Sunday, March 21, 2010
Reflection for weekend of March 20: Classroom management part 2
In all the information presented to you regarding classroom management, identify one strategy, idea, or concept that you find problematic. Perhaps you don't think it would work or you disagree with it philosophically. Identify it and explain your objection.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
The concept of getting a bell for the classroom to obtain the attention of the class seems to me to be problematic in that it does not train students at higher levels to listen to voice cues and behave appropriately. The use of bells to signal the start and end of activities within a class or to quiet the group is a routine that encourages teacher control of the situation and doesn't support the growth of self control for students within the classroom. I believe they have to work toward the goal of understanding verbal cues and developing behaviors that lead to the transition to adulthood. As students progress through their secondary school years, they must increase their ability to take direction and act accordingly. There will be no one to "ring the bell" when they attend college or work in the real world. Guiding students in their development of maturity and responsibility will ultimately serve them better in life than depending on someone else's control of the situation. Therefore, I think the idea of using a bell within a secondary school classroom is counterproductive to the goal of developing self-sustaining, independent adults.
ReplyDeleteI have some conerns about the real affects of modeling in the classroom. I am a big fan of positive reinforcement. I have seen the positive impact it can have in the business world on teammates and employees. Yet, I am not quite sure of the true impact of modeling in the classroom, especially on students that are apathetic or demonstrate resistance to learning. In theory, reinforcing the good beahvior of student A to change the poor behavior of student B to imitate the positive student A seems to be a potentially good solution. However, there seems to be a leap of faith that student B will want to imitate that behavior. I am just not sure in reality how often this will occur. Will the students that have been behaviorally challenged really care? Will they lash out (after class) at the student(s) being praised, labeling them a "goody two shoes?" We have also heard that we should praise even the slightest positive ( or just non-negative) behavior in some of the students that have demonstrated behavioral issues in the class. I think this is a good concept, but it must be done very carefully, or the student may feel like they are being patronized. I think that perception would elicit a very negative reaction. I am not "against" the idea of modeling, just a little skeptical of its effectiveness. I will heartily implement it as part of my classroom management strtategy. I believe it is clearly better to provide positive reinforcemnt rather than negative. If modeling can change the behavior of even one student in the class, then it would be a success. I will go forward with a positive outlook on modeling and hope that it works as advertised.
ReplyDeleteJoe, you make an important point about modeling. There are kids who either won't respond or will respond negatively. Think about the tiered intervention. You will move some kids in the right direction with modeling and will have to use other means for some of these aforementioned kids.
ReplyDeleteModeling in of iself won't automatically work but needs to be conducted effectively - as is the case for most interventions.
Similar to Joe’s thoughts above, I’m a little skeptical as to the effectiveness of positive reinforcement comments on the students that tend to be the “problem” students. For example, “Amelia, I appreciate you listening so carefully today. Good job.” I’m not sure if that will really have an impact on Freddy who has zero interest in being in your class for whatever reason. In fact, it may have as much chance at causing resentment as it does at creating a positive outcome. However, I trust that Randy and Dr. Perras have experience to the contrary and will try these techniques. I figure it may not have a positive impact on every kid, but it may bring one or two over from “the dark side.”
ReplyDeleteHonestly, I have none to object or disagree at this point.I tried to disprove or rethink in a different way but ended up convincing that there is atleast one kid, who will be benefited by these stratergies.I have only seen traditional teaching with punitive classroom management with my background.I am not being too positive with given stratergies but I am definetely going to try each one of them and see how it would work for my class.
ReplyDeleteDuring the course of our training several instructors have told us about motivational techniques involving tangible rewards to students. As described, these external motivations seem effective in getting students to put more effort into the school work and as a result, learn more. Ideally, students would be internally motivated to achieve excellence in their studies. I imagine that one of the reasons that they are not internally motivated is that they are unable to see far enough into the future to see the payoff from any efforts on school work. The tangible rewards help some students see immediate benefits for their efforts even though these substitute benefits are small in comparison to the real benefits they will receive by putting effort into their education. I’m not opposed to using these types of benefits with students, but I wonder if by doing this we are treating the symptom and not the problem. There won’t always be a token reward when they get to college or get into the workforce for doing what they’re supposed to do. At some point they’ll need to develop some internal motivation to succeed. Do we delay or stunt the development of the necessary internal motivation by providing this external motivation?
ReplyDeleteI have mixed feelings about "rewards" in terms of tangible items, and even about using the ticket system or coupon system. Mostly I have a problem with this because I think I personally would find it very hard to manage this on a consistent basis, i.e. I would second guess whether I should have given this student and ticket and then the other...if a student argued with me that he had done the same positive thing as another student and that he deserved a ticket, I wouldn't know whether to give in or not. It just seems like a complicated thing (but maybe in reality it isn't). Also, I don't like the idea of giving out "things" and "stuff" and perpetuating all of that. I like better the "reward" of having some recognition posted, or of free time (as Randy described on Saturday, and Wong talks about free time on Fridays as a great reward)--I think those are better. The student shouldn't be led to believe that he or she deserves a commodity for good behavior. But with free time, you can reward but really frame it as a natural consequence of the good behavior, i.e., because you worked so hard, we finished the less/unit, whatever, a little ahead of time, and now we can afford some free time in the class do something more fun. Like Saras and the others who have posted comments, I am keeping an open mind and will try everything that has been suggested, but my worry in all of this is that we are always seeming to meet the students at their level, and if we take that too far, I don't know how they will ever rise up.
ReplyDeleteIt's good when students or teacher candidates question/analyze information. Such hesitancy towards reinforcement is certainly not a bad thing.
ReplyDeleteI was skeptical as well. When I took courses in human behavior and subsequently saw the effect of reinforcement in working with kids like my son, I feel like I understood this approach in more depth.
Not all kids respond to telling another student "good job." Not all kids respond to a coupon. This doesn't mean the approach is ineffective.
I explained the concept of shaping by showing how we taught Gabriel to say eat. We start with a noise, then a sound of "eee" and eventually eat. Motivation can be shaped in small increments as well.
If a kid is apathetic about school, the alternative to helping him take small steps is probably that he'll continue to be apathetic.
This last point is what I hope some of you will consider. If not immediate rewards, what else helps can be used to help such kids move forward?
As I mentioned in the other blog, I think that many of the classroom strategies are manipulative, and we are almost playing by the kids rules. This might be necessary in the beginning, to get their attention, but I hope that a controlled-classroom isn't the end goal. If it is, then we are in fact being enablers. If we deem their behaviors in a structured classroom to be largely unacceptable, and it seems that we all agree on this, then we need to teach them how to act. Moreover, we need to get them to value appropriate behavior, to WANT to behave appropriately. Instead, we manipulate them to act a certain way, which is great in the short run. But why are they behaving?... because we are filling a need! And this need, for social acceptance, for constant visual "stimulation", for entertainment, etc, is one that we all seem to agree has grown to unacceptable proportions and is something the student can not control even when the situation demands it. We need to focus in the long-run on changing that. If all we do is feed their unhealthy needs, we are enabling them; we are perpetuating an unacceptable set of behaviors. I would hope that 9th grade rooms have far more of the strategies being implemented than the 12th grade rooms. I fear however that we are NOT trying to get the kids to appreciate our desired behavior and adopt it as their own. I fear that we are simply getting them through each grade with the use of these classroom management tricks (points, tickets, rewards, etc), we are focused on content only, and the kid comes out of each grade more dependant on this stimulation than they were when they entered. If this happens, then what is the kid (and society) in for when the kid graduates? As a few others have pointed out on this blog, after graduation nobody is going to be giving them stars and stickers, ring bells, or constantly give them verbal reinforcement. But if we all adopt these strategies in high school, then this is exactly what the kid will demand and expect upon graduation. If we have effectively taught our content along the way, that's great. But a kids high school years are so much more than finding roots of quadratics, memorizing the periodic table, or writing an essay on a midsummer nights dream.
ReplyDeleteWe can partition a person's lifespan into three distinct time frames... first, in our very young years, society expects that our parents will assume primary responsibility for us, while in our older adult years, society expects that for each person, the buck stops here, meaning, each person is responsible for themselves and their own actions. There needs to be a transition period that falls in between these two stages, when we begin to teach our children to be adults. We instill values when they are very young, then at some point they need to enter the second phase, the transition phase, when we need to let them take those first steps of independence, fall down, make mistakes, and learn... and hopefully, by the time they become an adult, they will be able to function in society without a sense of entitlement. Where should this transition take place? Adolescence, thus the middle and high school years, is exactly where this transition should take place. And it appears that it is currently not taking place in today's society. The litigiousness of our society today is, I suspect, largely a byproduct of the sense of entitlement that many adults have. Many adults have this sense of entitlement because they did NOT go through that second transition phase. I think that producing responsible adults is the job of both parents and schools, and should be a higher priority for schools than teaching subject matter. So I am suspect of any strategies that emphasize teaching subject matter at the expense of growing up and becoming an adult. But, I have no better solution, so for my 4 weeks of student teaching, I'm going to go with what works.
I find the token reward system problematic. Not that I think the idea is bad, but just the sheer record keeping and keeping it fair for all is just one more thing that a teacher would need to come up with. Looking at all the reward systems that were presented, the raffle ticket idea would seem to be the easiest but again you would need to figure out the correct things you were trying to give incentives for. For example, after watching my cooperating teacher use a particular method of writing PEDMAS and making pizza slices while teaching the Order of Operations papers, I was absolutely amazed that very few students actually wrote the formula and wrote out the work in pizza slice format on the test. The teacher explained that like the CMT exam, they were only being graded on correct or incorrect answers on that particular test. But I wonder if I had a raffle ticket to give to students who had correctly written the formula and used the pizza slice format say four times on their paper, I bet I could have gotten more students to make pizza slices and upped the test scores. I’d use pencils or homework passes as a prize. So as a regular thing, I think a token system is problematic, but I can see certain ways to use it to provide incentives towards the desired behavior.
ReplyDeleteThe one strategy or concept I am struggling with being effective is honoring students by postings of their work or pictures associated with an award like student of the month. In my limited experience, most students do not want to be recognized as doing well in school as this has a negative connotation among peers. I have seen students in the classroom act negative in regards to academics but in meeting with the teacher individually are much more positive. The negative context of being a good student among peers will most likely be more prevalent in urban schools or in lower level classes and less likely in honors classes. It may be difficult to find work worthy of posting for students that are disinterested in academics and if you post inferior work this may embarrass them or cause them ridicule in front of peers. Posting of exceptional student work or posting a reward for academic excellence may have a negative effect on the student.
ReplyDeleteMy personality is such that I hand out compliments sparingly. Obviously that is not the method of positive reinforcement. I find the act of saying, “I like how Janet has her notebook out and has started the Do Now!” to be very phony. It simply does not feel genuine and therefore I feel I am not being honest to my personality or myself. So I’ve tried it this week. I take a deep breath when the students are doing their thing instead of the class’s activity; then I look around for something good to say. “I see Katherine has gotten a calculator and Gab got a book, both of which are Do Now steps. I like that! Thanks Katherine and Dave.” And at least half the room jumps from their chairs to get calculators and books. It’s so stupid. I feel like the host from Survivor, “And The Hero team has one stage done and is moving on to the next …” The real deal is that I believe in trying things even if they feel silly or idiotic. I have nothing to lose and everything to gain.
ReplyDeleteOne thing I disagree with is the tokens or rewards. As others have said this can be a cumbersome thing to coordinate both in how do we issue rewards and keeping track of them as well as what do they get as a reward, is this going to cost he teacher or the school? Also, in essence this is bribing them. My daughter has a student teacher in her 3rd grade class. She is excited about this because now she understands what I am doing. She asks me about when I will be student teaching and other questions related to a 3rd graders mind set. This is great though. But anyway, she said that the teacher gives them 5 elbow macaroni in a small plastic cup at the beginning of class. If they cooperate and behave and participate they get to keep the macaroni. If they dont behave, then one is taken away for each infraction. (as an aside, my daughter was horrified that one of the boys ate his uncooked pasta, I said boys will do that! They'll eate anything to get a girl's attention). At the end of class, everyone gets to dump their cups into a jar. At the end of the month, if the jar is full then the class gets a pizza party. They have been bribed to be good and to get the peers to try to get one another to behave so they can achieve the pizza party. Is this good? I don’t really know. I bribe my own kids. Is it right, probably not, but I do it because it works with them.
ReplyDeleteI think rewards can be good, but I haven’t figured out how they can be used in the classroom yet, and I don’t think I can use them in student teaching effectively until I get a grasp on this. But it couldn’t hurt to bribe the kids to be good when Iris comes to evaluate me. I’ll tell them to be the best students ever and ask a lot of good questions and act engaged. Then I will buy them pizza the next day. Do you think this will this work? I’m only kidding! It couldn’t work.
From core and methods sessions, I have understood that punitive methods are quite ineffective for classroom management. As a consequence, techniques such as time-out, in or out of school suspension, should normally be avoided. Most of the time, these methods promote a vicious cycle of punishment and misbehavior. My philosophy is that students should be kept in class by all means. Besides using punitive techniques, although may seem as temporary relief, make things worse when the student comes back. They help nobody and especially the perpetrator who needs the most of the help. As such they should only be used in severe cases. The teachers should be very careful not to take the easy way out and they should use these methods very responsibly.
ReplyDelete