Teacher Talk

Tomorrow - my twenty-ninth first day of school as a teacher.  Considering I took five years off, I started teaching thirty-three years ago.  Boy, a lot has changed!  My first year teaching we used paddling as a consequence.  Like I said, times have changed.

Today, the last "teacher work day" before students come tomorrow, I realized something that has not changed.  Teacher talk.  Teachers can spend literal hours talking about teaching.  Do we talk about your children?  Probably; it's our job to help them grow and learn.  We rejoice with them when we do so successfully, and get frustrated when we can't help them reach every goal.  More often, though, we just talk about "how to teach".

"How to teach" is our favorite topic of conversation.  There is no outline, no agenda, just laughter, curiosity, and soaking up knowledge.  What about when they can't hold their pencil?  Try a giant crayon.  How did you get them to write complete sentences?  I used the peers that had it down as the 'sentence police'.  What about the one that blew snot bubbles to get out of standing on the wall at recess?  Oh no, you'll have to be a teacher to hear how to solve that one!

In the space of one hour at lunch today, seven of us learned more about classroom management from each other than we did from the "professional" that lectured us for three hours straight last week.  Because everything we attend must be structured, outlined, documented...on and on with the adjectives, we are never just given meeting time to just sit around and talk.  

Here's a novel idea, school districts, state CEU agencies, instructional specialists, etc.; create a meeting and call it Peer Mentoring.  Have a sign-in sheet, a cold classroom (from what I've seen it's a necessity for these meetings), snacks, water, and just let the teachers be.  Let them talk.  Let the experienced ones tell how they do this and the novice ones tell how they do that.  Let a group of teachers use their experience and knowledge to build each other up.  Teacher talk.  The meeting of the future.

Effective Classroom Management Gone Bad 8/19/14

Back to school for teachers.  The meetings, the hugs, the surprise announcements of pregnancy and engagements.  The excitement/boredom combination that only that particular week can bring.  I've been to two days now, and something is disturbing me.  It's August 2014, and the town of Ferguson, MO is in such a state of unrest that it's affecting our nation.  The National Guard has helped out, and fifty-seven people were arrested last night.  They were protesting, throwing Molotov cocktails at and even shooting at police.  (The article stated that only four of those arrested lived in Ferguson, proving that people will go a distance to protest and cause harm.)  I am not taking a stand on the Michael Brown case. I feel so sorry for his family, just as I do for anyone that loses a family member.  I am commenting on the vaguely-named "protesters".  If you know me at all, you know that I am seriously anti-violence.  I have trouble with the idea of military and war at all, but this world makes forms of such an evil necessity.  I do know that a family lost somebody they loved and cared about, and rather than use the peaceful tools available, many of these "protesters" are causing more harm, injury and even death to try to.........what?

Yesterday, we played a game with our teacher handbook.  Various questions were asked, teachers had to locate the page number and answer, then run up front and ring a bell and see if their teams answer was correct.  Shorthand:  these are the issues that teachers don't do well on, let's pound them in your head with a game.  I stopped participating when something on page 14 caught my eye.  Under "Principles of Effective Classroom Management" it stated:  "Discipline students in private.  Do not redirect or reprimand in front of the other students."

I am at a loss for words.  I don't know if I can keep teaching.  I can't ask some boys and girls in my classroom "Please stop talking."" "Please don't touch her" "Put your rhythm sticks away, you broke the rules."?  I know there are many other ways, but sometimes a polite direct request works the little miracle we need at the time.  I teach between forty and fifty-five students at a time.  Alone.  Do I have to step out in the hallway with a student that is not allowing me to teach due to misbehavior?  Who watches the others?

Today, we had a presentation on classroom management.  The presenter was all about being positive.  Before I go any further, I have to say that I pride myself on being positive with children, and encouraging them constantly by praising good behavior.  The presenter this morning claimed that she only ever does that, and the worst children that are having a "bad day" are brought around by her praise.  Going into my twenty-fifth year, I can agree with that technique, but only for about 75% of the time.  There are some individuals, small as they may be, that (due to whatever life has dealt them) don't care, don't listen to the praise, abuse the privilege of being treated nicely and even cause a violent happening to a fellow student or myself.

I think there are grown-ups that don't care to obey the law today because the authorities in their young lives let them see by example that they would be rewarded if they chose to do wrong.  Should the authorities in Ferguson need to take one protester at a time to a side street and have a talk with them?  That's what education in America has led them to expect.  I'm glad I only have a few years left, and I hope I didn't scar any of the little darlings that I've corrected in class over the last twenty-five years.

Where My Brain Goes During Staff Development 1/11/14

It is the bane (or blessing, if you choose) of any teacher's existence:  having to sit through hours of staff development.  Usually occurring at the beginning of the year, prior to students returning from holidays, or on the odd Monday holiday - students off, staff in session, teachers sit for hours to be what; taught new methods?  inspired to change everything they do? be told we're valuable no matter what the world thinks?  If you assume that I've met my quota of staff development hours every year I've taught, then at the end of this year, I've sat through 575 hours of these lovely meetings.  How am I not perfect yet?  Besides the fact that nobody is perfect, the other answer is that over a span of thirty years, the exact same ideas are being implemented, but they are packaged with different wording.  If I say the words from twenty years ago to praise or remind, I'm not doing it right anymore. Same ideas, different words.  I recently sat through a day of listening to a speaker that was guaranteed (by our administration) to be wonderful!!!  You will learn so much! Be excited!  Let me bring out my inner Yoda as I say - "Exciting to me, meetings are not."  I decided to bring a pen and let my thoughts flow onto paper to keep myself looking engaged.  Here's a little view of where my brain went from 8:30 a..m. to 11:30 a.m., with one twenty minute break:

Go ahead, inspire me.  Try to tell me something that I haven't heard.  The first try - telling me I'm older, smarter and I have skills.  As I've said many times before, 'There's your "duh" for the day.'  Keep trying.  Next, you tell me to put my phone out of sight (not a bad thing) because every time it goes off, some chemicals are released in my brain.  Yeah, chemicals are released for me every time I smell the pizza from the cafeteria next door, too.  That's life.  So, you got our phones put away.  Now you go over the handout.  Thank you so much for telling me what is contained in the papers that I'm holding in my hand  Oh good, a new power point slide!  Please read it out loud to me because I'm a teacher and reading is hard.  Also, I do not agree with the quote.  From famed teacher and child psychologist Haim Ginott, it reads:

“I’ve come to a frightening conclusion that I am the decisive element in the classroom. It’s my personal approach that creates the climate. It’s my daily mood that makes the weather. As a teacher, I possess a tremendous power to make a child’s life miserable or joyous. I can be a tool of torture or an instrument of inspiration. I can humiliate or heal. In all situations, it is my response that decides whether a crisis will be escalated or de-escalated and a child humanized or dehumanized.” 
― Haim G. Ginott

I do agree with most of that, but not the crisis escalating part.  I have personally seen situations escalate even when I'm at my personal best.  Dr. Ginott's observations are from the 1950s through the 1970s.  We need to keep the valuable and do away with what has changed with time.

Oooh!  Time to take notes! No, not really, just time to read the note-taking paper to me.  Once again, I guess I can't read.  More of the comedy routine (this is a fairly entertaining speaker, as they go...)about how tired teachers get, and how they go to happy hour together.

Finally!  We take notes about how our classroom looks.  And then about behaviors - we are supposed to tell them (the children) in all our gestures and behaviors that we want them here, we believe they can learn and we'll keep them as safe as possible.  (Good points, I've heard and used them for 23 years.)   Comedy moments were demonstrated concerning how our behavior is communication. (Example - a teacher yelling "What have I told you about yelling?"  haha)

Next we're asked "Do you get mad?"  Discussion (one sided) of what we do when we're mad.  All leading up to the point that we do not choose to sit in time out when we're mad.  So here we are, being told that we are doing it all wrong.  Don't say "don't hit".  Tell a kid that flips everyone off to do it in their pocket.  I don't know if I think that's ridiculous or I'm jealous because I didn't think of it.

We are told to ask ourselves:  "Can I be a perfect role model 100% of the time?"  We are told to remove "appropriate" and "inappropriate" from our disciplinary vocabulary.  Easier said than done.  A little contradiction is going on here. we can set a "parameter" and validate that a child has the urge to [hit, fight, curse, cheat....] and re-iterate the parameter for school.  But when you set parameters at school, isn't that because the action is not appropriate? Does simply changing "inappropriate" to "not ok" change the brain chemical?

So much of what this presenter is saying is the same thing I've been taught - on the job - for years.  And I personally use a lot of these techniques - maybe even in a very excellent, exemplary way.  Many teachers at my school do all these things well.

For the past 2.5 hours, this is what's been said.  It boils down to frame of mind.  She is saying "I did not say there are no consequences".  But she only gave examples of non-working consequences.  She didn't give concrete, usable examples of what to do once it's a necessity.  Consequences are seriously downplayed in the district, though, so that's probably a grand scheme.

Lunch is in six minutes and all I can think about is the pain in the bones of my rear end, as I've been sitting on a 12-inch diameter plastic disc for four hours.  And while I sit here contemplating whether this pain in my rear (literal, this time...) affects my bursitis, the speaker is making some of her most hard-hitting, serious, dynamic points and I'm not hearing a word.  Money well-spent, district?


Thus ends my free-write from my day of learning.  The afternoon session was another three hours of the same thing. My hand wouldn't write anymore.  But you know what?  The next day, students walked into my room.  I let them know that I was happy they were there, that I believed they could learn and that they were in a safe place.  I didn't do that because of the speaker. I did that because I love kids, I love teaching my subject to kids and I naturally adjust to the atmosphere and the basic needs of those kids to get them to learn and love music.