Month: May 2019

Teaching School-Appropriate Behavior

When we work with children who use a dialect of English or who have a different home language, we teach those children to “code-switch”, changing from speaking in one’s home language in some circumstances and switching to another language in other circumstances.  We do not penalize the child.  We teach him/her when each language is appropriate.

The same principle is true for behavior.

Children come to school with many ideas about what is the best way to behave.  What is okay at Mindy’s house may be not okay at Henry’s house.  When these children do things that are not appropriate for school, we can blame the parents and deplore the behavior, or we can plan how to teach children what is acceptable at school.

When I was a principal, an eight year old boy was sent to my office.  I was on the phone, but he stormed in and threw himself into the visitor’s chair.  He began talking before I finished my phone conversation.  When I hung up, I interrupted him and said, “Charlie, I am going to show you the school way to come to my office.”  I showed him how to knock on the door frame and to wait until I said, “Come in.”  Then I had him practice doing that.  At first I stood by him and praised what he did right and then corrected any mistakes.  When he had that down pretty well, I sat at my desk and had him try the behavior on his own.  We high fived when he got it right.  Only then did I ask him why he was sent to the office.

The school counselor watched this with her mouth hanging open.  Later she told me that most of the teachers had given up on Charlie, believing he would never behave in the way they expected. 

Charlie was sent to the office many times during that school year, but he never forgot how to ask permission to come into the office.

I offer this story to show that kids can be taught exactly what to do in “the school way”.  Phrasing it in these terms takes away the idea that what children do at home is wrong and what we do at school is right.  That just makes children confused and parents alienated from the school system.  Instead we need to say It is just a different way to behave in a certain situation.  In other words, we are teaching the children to “code-switch” between a place where X behavior is appropriate and a place where Y behavior is expected.

It is difficult to do this at the end of the school year, but we can plan to teach children to code-switch their behavior at the beginning of the next school year.  Here is what to do:

  1. Make a list of the behaviors children seemed to have difficulty with in previous years and what you would rather the children do.
  2. Prioritize the list.  What behaviors are the most important ones?  By prioritizing your list, you will know what behavior procedures you need to teach in the first few days of school and which can be taught later on.
  3. Decide when to teach the behavior.  Something that is of paramount importance to you might need to be taught before you begin the process of handing out books or other beginning of the school year activities. 
  4. Decide how to teach the behavior.  If you can teach the behavior in the context of a subject area lesson, more power to you! 
    1. Explain the behavior.
    1. Model the behavior.  You may choose to first model a non-example.  If you do, model the expected behavior, then the non-example, then the expected behavior again.
    1. Have students practice the behavior.
    1. Reinforce verbally.
    1. Repeat steps A-D as needed.
  5. Remember to re-teach the expected behaviors regularly during the first couple of weeks.  Plan to remind students of the expected behavior after a long weekend or a school holiday.

Teaching children to code-switch their behavior between “home behavior” and “school behavior” saves wear and tear on our nerves.  The time we spend on teaching those behaviors up-front saves our stress level as the year goes on.  In addition, it helps kids understand what to do in a given situation at school instead of just telling them they are wrong.  Learning to “code-switch” behavior is a life skill worth cultivating.

Planning Ahead

The end of the school year is close at hand.  Teachers are trying to stay smiling while many feel they are at their wit’s end.  I don’t need to enumerate these end-of-the year stresses. 

Many teachers, on top of everything else, are already planning next year, thinking about what they can do differently.

Here are four things you can do now to plan for a better 2019-2020 school year:

  1. Plan how you will take care of yourself.  When the teacher takes the time to take care of herself, students as well as the teacher benefit.  Self-care could include better nutrition, regular exercise, and getting a full eight hours of sleep.  I know I used to think I simply did not have time to plan better meals, walk for a half hour, and try to get more sleep.  It always seemed like everything I did ate up any time I might use to cook, exercise or sleep.  What I discovered was that if I worked out for a half hour, I was more likely to sleep better, I was more likely to think about preparing veggies instead of loading up on carbs, and I had more energy to tackle whatever else needed to be done.  Really. 

    How can you force yourself to do these things?  I recently worked with a college student who was taking a class on how to be a personal trainer.  I showed up every day we were scheduled to meet, even though I frequently grumbled all the way there.  Why?  Because the student’s grade that was dependent, in part, on my showing up.  The lesson I learned:  find someone to whom you feel you are accountable.  This could be friend, a colleague, a spouse.  Schedule your time to meet to work on self-care.

    Use the summer to get into the habit so that it is easier to do when school starts up again.
  • Consider what procedures worked this year, which ones could be improved upon, and any procedures that might make your life easier in the fall.  Remember, procedures are the bedrock of managing a classroom.  Rules do not manage students and students often see rules as a dare.  They test us for days and weeks to see if they can get a consistent answer about whether or not we are serious about them.  In part, it is for that reason that I would rather teach in a school that had no rules and lots of procedures than in a school with a lot of rules and no procedures.

    It is all right to have procedures that benefit the teacher!  My students would tear pages out of spiral notebooks to turn in.  The “fringe” on the pages seemed to lock together irritating me no end.  The solution was to teach a new procedure.  I put a pair of scissors on a string next to a waste basket.  I showed the students how to cut down the “eye” of the spiral fringes, holding the papers over the waste basket to catch the resulting confetti.  Problem solved! 

    Think about what procedures might make your life easier in the classroom next year.
  • Think about ways to keep your enthusiasm for teaching alive and well.  If we are enthusiastic about teaching, that enthusiasm shows.  Students know which teachers are passionate about teaching, not just about the subject.  That passion is contagious.  The students catch it and our colleagues do, too.

    I always found that taking a class, whether or not it was for credit, and reading the required books or articles kept me on my toes.  Even when I didn’t take an actual class, joining others to talk about books, articles, videos, etc., helped me think of ways to keep my instructional craft fresh.   Lately I am apt to turn to social media to help me remember why I went into teaching in the first place.
  • Contemplate how you will find compassion for THAT student.  You know you will have someone in class that will fall into being THAT student.  It is inevitable.  Yet when we start thinking THAT student is purposely out to get us, or that s/he can’t learn or can’t behave, we begin treating him/her differently.  We don’t mean to, but we do. 

    I have used the “Ten good things about ___” strategy taught to me by another behavior disorders teacher.  That is, when I find myself thinking negative thoughts about THAT student, I sit down and try to list ten positive things about him/her.  If I can’t think of ten things, and I frequently can’t, I set myself the task of looking for positive things about him/her to round out my list.  Looking for good things, especially if I am planning on sharing that information with THAT student’s parent(s) helps me focus away from the negative.  I almost always find THAT student does something that I find amusing or endearing, some little thing I would not have noticed if I didn’t look at him/her with that in mind.

    What can you do to be more mindful of what is good, or interesting, or worthwhile about THAT student?  What can you do to view his/her behavior as clues to how to help him/her?  Planning strategies to look for ways to like THAT student can actually help you treat THAT student in ways that defuse his/her more irritating behavior.

Teaching is a far more difficult job than most people realize until they actually are teaching.  Planning now for a better next year can help smooth over some of the inevitable rough spots so we can focus more on the joy than the day-to-day difficulties we are sure to encounter.

Apology

This past Monday I had surgery to repair a torn rotator cuff.
As of this writing, I have eleven more day in this sling, then four weeks of physical therapy. I am only able to write with one hand. I apologize for not writing a blog post. I will be back at it when I can use both hand again. You can see posts I share from other writers on my Facebook page, Roe’s Rules.