I have been silent in the blog-o-sphere for quite some time. It isn’t that I don’t have anything to say. It is just that I don’t know how I can possibly express how much I wish I had a magic wand to wave and make all of the stress and difficulties go away during the horrible challenges of 2020! Sadly my magic wand is broken.
I have considered what I can offer educators today while they try to figure out how to teach online when they’ve never been trained to do so, and while they try to teach face-to-face all the while coping with the additional cleaning, reminders about keeping masks on, and all of the schemes school districts have come up with the try to limit the spread of the virus. And if you are in a district that is combining face-to-face with virtual teaching, you have all of the problems of both, plus trying to balance it all without losing your mind!
Here are my top five suggestions.
Procedures and routines are more important than ever. When we teach face-to-face, most educators teach students “how we do things in this classroom”. These things might include how to ask to use the restroom, when to sharpen a pencil, how to line up, what to do when a visitor enters the room, how to show you are paying attention, or where to put finished work.
It is not so much different in a virtual classroom. We have to teach students how to mute, how to unmute, how to submit assignments, how and when to email the teacher, etc.
Don’t assume students know how to navigate the digital world. We tend to think that students today are able to navigate the digital world almost effortlessly. Sadly, this is often not true.
Yes, we see students using their phones to check snapchat, post on tik-tok, or Instagram, but knowing how to do that does not mean they know how to do things in a digital classroom.
Even at the college level I had many students who did not know what I had assumed everyone knew. (Yes, I know I should never assume!) I’ve had to teach students how to change margins or fonts in Word, how to navigate student management programs (like Moodle or Blackboard), how to submit assignments, how to take an online quiz, etc. I even had to have an informal lesson on how to use the calendar on students’ phones to set up due dates, appointments, and to-do lists!
It is not so different with K-12 students!
Just as you are learning how to teach virtually, students must be taught how to learn virtually.
Remember: s/he who does the most work does the most learning.
We educators tend to work ourselves to death trying to create perfect lessons. I have to raise my hand and include myself in that number. Just like you, I often forget to have the students do most of the work.
Let’s take a lesson on science vocabulary words.
Choice 1: I create a series of slides to show students with the words, the written definition, and a photo that illustrates what the word means. I’ve included animations that are designed to capture students’ interest and motivate them to learn. I’ve researched and found online quiz sites students can use on their own time to practice the vocabulary.
Choice 2: I give the students a list of the words they need to know for the upcoming lessons. I can have the students work in pairs or singly. I can have the students write their own definition of what the word means – no copying the definition! – then use the word in a sentence, and find a photo or drawing. I can include having the students find helpful articles, quiz sites, etc., that can help them remember the vocabulary. While the students are doing these tasks, I can monitor the students’ work. When the students are done, I can call on various students to share their work. Later, I can use some of the students’ work in a practice quiz to reinforce the lesson and help students with retrieving the information. (If you are not familiar with retrieval practice I highly recommend that you explore this website: https://www.retrievalpractice.org/ )
Choice 3: I pair students up to lean about one or two of the vocabulary words. They must research the words and do the following: prepare to teach students what the words mean without parroting the definition found in the glossary, use an illustration to show the class what the word means, and come up with a unique way of remembering the words and what they mean. I can use the illustrations and definitions in practice quizzes, and I can ask other students to explain how the presenters’ memory device can help them retrieve the information.
Let’s face it: choice 1 puts the whole thing on the teacher. No wonder we are exhausted!
Choice 2 is similar to a lesson one might use in any face-to-face classroom. It begins to shift the lesson from the teacher doing all of the work to the students doing more work.
Choice 3 puts almost all of the work on the students. The teacher creates the framework for the students to do the learning, helps build excitement about learning, and provides coaching as needed. Choice 3 is more student centered and less teacher centered. (For more about student-centered learning see Edutopia’s articles and videos about student center learning. Here is one to get you started: https://www.edutopia.org/blog/student-centered-learning-starts-with-teacher-john-mccarthy )
Of course, choice 3 requires the teacher to teach students how to write their own definition, how to find meaningful illustrations, how to create a mnemonic, and how to make a presentation.
We can think of all of those things are types of procedures. In reality, those procedures ultimately teach students how to learn.
I know I used to think that someone else taught students how to learn. I’ve taught third and fifth grade, middle school and high school, and for a long time I did not teach students how to learn. That, I think, is a misunderstanding many of us educators have: someone somewhere else has taught kids how to go about learning. If you, like me, have not considered teaching students how to learn, you might pick up some interesting ideas here: https://www.cultofpedagogy.com/do-something/
Reach out to colleagues. You are not alone in trying to navigate virtual learning, or even a combination of virtual and face-to-face learning. Your colleagues are going through this, too.
If you are stumped on something, odds are someone else is as stumped as you are. Work together to find a solution. Ask if someone else has figured it out. If you have an idea that has seemed to work well, share it.
Many U.S. teachers seem to be worried or nervous about working with other educators to plan lessons or to improve their teaching skills. This is not so true in other countries.
I don’t think this is teachers’ fault! In fact, most of our schools are set up in ways that discourage teacher collaboration. We work within four walls, the only adult surrounded by students. We rarely get an opportunity to sound out other educators on the topic of teaching and teaching well. This means we are constantly re-inventing the wheel.
John Hattie, the educational researcher, has said that teacher collective efficacy is the most important factor in student achievement. In other words, teachers must share the belief that all students can learn, and work with each other to achieve that end. (Here is more information on this: https://visible-learning.org/2018/03/collective-teacher-efficacy-hattie/ )
Take care of yourself! I do not have to tell you that teachers are stressed right now. In fact, you probably just reacted with, “Ya think?” or “Duh!”
Between a global pandemic, having to learn new ways to teach, district expectations, etc., etc., etc. It is a whole lot like being tossed into the deep end of the pool while chained to a cement block and having people who are not in the water holler at you, “Just swim!” No one seems to get it that you are barely able to get your nose out of the water, let alone swim.
You are important!
When that kind of stress happens, in any situation, we tend to neglect the very things that help us manage best: taking care of ourselves.
Yes, I know it seems like we need 36 hours in the day to get it all done. But when we are so overwhelmingly stressed we need to take care of ourselves first!
So try to eat to get those necessary nutrients, drink lots of water, do some physical exercise, and try to get eight hours of sleep.
You are no good to yourself, your family, or the students if you do not take care of yourself.
Yes, this is easier said than done. However we can refer to point 4 on this one, too. Reach out to colleagues to find a partner that will nag you about taking care of yourself, and in turn, you nag them. There is power in helping others help you to think about self-care.
Above all, try to remember why you decided to become a teacher. Think of your purpose beyond liking children or being in love with your subject.
I will tell you why I think you are worth all of the above: you are doing the most important work in the world. It is through you that our society’s future, and our world’s future is shaped. It is through you that future generations will be able to think, to innovate, and to influence the course of humanity!
Have you started checking out Pinterest for ideas on how to
decorate your classroom this year?
We all want a good looking classroom. I know. Really, I do! However, I’m going to suggest something that might make you feel a bit anxious: don’t sweat it!
Seriously, think about how you feel when you spend lots of
time and energy and, yes, money on having the best decorated classroom. Now think about how you feel if the students
mess it up, or, worse, ruin something.
Pretty awful, isn’t it?
Think about why kids may not show appreciation for all the
hours you’ve spent on having a lovely classroom. I often hear teachers blaming parents or
children who “have no respect”. I’d like
to suggest another reason: Students don’t
necessarily value the time you’ve spent on décor, because you have spent the
time on décor.
Let me put that in terms of another of Roe’s Rules: the person(s) who put the most work into the
room, have the most appreciation for that work.
It used to infuriate me when kids would mark up a lovely poster
I put by the pencil sharpener, or when they would ignore a beautifully composed
bulletin board. One day I thought, to
heck with it (using a more adult idiom), I’m just going to let the kids do
it. I was busy, after all, planning
lessons, taking a class, and being a single mom.
I took down that lovely bulletin board and left it
blank. When the students completed some
work, I had the students put some of it up.
I didn’t spend time making a brilliant anchor chart, we completed one together, and we put it
up.
Soon we had a room “decorated” with the work the students
had done, and anchor charts cataloging the skills we were learning. And before long, I noticed my stress level
had gone down a bit. I wasn’t constantly
feeling under-appreciated.
That’s all well and good, but let’s face it, there are a lot of pressures on teachers to have a well-decorated room. We also know that those pressures can lead to stress and burn-out! So what can we do about it?
Let’s look at some of the pressures we put on ourselves regarding room decor and what we can do about it.
What will parents
think of me? If your school has a back-to-school night, you might worry that parents
seeing a bare room will think less of you.
Here are some ideas on how to cope with that.
Have a well-organized room and label where
everything is.
On the bulletin board, put a sign that says “watch
this space for how we are learning”, or something similar.
Put up a display of things the students did last
year – photos of the room or of children working (blot out faces) – with a note
about how “we learned so much last year!” or “Some of the wonderful things we
look forward to learning.”
Students will worry
that I won’t be any fun! One of the best ideas for the first day of school, besides teaching
procedures, is to show students what they will be doing and learning this
year. Make it seem like the very best
movie trailers, or make it a show of “coming attractions”. Your attitude and enthusiasm will show them
that they have nothing to worry about.
What will other
teachers think of me? Let’s face it: teachers can help
other teachers have unrealistic ideas on what they should do. They can be a serious source of peer
pressure! Stand firm and say something
like:
I am so excited about showcasing the students’ work this year!
I decided to take one bit of stress off my plate.
I want to make it our classroom this year.
Wow, your room looks terrific! You must have spent a lot of your summer planning lessons. I guess I was not that organized.
I’m spending my time now planning really terrific units.
The principal will
look sideways at me! Explain to the principal:
Students have not been as appreciative of your decorating efforts in the past and it led you to feel a bit of resentment for them.
You want to have a truly student-centered classroom this year and having the students help with the décor is the first step.
You want a pleasant room, yes, and you want to spend more time planning really effective lessons this year.
Stress leads to burn-out and burn-out leads to a whole lot of awful things that happen to our bodies and our souls. Quitting teaching is the least of it! We can remove some of those stressors!
Remember, effective teachers do not spend their time making the classroom look like it should appear on the cover of Better Schools and Classrooms, even if there was such a publication. Effective teachers plan for effective classroom management and effective instruction.
And to be the most effective, we have to set some of those stressors aside!
The Fourth of July always seems to mark when I start
thinking about school again. I take a
walk and see an unusual stone and pick it up for the classroom. A friend starts to throw out something and I
snag it thinking I can use it for this or that.
I’m sure you have had similar experiences.
It is also time when we start thinking about the students we
will have in the coming year. We look
forward to getting to know new students to the grade. As pleasant as that can be, we worry a bit
about THAT student, the one we’ve heard so much about, or have had in class
before. Thinking about THAT student can
tie our stomachs in knots.
The teachers I know report that the number of challenging
students has changed, and the kind of behavior these students demonstrate has
become more violent.
Articles about the nation’s schools seem to indicate that
the number of students with behavior problems has not actually increased, but
that the intensity of their behavior has.
What can teachers do now to have a better 2019-2020 school year?
The first step to find a way to make ourselves think about
THAT student’s behavior in a different way.
Every time a student acts out, she is sending a message. We must think like detectives to decode the
message. We cannot just conclude the
behavior stems from some fundamental core of “bad child”.
The fact is that less than 1% of the whole population can be
considered psychopaths, people who do not have that little voice inside their
heads telling them what they are doing is right or wrong, people who can be
considered “bad” in their souls. This
means that the student who throws a temper tantrum, who swears at the teacher,
who flinches when someone comes near them, or who seems to over-react to the
simplest thing is not bad. They are not
trying to get on your last nerve. They
are sending you a message.
This is where we have to start looking at patterns.
Some are easier to see than others. The child who has to use the bathroom the minute the class is supposed to work on math is likely trying to avoid math.
Other patterns are a bit more difficult to decipher.
There is much being written lately about the effects of
childhood trauma or exposure to trauma.
These students may have short tempers, meltdown easily, or be unable to
switch smoothly from one task to another.
Children who experience trauma have classroom difficulties
in five main areas: forming bonds with others,
hypervigilance, negative thinking, issues with self-regulation, and with
executive function.
Forming bonds with others Clues we can expect to see are:
Being wary of adults
Suspecting adults have an ulterior motive for being nice to them
Not knowing how to make friends with other children
Being “clingy” with children and/or adults
Hypervigilance Hypervigilance is defined as being extremely alert for possible danger. Children who are hypervigilant may give these clues:
Flinching when someone comes too close
Requiring more personal space than other
children
Positioning himself on the edge of a group
Jumping or startling in situations that do not
seem to require that reaction
Consistently expressing that this child or that
is out to “get” her
Negative Thinking Negative thinking is, in essence, seeing the world as a glass half-empty. They have been led to believe they are “bad kids” and bad kids just don’t do well in school, or in life. Clues about negative thinking may be:
Figuring that adults or children are thinking poorly about them
Being a perfectionist, or giving up because he cannot understand something or do something quickly enough.
Believing the teacher’s behavior towards them has negative intent. For example, the teacher says, “Sit down,” but the child hears the teacher as if he has hollered the same words.
They melt-down or over-react to making mistakes. They may attempt to hide those mistakes or say the assignment is stupid and not worth the effort.
Self-regulation Self-regulation is the ability to wait to have one’s needs met. It can also be the ability to calm one’s self when one is feeling “big emotions”. Clues to watch for include:
Attention-seeking behavior
Negative behavior that happens when the teacher’s
attention is focused on another student.
Negative behavior that happens when a peer’s
attention is focused on someone else.
Being easily angered, easily frustrated, easily
reduced to tears
Having to be first, first in line, first to be
called on, first to be noticed.
Issues with executive function “Executive function” is a bit like the role of a company’s CEO. She is the one that plans, organizes, and choses the company’s direction. Our brain’s executive function includes our ability plan, organize, pay attention, switch from on task to another, and makes choices about what to do now and what to do later. Clues that a student has difficulty with executive function include
Difficulties with organizing his desk, his
locker, his backpack
Appearing to fiddle around with things instead
of getting right to work
Appearing angry, overwhelmed, or lost when it is
time to transition from this task to another
Confusion about what to do first, second, next
Taking forever to complete a task
Giving up easily
Seeming to lose papers, pencils, books, and not
being able to locate them even when they are in plain sight
Students’ behavior tells us things about what is going on inside their immature brains. Situations that would not test an adult’s ability to function are already challenging to children. (Remember, the brain does not really reach maturity until it is 25 plus years old!) Those students who have experienced trauma find getting though the school day to be even more difficult than their peers do. Their behavior may seem naughty, irresponsible, or downright mean, but it is really the child telling us she is having difficulties in the only ways she knows how.
Teachers can do some things that other professionals cannot do as easily. They can try to teach students a different set of behaviors. They can demonstrate that adults can be trustworthy and positive role models. They can show kids they find something endearing about them even if they do not like all of the child’s behaviors.
Now is the time to think about THAT student’s behavior. Try thinking about the things THAT student does as messages, rather than malicious.
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:
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.
I am taking a little break from writing about good rules and
poor rules to address a concern I’ve heard frequently over the past several months. What I’ve heard over and over again is people
saying that the solution for chaotic schools is to get rid of those students who
are disruptive so teachers can work with the students “who want to learn.” These comments have come from those in education,
and those outside of education.
I want to start by saying that I can hear the frustration in
the voices of those who express these ideas.
The teachers who say it are stressed and often bewildered by what is happening. People outside of education are often saying this
because it angers them that their loved ones have such a poor work environment,
or are expressing nostalgia for the “good old days” when allegedly students behaved
in school.
No matter what age one lived in, there have always been disruptive
students in the schools. Yes, we did deal
with those students differently in the past.
They were often urged to drop out of school, even as young as in elementary
school. Their absence did make schools more
peaceful, but at what cost?
In my grandparents, or even my parents time, it was possible
for a person to be functionally illiterate and to still make a decent living for
themselves and for their families. There
were factory jobs or manual labor jobs where one did not need to read, write, or
do math at all, or not at a very high level.
That has changed dramatically in the second half of the 20th century
and even more so in the first decade of the 21st.
(Bridgeland, Dilulio, & Morison, 2006)
Using figures from a PBS article describing an episode of Frontline called Dropout Nation from 2012, we
can see that even six years ago, the cost of dropping out of school is expensive,
not just to the drop out but to society as well.
The average dropout can expect to earn an annual
income of $20,241. . . That’s a full $10,386 less than the typical high school graduate,
and $36,424 less than someone with a bachelor’s degree.
While the national unemployment rate stood at 8.1 percent in August [of 2012], joblessness among
those without a high school degree measured 12 percent. Among college graduates,
it was 4.1 percent.
According to the Department of Education.
Dropouts experienced a poverty rate of 30.8 percent, while those with at least a
bachelor’s degree had a poverty rate of 13.5 percent.
Among dropouts between the ages of 16 and 24, incarceration
rates were a whopping 63 times higher than among college graduates, according to
a study by researchers at Northeastern University
When compared to the typical high school graduate
— a dropout will end up costing taxpayers an average of $292,000 over a lifetime
due to the price tag associated with incarceration and other factors such as how
much less they pay in taxes. (Breslow, 2012)
These are dismal
figures. Worse, additional research
shows that this “by the numbers” snapshot is getting darker, not better.
Confusing matters
further, each state has set their own age where a student may drop out of
school legally.
States vary in when they say a student can drop out of school legally.
Age for drop out varies.
This figure is in the individual states’ hands. Most have set the legal age at 16. However, fifteen states and the District of
Columbia set the legal drop out age at 18.
Nine have set it at 17. As of
2011, six states, including Iowa were debating raising the minimum dropout age
to 18. In other words, 38 states plus
the District of Columbia have or are considering raising the age when a student
can legally leave school. (K12 Academics, 2011)
The National Education Association, the nation’s largest
teachers’ union, advocates for raising the legal dropout age to 21. Why?
The NEA cites much of the above information and adds that a study done
at MIT shows that more than a quarter of the students considering dropping out
of school stay in because of compulsory attendance laws. (National Education Association, 2012)
So we see that there is a high cost to the student and to
society when young people drop out of school.
But that leads us to the next strand of this issue: what is the connection between using
in-school suspension, out-of-school suspensions and expulsions and dropping
out?
First we have to look at suspension and expulsion, why
schools do and don’t use it.
In the aftermath of mass school shootings in the 1990s, new
policies were put in place at the federal, state, and local levels regarding
students bring guns or other weapons to school, and how we handled violent
students. These policies came to be
called “zero tolerance” policies because any student who brought weapons to
school or who were too violent were expected to be taken out of the school – we
were to have no or zero tolerance for such behavior.
I was a school principal when “zero tolerance” became the
buzzword in conversations about school discipline. In districts all around mine and across the
country, students were being suspended for “offenses” as small as bring a knife
in their lunch box to cut up an apple, making their fingers into “guns” and
having imaginary gun battles, and bringing their grandfather’s pocket knife to
show and tell. I believed that such a
strict interpretation of the zero tolerance policies was absurd and I refused
to suspend the kindergartener who brought that pocket knife to school, although
I did keep it in my desk until his parents could come get it. I was much more concerned with the intent
behind the behavior than actually bringing the item to school or playing “cops
and robbers”. At that time, I often
declared that if someone wanted to take me to court over it, I figured no judge
would condemn me. I still stand by that
position.
Yet many did not and school suspensions and expulsions rose
dramatically. However, during the Obama
administration, states and schools were sent a policy memo asking for a more
moderate interpretation of the policy requirements. Sadly, after the Parkland shooting, federal
level law makers have called for a return to the literal interpretation of “zero
tolerance” and for increasingly punitive responses to student behaviors.
We have had two decades to study the results of those zero
tolerance policies and to see if they do indeed work. The short answer is “No, they do not work.” Why?
A synthesis of a number of studies shows that schools that
have high suspension rates demonstrate low academic performance rates for the
school. These performance rates are
those measured by whatever academic assessment has been required by the
state. Additionally, studies of student
attitudes show that schools that have a high number of suspensions have
students and families who believe the school to be punitive instead of trying
to help students and their families. The
students in the studies often cited the reason for a suspended student’s
behavior as being rooted in institutional oppression based on race, creed,
socioeconomic condition, ethnicity, or sexual orientation. These observations made the students less
likely to view the school, its teachers and administrators as sympathetic to
the needs of young people, and more likely to be unfair and arbitrary. (Black, 2018)
In other words, the greater the number of suspensions and
expulsions in a school, the more poorly the school did academically and in the
perceptions of the students and their families.
(Maxwell, 2013)
Further, there is a direct correlation between suspension
and the so-called school to prison pipeline.
In an article about the reasons why school punishments do not work,
Marie Amaro cites an Australian study that found “students were 4.5 times more likely to
engage in criminal activity when they were suspended” than when they were simply
truant. She further asks, “Jails are
full of people who do not respond to the threat of incarceration so why do we
think that loss of recess or suspension will change a student’s behaviour?” (Amaro)
To be absolutely fair in this discussion, I must report that I was not the only administrator who disliked the zero tolerance policies and who did not always follow them. However, often the reasons why school leaders did not follow them had to do with another punitive piece of legislation: the 2000 iteration of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. The ESEA has been around for nearly 60 years, and is renewed approximately every 10 years. Each time it is revised, it is given a new name: Goals 2000, Every Student Succeeds Act, or, in 2000, No Child Left Behind (NCLB). The ESEA is currently called Every Student Succeeds Act and does away with many of the NCLB regulations — therefore, those who lay the blame for the problems in education on NCLB may need to look at the ESSA more closely.
NCLB was the first time that there were punitive measures
against schools and districts that did not show “adequate yearly progress” in
academic achievement, or in school behavior issues. Under NCLB, schools that were deemed “persistently
unsafe” were sanctioned in progressively harsher ways. As a result, many school superintendents directed
administrators to under-report acts of school violence, and to deal with, for
example, fist-fights, without resorting to out-of-school suspensions.
This institutional dishonesty resulted in some very
interesting efforts to encourage young people to avoid violent behavior. In one school district near the one where I
worked, the middle school principal would fly a special flag outside of the
school building on days when there were no fights. Other schools adopted school-wide reward
programs such as point and level systems that gave students rewards such as
weekly movie afternoons if the student had earned enough points to be
considered at the highest level of positive behavior.
Many schools seemed to jump onto the positive rewards
bandwagon in an effort to encourage positive behavior. We saw systems like “catch them being good”
in which adults would give a tangible reward to students who did something
positive. We saw “Character Counts”
programs in which students were expected to demonstrate one of the six pillars
of ethical behavior, and in which students who did demonstrate those behaviors
were given a tangible reward of some kind.
The common theme of these programs was to give students tangible
rewards if they followed the rules and who were recognized by teachers and
staff as “behaving”.
I can almost hear readers saying, “What’s wrong with
that? That’s the opposite of punishing
misbehavior, isn’t it?”
Well, yes, and no.
Yes, giving tangible rewards like movies, or extra recess,
or special privileges, candy, treats, tickets, or whatever, is the opposite of
punitive measures that seek to punish those who do not “behave”. But the reality is that these programs do not
work either.
We have known since the 1970s at least that giving a person
a tangible reward actually decreases their enjoyment of that activity. Daniel Pink, in his book Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us, summarizes
these studies from an economics perspective.
(I highly recommend listening to or watching Pink’s TED Talk.) But Pink is not the first person to call for
end to “stickering students to death” as I used to call it. Alfie Kohn has long been an outspoken
champion of making schools less about rewards and more about learning.
I’ve written about this phenomenon before, and I will repeat
here: promising treats, extra recesses,
or other tangible rewards will not make students more successful. It will not make students adopt the behaviors
that are rewarded. In fact, it will make
students less likely to see the behavior or academics as something worthy to
do, and more likely to make them see those things as means to an end. They will do the minimum to get the maximum
reward. It will not make those students
who are not rewarded envious enough of the reward to have them change their
behavior on their own. It does make
students see the reward as handed out consistently to students based on
something other than their behavior – for example, students perceive that athletes
get rewards more often than non-athletes.
It can also result in the same phenomenon reported in Black article,
that students see rewards and punishments being unfair and punitively applied
to those who really need help.
Dr. Ruby Payne, quoted in an article about the effectiveness
of punishment in schools, says that while teachers may see punishment and
rewards as flip sides of the same problem, students do not. She goes on to say that behaviorist theory
that says to reward one behavior and punish another may work when one is
observing rats in the laboratory, or training animals, but it doesn’t work so
clearly with human beings. (Morrison, 2014)
Rick Wormeli ,another “big name” in education, comes at this
argument from the perspective of making meaningful changes in schools and from
standards-based grading. In one of his
videos available on YouTube, he discusses the concept of make-up work and
assessing students who fail to turn in homework. In it he says, that students who raise their
hands, sit down in their chairs, do work when we tell them to do it, do it, not
from a fear of punishment, but from hope.
He says it is not about “you can get a horse to water but you can’t make
it drink. No, it is about you can get a
horse to water, but you can’t make him thirsty.” He advocates for making students “thirsty”
and to do that they have to have hope. (Stenhouse Publishers, 2010)
So how do we, as Rick Wormeli says, communicate hope to
students?
First, we have to change our perspective on what works and
what does not work when talking about managing behavior. All of the resources I consulted stated
this: We must reform how we manage
student behavior, not with punishments or rewards, but by teaching students the
behaviors we expect.
Harry and Rosemary Wong have advocated this approach for
decades. They say that if we just give
rewards or apply negative consequences, we are applying discipline, we are not
managing the classroom or the behavior.
They repeat over and over again that we must teach students what we
expect them to do, not just with academics, but with behaviors as well. (Wong, 2018)
Understand, this is not a quick or easy fix. Many teachers have not received much
instruction in classroom management.
They have been expected to simply acquire these skills by osmosis or
some other process. Those who were
required to take a specific class in classroom management often did not really
embrace the information. They did what
was expected of them, but continued to believe that punishment was the real way
to change student behavior. After all,
the college students would say, they changed their behavior when their parents
punished them.
This last is a misconception about how parents teach
children about what to do in any given situation. Parents teach children in several ways that
do not include punishments. They
demonstrate what they want, using what we educators would call direct instruction. They also employ indirect instruction by
modeling expected behaviors – sometimes behaviors educators do not want to see
in schools! Parents have children
practice the desired behaviors over and over again, primarily because parents
have more opportunity to be with children – they are with children when they
are not in school and during school vacations.
(I am using “parents” loosely, as meaning whomever stands in for
parents, including those providing child care.)
In addition, parents are usually loved by children, and are far more
important to the child than a teacher.
This latter part is especially true if the child has the
perception that “the teacher doesn’t like me” or “the school is out to get me.” This is the result of the negative side of
the self-fulfilling prophesy, and of being both on the receiving end of school
punishments or observing that these punishments are applied in a manner thee
student sees as unfair.
I often hear, “By this age, students should know . . . “ Yes, they probably should know, but they have
just demonstrated they do not know. Or
they may know what Ms. Jones down the hall means or expects but not what you
mean by something or what you expect students to do. It may be fine to just toss work onto Ms.
Jones’ desk, but you want the work put neatly into a particular tray. You must teach students how to do that! It may be fine in Ms. Jones’ room to holler
across the room, “Hey Teach! I need some
help here!” It may not be okay with you,
and if not, you must teach the desired behavior!
When we teach behaviors, we have to follow the formula we
use when teaching how to find the area of a rectangle or the steps in the
scientific principle: teach, practice,
reinforce, reteach, practice some more, and reinforce again. Just saying do this or do that at the
beginning of the year won’t help.
Expecting students to remember everything you expect when they’ve had 3
out of 5 days home with snow days, won’t help.
We must teach the behaviors, and review them when students have been
away from school or in a situation where the expectations have been different
for a while. Review expectations after
having a sub as well. It doesn’t have to
be a big, long review. It can be as
simple as, “In just a minute I’m going to ask if you all turned in your
homework when you walked into the room.
Tell me what it is you are supposed to do when you turn in
homework? Jackie? Yes, that is correct, we . . .”
Middle school and high school teachers often describe
student behaviors that they find particularly difficult to change. This can be true for a number of
reasons.
First, one of my personal rules is “the larger the kid, the
larger the behavior.” Behaviors that
started out fairly small when the student was in kindergarten have compounded
until they are “larger” by the time they are in 7th grade. A kindergartener who throws a temper tantrum
is more easily handled than a 7th grader who is nearly the height and
weight of an adult.
Second, as children get older, there are more opportunities
for life experiences to leave a permanent mark or scar. What may have made a child cry in 1st
grade has become so deeply entrenched by 7th grade that it may have
completely changed that student’s perspective on life, leaving him/her with
chronic depression, anxiety, or other mental health issues. The 7th grader has had at least 8
years of school experiences, making re-learning or changing a behavior that
much more difficult.
Third, the peer group has become more and more
important. An early elementary student
may do something just to have the teacher smile at him. A 7th grader is much more likely
to try to get other 7th graders to approve of his behavior.
Fourth, a 7th grader has had far more
opportunities to learn what works and what doesn’t work. She may have learned that if she doesn’t like
math, she can act like this or that and she will be sent out of the room. He may have learned that if the lunch room is
where he will be bullied, he can earn a detention and avoid the lunch room all
together. If she think that teachers are
usually out to get her, she will see what the teacher does, not what the
teacher intends, as reinforcing that belief.
All of these are even more true of the high school student.
One obvious solution would be for specialized teachers to
work with disruptive students. I started
out as a special education teacher, and that is what we were expected to accomplish. However, I have worked in teacher preparation
for 13 years and as a school principal and curriculum coordinator for 12. In the last 15 years, I have seen a troubling
trend in special education. That is,
these specialists are viewed as people to help students complete work assigned
in “regular” classes rather than as having something to teach students separate
from the “regular” classroom. More
recently I have seen this trend in states or in districts that have a near 100%
“commitment” to the integration of special needs children into the regular
classroom.
Please do not misunderstand me. I am not advocating for a return to the bad
old days when kids with special needs were hidden away in basement rooms and
who never saw the rest of the school or their peers except in art, music, and
PE classes. (That latter is another
story altogether.) What I am saying is
that students with special needs in learning disabilities and behavior
disorders need to have specialized instruction in how to work with their different
abilities. The LD student needs to know
how to use his/her strengths to help him/her learn. The BD student needs to learn ways to better
control his/her behavior before being out in the general population. Both are areas of instruction that a teacher
with a four year degree has had no time to learn.
In teaching a junior/senior class in classroom management, I
was appalled to learn that the students knew nothing or next to nothing about
working with ADD/ADHD students who do not necessarily qualify for and IEP, let
alone knowing how to work with BD students, and nothing about oppositional
defiant disorder let alone conduct disorders.
Yet they were expected to work with all of these children in the regular
classroom often without support from a “push in” special education
teacher. Even worse in my eyes was that many
were getting additional endorsements in special education besides their “regular”
teaching license with almost no additional training.
How can we expect any regular teacher with a four year
degree to know what to do about students whose poor behavior has taken root for
so many years?
Yes, these students can benefit, sometimes, from having an
aide work with them. However, few
special education aides have any training whatsoever in working with these
students. And what do we expect when we
pay them minimum wage for 30 hours a week or less so we can get by without
providing health insurance?
Neither is what is meant when we write an IEP that says a
student needs an aide or when we say that s/he is eligible for specialized
instruction. Folks, that is exactly what
it means when we say a student is eligible for an IEP! We are saying the student needs specialized
instruction from a teacher trained to work with his/her disability.
Besides the lack of training, many teachers find that the
special education teacher is bogged down with far too many students than s/he
can teach effectively, even if s/he is only expected to help students complete
work assigned by others.
To be fair, those who set the school budget and who oversee
the instructional program too often do not have much more training than the
regular classroom teacher, and often that training came many more years
ago. School board members in many states
do not need to have any particular level of education to qualify for the
position. They are elected on whether or
not their campaign promises strike the voting population as needed or
reasonable. And few of the people in a
community will vote to raise property taxes to improve school funding.
So we must understand that changing this situation will not
bet a quick or easy fix.
There are a few things a teacher can do to help improve the
situation. But it will not be a silver
bullet! And often, the best time to
start these changes is at the beginning of the year.
What we can do:
Relationships Teachers can and must develop relationships with students. It is not enough to develop a relationship with those students who follow the rules, complete homework, and are generally viewed as “the good kids.” When we do this, we perpetuate the self-fulfilling prophesy. Students live up or down to the teacher’s perceptions of them, even if the teacher does not consciously treat the students differently.
I recommend greeting students at the door of the classroom
at the beginning of the day or at the beginning of each class period. When I first heard of doing this, I was teaching
science and saw the passing time between classes as the time when I could
quickly set up equipment for the next class.
I had to revise how I structured my working day, arriving at school a
bit earlier and setting up the equipment for the whole day, not just class
period by class period. I had to get
over my initial feelings of how unfair this was to me, and to focus instead on
the students.
I also recommend that teachers work to improve their
relationship with students by improving their relationship with the students’
families. Making positive phone calls
home is the best way to do that as study after study has shown. Families view a voicemail message as being
much more personal than an email, especially when it appears the email is mass-generated. And we still cannot guarantee that adult
family members will use electronic media with any regularity! I’ve written about ways to go about making
positive parent contacts. When I taught
middle school I saw about 120 students a day, but I managed to usually meet my
goal of contacting each student’s family by phone once per month. It meant making about 6 phone calls per day. I was always sure to have a quick thing to
say, hoping for voicemail, but telling parents who actually answered the phone,
“I have about 30 seconds to let you know this” so they would be more
understanding if I had to cut the call short.
Although I do not have the article at my fingertips, I
recall reading where a teacher would quietly some of the more problematic
students as they entered the room, “I’m glad you are here today. I’m planning on calling your mom (or aunt, or
foster mom, etc.) today and telling her how you are doing in school so I’m
going to be watching you closely today to be able to tell her something good.” It sounded a bit like what I did as a
principal. I couldn’t hope to call every
family about every one of the 500 children in the building each month, so I
picked out those kids who had the worst reputations for behavior and focused on
calling home each month with something positive about those students.
I can say from experience as both a teacher, a principal,
and parent that those positive phone calls work!
Use Praise and Encouragement, not Tangible Rewards We know tangible rewards don’t work so don’t use them. Yes, that is difficult when other teachers use them, but it can be done.
When I am talking about praise and encouragement, I am not
talking about saying, “Good job, Kathryn”.
That is not praise. In fact, most
students hear it as so much noise – think how Charlie Brown hears his teacher
talking. Others see that “good job” as
something other kids hear but that they don’t – more ways we perpetuate the
self-fulfilling prophesy.
Useful praise tells the receiver exactly what s/he is doing
right and why. Students cannot hope to
replicate the behavior if they do not explicitly know what it is they are
supposed to do! Here is the formula for
effective praise and encouragement:
Get the student’s attention – usually by saying
their name quietly or by talking directly to the student
Tell the student what s/he has done that is
right or praiseworthy. For example,
saying, “You were able to hold your tongue and not say something mean to Gloria
when she knocked your books down.”
Tell the student why that behavior is
positive. For example, “Remember how
when you would yell at the other student, it was usually you that got into
trouble? By holding your tongue, you
were able to avoid making the situation worse and having you get into trouble.”
If you can, acknowledge the effort the student
made to do this thing. For example, “I
know it takes a lot of effort and self-control to do that.”
Then you can add words of praise like, “that was
awesome”, or “good for you”, etc.
It is important that teachers make the praise about the
students, not about the teacher. Saying
something like , “I like how you did this or that” is not effective because it
makes the praise contingent upon what the teacher likes. Students need to know that there is a goal
larger than what a teacher likes or dislikes.
If it is just about what the teacher likes, we reinforce the perception
that teachers are arbitrary and unfailr.
Use Restorative Justice Practices instead of Punishments There are some very good articles about restorative justice practices found on the Edutopia website. In a nutshell, restorative justice practices focus on helping students make up for what they have done, and learn from the situation rather than applying punishments. Students do not learn from punishments because they are designed to make students fear the negative consequences of a particular behavior rather than learning an alternative to that behavior.
A case in point: many
schools use detentions and they do so because they believe students will want
to avoid getting a detention. This does
not acknowledge that students often do not know how or what to do instead of
the behavior that earned them a detention, that detention is often preferable
to being with others at recess or in the lunch room, or that often older
students have incorporated the idea of being “given” a detention with their
personal identity. (Note, in schools
that do use detentions, never say you are “giving” a detention. That again reinforces the idea that
detentions are awarded in an arbitrary or punitive manner. Instead, always talk about the student
earning the detention or “In this school, that behavior means you must go to
detention.” Never make the behavior
about what the teacher likes or dislikes!)
Too often we think that if this small negative consequence
didn’t work then we just need something stronger to use as a deterrent. Not so.
Less harsh penalties often have a greater effect on the student than the
fear of a harsher one. It is more
effective to hold a student after class for a minute or so to talk with the
teacher (keep it short!) than to threaten a detention.
Don’t assume! Teach the expected behavior! I often hear, “By this age, students should know . . . “ Yes, they probably should know, but they have just demonstrated they do not know. Or they may know what Ms. Jones down the hall means or expects but not what you mean by something or what you expect students to do. It may be fine to just toss work onto Ms. Jones’ desk, but you want the work put neatly into a particular tray. You must teach students how to do that! It may be fine in Ms. Jones’ room to holler across the room, “Hey Teach! I need some help here!” It may not be okay with you, and if not, you must teach the desired behavior!
When we teach behaviors, we have to follow the formula we
use when teaching how to find the area of a rectangle or the steps in the
scientific principle: teach, practice,
reinforce, reteach, practice some more, and reinforce again. Just saying do this or do that at the
beginning of the year won’t help.
Expecting students to remember everything you expect when they’ve had 3
out of 5 days home with snow days, won’t help.
We must teach the behaviors, and review them when students have been
away from school or in a situation where the expectations have been different
for a while. Review expectations after
having a sub as well. It doesn’t have to
be a big, long review. It can be as
simple as, “In just a minute I’m going to ask if you all turned in your
homework when you walked into the room.
Tell me what it is you are supposed to do when you turn in
homework? Jackie? Yes, that is correct, we . . .”
Look for the Positives, not the Negatives It is very important that teachers always focus on what kids are doing right, not what they are doing wrong. That means recognizing and reinforcing when students take baby steps in the right direction. We do that when we teach kids to do double digit multiplication. We will say, “Yes, you got this part and this part right. Now, what do you do next?” Sadly, we forget that behavior is also something that is learned and changed incrementally. When we look for positives, we are much more likely to see the student who is taking those baby steps in the right direction. We are more likely to notice that student who didn’t yell at Gloria when she knocked his/her books on the floor. We are more likely to get the behavior we want when we actually look for it!
I know this is much easier to say than to do. It takes a true shift in perspective. I used to make little notes to myself,
usually in the form of a symbol, and put them where I would see them, just to
remind myself to do this and not that. For
example, I would use symbols like these to remind myself to use the effective
praise formula.
Love the Sinner, Hate the Sin We have to let students (and parents) know that we really like them. We may not like something they did, but we like the person the student is. We cannot do that unless we focus on the positive!
On a larger scale, there are things schools must do if they
are going to turn things around, if the school is going to improve the
experience of schooling. It is not going
to improve if schools and districts adopt policies that punish students rather
than help educate students to live better lives.
Don’t expect that adopting any of the above will change
things over night, or in a week, or even in a month. Remember, most students have had too many
years of negative school experience to overcome. Indeed many of these recommendations work
best if initiated at the beginning of a school year. However, one can make improvements in our own
lives as well as the lives of the students by even taking small steps.
Given that the school year is half way done, I would
recommend doing the following:
Make positive phone calls home
Teach, practice, reinforce (and repeat) the
expected behavior
Hate the sin but love the sinner
I know that I have not addressed all of the concerns
expressed to me about this topic, but this blog post is twice the length of any
other one I’ve done, so I will have to look at those areas in other posts.
Take a deep breath!
You can do this!
Works Cited Amaro, M. (n.d.). Why Punishment is Ineffective Behavior Management. Retrieved February 13, 2019, from The Highly Effective Teacher: https://thehighlyeffectiveteacher.com/why-punishment-is-ineffective-behaviour-management/ Black, D. W. (2018, March 15). Zero tolerance discipline policies won’t fix school shootings. Retrieved February 13, 2019, from The Conversation: Adademic Rigor; Journalistic Flair: http://theconversation.com/zero-tolerance-discipline-policies-wont-fix-school-shootings-93399 Breslow, J. M. (2012, September 21). By the numbers: the cost of dropping out of high school. Retrieved February 13, 2019, from PBS: https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/by-the-numbers-dropping-out-of-high-school/ Bridgeland, J. M., Dilulio, J. J., & Morison, K. B. (2006). The Silent Epidemic: Perspectives of High School Dropouts. Retrieved February 17, 2019, from gatesfoundation.org: https://docs.gatesfoundation.org/Documents/TheSilentEpidemic3-06Final.pdf K12 Academics. (2011). School Leaving Age. Retrieved February 13, 2019, from K12 Academics: https://www.k12academics.com/dropping-out/school-leaving-age Maxwell, Z. (2013, November 27). The School-to-Prison Pipeline Is Targeting Your Child. Retrieved September 12, 2018, from Ebony: https://www.ebony.com/news/the-school-to-prison-pipeline-is-targeting-your-child-405/ Morrison, N. (2014, August 31). The Surprising Truth about Discipline in Schools. Retrieved February 12, 2019, from Forbes: https://www.forbes.com/sites/nickmorrison/2014/08/31/the-surprising-truth-about-discipline-in-schools/#5bdd6ec93f83 National Education Association. (2012). Raising Compulsory School Age Requirements: A Dropout Fix? (An NEA Policy Brief). Retrieved February 13, 2019, from National Education Association: http://www.nea.org/assets/docs/PB40raisingcompulsoryschoolage2012.pdf Stenhouse Publishers. (2010, December 14). Rick Wormeli: Redos, Retakes, and Do-Overs, Part One. Retrieved February 16, 2019, from YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TM-3PFfIfvI Wexler, N. (2018, November 29). Why Graduation Rates Are Rising But Student Achievement Is Not. Retrieved February 13, 2019, from Forbes: https://www.forbes.com/sites/nataliewexler/2018/11/29/why-graduation-rates-are-rising-but-student-achievement-is-not/#271c02216a7f Wong, H. a. (2018). The First Days of School: How to be an effective teacher 5e. Harry K. Wong Publications.
A study released in May 2018 showed that the inclusion of
students with intellectual disabilities is “lagging” (Heasley, 2018). The study examined trends in having such
students taught in regular education classes since the Individuals with
Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) passed in 1976 through 2014. IDEA requires that students with disabilities
be placed in the “least restrictive environment”, meaning that they should be
placed in a regular education classroom as much as possible.
I’ve read several
articles about this study and I’ve found that there seems to be some confusion
about what the term “intellectual disability” means. I won’t go into a complete definition here
but the term is generally used to describe students
who have problems with general mental abilities that affect functioning in two
areas: intellectual functioning (such as
learning, problem solving, judgement) and adaptive functioning (activities of
daily life such as communication and independent living). Some of the articles included students with
ADHD, receptive and expressive language issues, those with poor social skills,
etc.
This
got me to thinking about teachers and special education inclusion.
I do
not think there are any teachers who believe that inclusion is bad for
students. The majority would say that
inclusion has real, tangible benefits both for the student with special needs
and for the general population of PK-12 students. On the other hand, there are many teachers
who believe that they are not the best person to work with special needs
students. A person outside of education,
would, I think be unlikely to understand why that is, and would probably cast
those teachers in a negative light.
All
teachers take a course or two about special needs students. At the college where I taught, this class was
a 100 level class meaning it was generally taken by freshmen. Another course in assessment was required for
elementary education majors; this course primarily focused on special education
assessment but was also supposed to include assessments teachers might use for “regular
education” students.
I
taught an upper level course on classroom management and I found that, almost
without exception, these pre-service teachers had a limited view of special
education and almost no understanding of various behavioral issues that a
special education student might demonstrate.
To a student, none knew anything about specific behavior disorders.
This is
not to condemn those who teach classes about exceptional learners. Not by a long shot! Understanding students with disabilities and
what it means to work with these students in the general education classroom is
simply too much for one, three credit hour class. In addition, in my experience, few freshmen
can fully grasp the topic. It is not
because freshmen are deficit in any way.
It is because they are usually quite young, 18-19 years old. They are usually away from home for the first
time and exploring how to be independent from their parents. In addition, college learning differs
significantly from PK-12 learning.
College students are expected to have the discipline to do most of the
educating on their own – for every hour of credit, the student is expected to
do two hours of work outside of what is happening in the classroom. In other words, the college student is
expected to be in charge of his/her learning whereas the high school teacher is
expected to “make” students learn.
This is
a very difficult transition for many young people.
Those
who major in special education may receive more specific training in working
with students with special needs, but those teachers are the ones destined for
the “special education classroom” and for collaborating with regular education
teachers who are working with special needs students.
So why
don’t colleges require students to take more classes where they learn more
about working with special needs students?
Have you
looked at the requirements education majors must meet? Where I taught education majors, the list of classes
that met requirements for an elementary teacher meant that an elementary
education major could not take any electives unless s/he wanted to add a
semester or so onto his/her college time.
Few students want to do that. As
it is, elementary education majors often have to take 16 or 18 credit hours per
semester even though 12 credit hours per semester is considered full time.
Many
college professionals recognize that education could easily become a 5 year
degree, or even a 6 year degree if courses and field experiences were added to
ensure that all of the education majors were adept at teaching their own
subjects and special education. I have
heard of only a handful of colleges that have made this a requirement. The thinking is that students will vote with
their feet, avoiding the 5 year programs in favor of those who say they can get
the student through the program in 4 years.
Photo by nappy from Pexels
There
are many outside of education who believe that the regular education teacher
receives significant support from the special education teacher. The special education teacher is supposed to
help that regular education teacher find accommodations to use to help the
student with special needs meet the same expectations as the other students in
the classroom, and with modifications if the special education student is
expected to be held to a different standard.
Many believe the special education teacher will be working along side
the regular education teacher, co-teaching and collaborating. And, really, that’s the way it is supposed to
be! But how many sp. ed. teachers are
really able to do that?
Consider
an elementary sp. ed. teacher. States use
a number of plans to determine how many students a sp. ed. teacher has on her
caseload. There are students with whom
she simply consults with the regular education teacher, students who are
expected to have the teacher or another trained professional working with them
for a significant part of the day, and everything in between.
The sp.
ed. teacher might have students in multiple classrooms who are supposed to be
receiving services from a “trained professional” at the same time. She has to create a schedule where she is in
this classroom for this amount of time, and that classroom for a different
amount of time. She has to have the time
during the day to meet with the general education teachers for
collaboration. She has to have time to
administer alternate assessments for some students, and assessments with
accommodations for other students. She
must write and update Individualized Education Plans (IEPs) and report on
students’ progress to various people.
She must work with the parents of the students, too. And she is expected to direct
para-professionals on what to do with the students with whom they work.
This is
probably not half of what most special education teachers have to accomplish.
Some
districts hire aides or para-professionals to work with special education
students on a one-to-one basis. Many
districts pay only minimum wage to these aides and keep them under 30 hours per
week so that they are not considered full time and do not receive
benefits. As a result, few of the aides
can truly be considered “trained professionals”. Some states require special education aides
to receive training, but this training varies.
It could be an online overview of special education, or it could be a
few hours of face-to-face instruction through a college, tech school, or
district led inservice training. Few
states require special education aides to have a baccalaureate, and few states
require aids to receive a salary commensurate with that level of training.
In
short, most sp. ed. teachers wish they could be cloned so that there was enough
of them to go around.
What
this means for the general education teacher is that s/he is expected to
accommodate or modify lessons for the special needs students assigned to them, find
alternative materials as needed, work with the students developing social
skills, helping the students change negative behaviors, etc.
I’m
sure there are many, many regular education teachers who are delivering
fantastic services to special needs students!
My point is that those wonderful regular education teachers often have
to figure out how to do all of that often based on what they were supposed to
have learned in one or two college classes.
Some
school districts try to “fix” the problem by integrating students with IEPs
into “specials” like art, music, and physical education. I used to be an art teacher, and I used to be
a special education teacher. My training
as an art teacher did little to help me understand how to accommodate or modify
art activities for special education students.
Special subject teachers in general receive no more training in working
with special needs students than any other “regular” teacher.
As a
special educator, I worked primarily with students with behavior disorders (BD). Out of that experience, I’ve seen that it is
very difficult for a regular education teacher to work with a BD student and
assure that the other students in the class are learning. By definition, BD students have problems with
their behavior and can disrupt a regular education class regularly. Regular education teachers can become
frustrated and resentful if they are expected to work with a BD student without
intensive support. That frustration and
resentment is communicated to the students in very subtle ways, even when the
teacher truly does not want to project that.
(See the blog posts about teacher attitude.) I found it was to the BD student’s benefit to
keep him/her in a special education classroom where we could work intensely on
his/her behavior, and to slowly integrate the student into regular
classes.
It
takes a teacher with super powers to provide for everything a special needs
student needs to be successful academically!
My hat
is off to those teachers and paraprofessionals who are working hard to provide
the best educational opportunities for both the “regular” and the “special”
student!
In my
opinion, that is why so many students with IEPs are served in classrooms separate
from their general education peers. It
is not ideal. It is not the intent of
the law.
And
that is why, in my opinion, why we do not see an 80% or better inclusion rate.
If we
really want special education students to be included in the regular classroom
80% of the day or more, we need to provide supports for both the students and
the teachers. We need more special
education teachers and more training for regular education teachers. And most teachers would say they also need
fewer students – smaller class sizes or caseloads.
Sadly,
I suspect that the student mentioned at the beginning will spur state agencies
and local school districts to boost the number of students in the regular
education classroom. I also suspect that
there will be no requirement for additional training for teachers or paras.
If you
are a special education teacher, please have some compassion and empathy for
the regular education teacher. Help
him/her develop effective accommodations and modifications.
If you
are a regular education teacher, work as closely as you can with the special
education teacher and recognize that s/he is probably doing the best s/he can
with all of the things s/he is expected to do.
I
encourage all teachers to request more training in working with special needs
students, and I encourage all teachers to seek out more information themselves. Advocate for the students by advocating for
more support and training for all of the adults who work with special needs
kids. Remember: being positive about what you do, tends to
get more results that telling people how bad your day is! We catch more flies with honey than vinegar.
The
kids deserve it and so do you!
Take
your advocacy a step further: let your
local school board know what you must do each day and how you do it. Do this in a positive, informational
way. Help state and federal
representatives know how the legal expectations for special needs children play
out in the classroom.
Let
everyone know what the good things are that go on in your classroom and how
students benefit from your dedication to the education all students.
I hope I can do you a service by suggesting ways to work with THAT student in your classroom!
It is that time of year again. December. The month when elementary teachers
Observe students that seem to gravitate to either eerily good or Grinch-like badness and sometimes both in a single day.
have to try to hush the kid who is bragging about there being no Santa Claus when she knows that another student fervently believes.
wish snowsuits could go on in 5 seconds or less and without teacher intervention
wish snowsuits came off in 5 seconds or less and without teacher intervention
dream they could take coffee intravenously
Ponder getting a long term sub so they can do the expected holiday things for their family AND for school
Secretly want Santa to lace the students’ drinking fountain with valium
I’ve seen new teachers go from chirping about how much they love Christmas to asking obsessively when the holiday break begins. And I’ve watched the color drain out of their faces when they realize that the break is far shorter than the break they had during college. Poor things. Welcome to teaching!
All of the teachers I know talk about the stress that comes this time of year. It doesn’t surprise me.
Teaching at any time of the year is stressful. And no wonder! Having to constantly make decisions is stressful and teachers are estimated to, on average, make 1,500 decisions a day. Having to constantly exert self-control is stressful, and teachers must keep tight self-control or they would be making sarcastic comments to students, snapping at parents, and telling insensitive supervisors where to go and what to do with it when they get there! Teaching is one of the few professions where one cannot attend to bodily functions whenever one feels the need; teachers have to train themselves to go to the bathroom during prep time or recesses. A 2017 survey reported by AFT says that teachers feel a lack of societal respect for a variety of reasons and feeling like one is being watched and judged constantly is another form of stress.
This is not mentioning the amount of paperwork, the long days, the constant pace of the school day, feeling like one is trying to teach more and more while the available time to teach it all has decreased . . . oh, and let’s not forget the day when you are starting a lesson you’ve planned so very carefully only to find that three kids are out with the flu, the internet is down so you can’t show the video clip and, oh NO! Johnny just threw up on his desk.
Add to the generous amount of stress educators encounter on a daily basis to the stress many feel during the holidays and a teacher can feel like she is about to break in half.
So what’s a teacher to do?
I know you’ve heard this advice over and over again, and it is SO much easier to say it than do it: You have to take care of yourself! This means getting a reasonable amount of sleep at night, eating healthily, drinking enough water, and exercising.
I know it is easier said than done because I am struggling with doing those things myself. I constantly wonder what I can do that will force me to choose wisely when it comes to food and will make me want to exercise despite the cold and early darkness and lack of will power. One thing that was suggested to me was to put alarms into my phone reminding me to drink water or to get up and move. I’m ready to try it!
Maybe we all can help each other? Maybe we can approach another educator or school worker and ask him/her to be your school “mom”? (You know, moms take care of everyone. Who doesn’t need a mom to take care of us at school?)
I certainly am open to ideas on what and how to do these things!
The other thing we can do is this: Create a “Why I Teach” file. A WIT file is where you put those sweet notes kids periodically write to us, the email from that parent that said that nice thing, or even a photo of something good kids have done. My WIT file has cards from kids and parents, notes from kids, emails with rather cryptic remarks that I’ve had to explain in the margin. Your WIT file could have newspaper clippings, marvelous quotes from famous authors, funny cartoons. It could be almost anything. The idea is that you are collecting things that you can look through when you feel like you’ve reached the end of your rope. It is a gift you give yourself for those times when you’d like to chuck the whole career out the window.
Most of the time I am fairly positive, but there have been times when the tongue-in-cheek newspaper clipping feels like it could happen and I have thought my WIT file was the only thing that could remind me of why I chose this profession.
There are a lot of people who will tell you that teachers make a difference. But I’d like to echo Harry and Rosemary Wong when they say, “You ARE the difference!”
Take care of yourself, and take care of your fellow educators! Have a good holiday!
Please share what you are doing to take care of yourself during this time of the year, and what you are doing to help take care of other educators.
