as far away from the opposite wall as they could. When they saw me they all exclaimed in excited panic, "Mr. M! Mr. M! There's a mouse!" I followed their pointing fingers across the washroom to a tiny gray lump lying motionless against the wall.

"I killed it!" squealed Brody with a mixture of pride, shock, and disgust. Apparently Brody had "accidentally" stepped on the tiny mouse, something I didn't think was entirely plausible.

Deciding that quick, decisive action was required, I pulled off a long strand of toilet paper, wadded it up and quickly scooped up the mouse carcass and deposited it in the trash can. Of course, the entire 5 seconds that this action took was accompanied by grossed-out cries from my little comrades. Of course, immediately afterward, they spread the word that there was a dead baby mouse in the washroom trashcan, creating something of a sight-seeing destination for every boy as they entered and exited their washroom.

Once I finally got the fellas ushered out of the washroom and back into the class, I was beckoned over immediately and with some unspoken urgency by Brody, who was raising his hand and looking intently at me. Thinking he must have had some pressing question about the math "Do Now," I went over to Brody, who asked me with grave concern, "Mr. M, how did that mouse get in our school?" Thinking it unwise to tell him that there were probably more mice in the school than children, I simply shrugged, said "I don't know, Broady, he must've come in in somebody's backpack!" He didn't think this was funny either, of course, but it did seem to be an explanation he was willing to buy.

Links

Not prepared to comment in brief or at length on either of these topics, but thought they were worth posting for future thought:

A review of Stuart Buck's "Acting White: The Ironic Legacy of Desegregation."

"No Teacher Left Behind: When Did It Get So Hard to Fire a Teacher?"

Did I mention I love Slate(.com)?

All the Single Ladies

After reading my last couple of entries, my ever-astute better half has informed me that in my reflections I seem to skew towards talking about the young men in class. I tried a number of ways to rationalize this: it just SEEMS that way, because all the character names from "The Wire" are guys; but it's just because my small work groups are 100% male (slight exaggeration, as it turns out); but there's an 11:5 ratio of boys to girls and one of the girls (Rhonda, the only one I've mentioned so far, and for fairly negative reasons) never bothers to show up (oops, there I go again)! Clearly no amount of rationalization can hide the fact that, after only 5 instructional days I have fallen into the trap of interacting more with, focusing more on, and thinking more about the young men in my class and the challenges they present. And all this after reading BOTH "Failing at Fairness" and "Still Failing at Fairness!"

A bit about the young women of Room 204:

Lester, the soft-spoken model student, seems to have been exposed to a number of concepts in math and reading that other students are learning for the first time. Of course, this only exacerbates the problem of not giving her enough attention, as we struggle to catch the rest of the class up and take for granted that Lester will do okay with minimal support/care. Plus she's reading on a 4th grade reading level (other students are entirely illiterate), a full level ahead of just about everybody, with the exception of ...

Stringer, the slightly less soft-spoken model student. Stringer was the only student to look at her mid-summer-school progress report to find Bs AND be disappointed. Stringer struggles in math but is easy to overlook because she follows directions, copies problems from the board and is well-behaved. She is also the tallest student in class ... or maybe the second tallest to ...

Rhonda, the "5th-grade-lookin girl" with the attendance problem. Rhonda -- when she comes to school -- gets more attention than the other girls, for the sole reason that she acts out more. Between her aforementioned death stares and her inability to keep her hands off her "Scholar Dollar" bag (which can't have many Scholar Dollars* in it), Rhonda gets a fair amount of attention -- but usually the disciplinary kind. When I discovered at one point that Rhonda and her neighbor (Poot) didn't understand a key concept, however, and spent some time working with them as an impromptu small group I found Rhonda to be very responsive and a quick learner.

Avon, a quiet girl who wants to be a school principal when she grows up, has been struggling in just about every subject and with every concept so far and yet probably has received less individual attention than she needs/deserves. I have, however, been very good about confiscating the two notes that I've seen her writing (one of the "F*** you" variety and the other more of a chart than a note, listing in one column the "cool people" (yours truly included) and in the other column the "not cool people" the sole occupant of which happened to also be the recipient of the "F" note). My teacher advisers tell me that these notes bode well for her potential career in administration.

Finally, Kima, who I originally worked with quite a lot in my first couple of math classes. Kima loves math and is a quick learner but gets frustrated very quickly and, unlike the boys in the same situation, shuts down rather than acting out. You can guess how teachers (including myself) respond to this when there are four or five frustrated boys banging on desks, yelling for "Mr. M" and threatening/punching their classmates.

And yet it is not fair to these young women for this behavior -- my behavior -- to continue.

Thus I resolve the following:

-Despite the fact that -- as a general rule -- they tend to be quieter and less attention-demanding than their male counterparts, I will show an equal amount of care and concern and attention to the education of Lester, Stringer, Rhonda, Kima, and Avon as to their male counterparts.

-Given that my colleagues are likely to be falling into the same trap, I commit to give positive attention to these students.

-In addition to giving more positive attention, I commit to holding these students just as accountable to the classroom rules and procedures.

-In spite of their 4th grade reading level (on average 2-3 (and in some cases more) above their classmates), I will work and engage with Lester and Stringer during our small group for reading to make sure that they are being challenged to grow as readers and to speak their minds about the materials they are reading.

Back at it ...

Last week ended on an upswing. At least that's what the post-week spin doctors are saying. After three days of increasingly capable classroom management (but still fairly chaotic classrooms), I seemed to manage a breakthrough on Thursday. Not only was I able to get through my entire lesson (expanded notation and adding two-digit numbers), but I managed to do it without having to bark at anyone and without TOO much general disorder.

I also had really great individual interactions with some of the kids. Prior to my lesson, I worked with Bunk, Poot, and Frank Sobotka on expanded notation, and they all got it and were excitedly doing extra-hard problems in exchange for high-fives. Bunk in particular prided himself on his expertise and -- taking the advice of my faculty advisor, Ms. W -- I put him to work explaining the concepts to Poot, which he seemed not only to be quite good at but also happy to do. Bunk also managed to pick a tiny scab on his arm and demanded a band-aid, which apparently are non-existent at the school. To solve the problem, I told him about how men stick pieces of tissue on their bloody spots when they cut themselves shaving, and he proceeded to wear a bit of tissue on his arm like it was the baddest-a** bandage you ever saw.

In addition to my trio of miscreants, I noticed after my lesson that Bubs hadn't filled in his exit slip (daily assessment quiz) and that he had his head down and seemed to be pretty upset during the follow-up lesson, which was building on concepts that I had just taught. Knowing from the previous day that this detached melancholy would likely lead to a spiral of self-destructive behavior, I pulled a chair up to Bubs' desk and worked him through the lesson I had just failed to effectively communicate to him. The individual attention and the one-on-one tailoring seemed to do the trick in a matter of minutes, and Bubs was back in action answering questions and participating in class. It felt good.

As for a more general view of the class, it's an interesting one. Of the sixteen students there are five girls (Rhonda, Kima, Lester, Avon, and Stringer) and 11 boys (McNulty, Bubs, Lt. Daniels, Rawls, Bunk, Omar, Herc, Poot, Brodie, Frank Sobotka, and Ziggy). Although it's still early, I'd say the loci of power tend to reside with Lt. Daniels, Bunk, and Rhonda, though certainly any member of the cast of characters has the capability of throwing the classroom into a tailspin. Bunk is a hyper-sensitive hothead who has ALMOST been in a fight just about every day so far and writes us notes like "you don't like me" when we ask him to reflect on his misbehavior. Lt. Daniels is the class smarta** who's always good for a cheeky remark about whatever we're trying to accomplish and who needs to be constantly kept busy to avoid problems. And Rhonda, the aforementioned "5th grade-lookin' girl" is like a combination of Medusa and a proximity mine -- death glares everywhere she looks and always a potential for explosions.

It's a lively bunch who aim to please and are hungry to learn -- and more than capable of it, too! By and large, they have to deal with far more than any kids should, but the fact that the vast majority of misbehavior and tears comes from not understanding a given lesson -- to me -- says quite a lot about their collective character. I'm looking forward to the next few weeks with them and have to say it -- I missed them over the weekend.

Luckily I had lots of illegal fireworks going off in my neighborhood to occupy my thoughts. Apparently the friendly residents of Logan Square were trying to compensate for Mayor Daley's cheapskate fireworks show.