During the past week, I have had friends declare on Facebook that they are reasonably intelligent, well-educated white women and yet they had never heard of Juneteeth before this year. I confess I had not heard of it until two or three years ago myself.
One of the women asked, “When is public education policy going to enter the racism conversation? I’m angry at the things I was never taught in school and am learning now in my 40’s. I am horrified and embarrassed at my own ignorance.”
That ignorance is an example of how racism permeates the U.S. public school system.
Last week, I wrote about how the Pygmalion effect creates two distinct school environments for students that teachers unconsciously categorize as “capable” and “less capable”. I listed student characteristics that contribute to teachers labeling students as “less capable”. Having black or brown skin topped that list.
I stressed that teachers do this mental categorization unconsciously. I believe that; yet whether or not the process is unconscious, it is part and parcel of implicit bias.
More information on the Pygmalion Effect and Black students can be found here:
Implicit bias is the term used for the attitudes or stereotypes that affect our understanding, actions, and decisions in an unconscious manner.
Much of implicit bias comes out in the classroom in the form of “microagressions”. Wikipedia and other online sources define “microagression” as “brief and commonplace daily verbal, behavioral, or environmental indignities, whether intentional or unintentional, that communicate hostile, derogatory, or negative prejudicial slights and insults toward any group, particularly culturally marginalized groups “.
Interestingly enough, when doing the research for today’s blog, I found only one article that focused on microagressions in the K-12 classroom. The rest of the information I found was generated by colleges and attempting to remove these from college classrooms.
Still the lists of sample microagressions are relevant to K-12 teachers!
I recommend the following resources to learn more about microagression and what to do about it:
Implicit bias in teacher behavior is one aspect of how educational experiences are different for white students and Black students in the same school. There is a persistent gap in academic achievement between white and Black and minority students. There is also a significant difference in how each group is disciplined.
In some studies on how students are disciplined, Black students, especially males, were ten times more likely to be suspended or expelled for their behavior. Other studies report the figures as 10% to 16%.
I submit that part of the reason why Black students receive more hash discipline in K-12 schools starts in the earliest years of schooling. Children who are viewed as “less capable” by teachers, even though this may be unconscious, have appreciably different educational experiences than do those viewed as “capable”.
These radically different educational experiences cannot help but affect how children view schooling and how they view their ability to acquire an education. Immature people do not express their displeasure at how they feel in mature ways. Instead, they lash out, act out, become sullen, restless, fidgety, and “cop an attitude”.
I dare say adults would probably resort to being less than well-behaved if we were in similar circumstances.
If you would like to read more about the disparity between how Black and Brown students and white students are disciplined in school, I recommend these resources:
Historians and social studies teachers are likely to say, “Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.”
Another applicable quote is, “History is written by the victors.” The origin of the quote is disputed, yet it points out a truth about the perspective of history taught in schools.
Education within a society is geared towards producing upstanding citizens of that society. This aspect of school curriculum was much more apparent during the “Red Scare” of the 1950s and 1960s. Civics and social studies texts of that time unabashedly promoted the idea that U.S. citizens held certain values and rejected all forms of Communism.
We would like to think our curricula and social studies textbooks today are free of bias, but they are not.
Numerous studies have been done of who and what is examined in textbooks. These began as early as the 1970s. These studies showed that people of color were added to textbooks as sidebars, a bit of information that was set off from the rest of the text, and, as a result were often overlooked or skipped as unnecessary. (Similar “inclusion” can be seen in science textbooks.)
One can only describe this method of inclusion as marginalization. Literally!
Reading the content of textbooks gives more insight into how “history is written by the victors”. Not too many years ago, McGraw Hill, a major textbook company, was righteously called on the carpet for describing enslaved humans as “workers” and the slave trade as “migration of workers” to “agricultural plantations”.
Textbook labels enslaved people as “workers”
Labeled as outright racism, the textbook company said they would change their online books to more accurately reflect the slave trade, but the in-print books were already in circulation.
I don’t know about your school district, but the ones in which I worked did not purchase social studies books very often, so I expect those books will be in circulation for some time!
Many schools do not use social studies or history textbooks. They use multiple resources to meet their state standards. These resources may be up to the teacher, or up to the curriculum director, or up to the state.
Another example of history being written by the victors played out in Texas not too many years ago. A very conservative person became the head of the Texas state level school board. Under his direction, the state’s social studies curriculum was overhauled.
The result was
Slavery and the slave trade were down-played.
The African-American diaspora or any events in history involving African Americans was not mentioned until the Civil Rights Movement.
Jim Crow laws and segregation were removed from information on the rise of the Civil Rights movement.
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., was barely mentioned.
Those are just a few of the revisions to history this particular set of state standards made.
If you would like to learn more about how K-12 textbooks whitewash history, I suggest these resources:
The most recent statistics I could find show that 80% of the nation’s teachers are white. Yet only 44% of K-12 students are reported as white. This means that the majority of Black or minority children never have a teacher who looks like them. Research on this phenomenon is very clear: all students benefit when they have Black or minority teachers.
[Many factors influence recruitment of Black and minority teachers at the college level. I won’t go into those in this blog at this time.]
All of the information I’ve touched upon has been the subject of many studies. It all adds up to the fact that the current way we educate children helps perpetuate the marginalization of African-Americans and minorities. In other words, our education system as it stands right now supports racism in the U.S.
First of all, each teacher must search his/her heart and soul and recognize that we contribute to this! It is not easy to do. It is not fun. But it is vitally necessary!
Second, we must address implicit bias, the Pygmalion Effect, and microagressions. That can mean having some very uncomfortable conversations with our students, our colleagues, administration, and the community. That takes bravery and a willingness to listen. However, it takes brave souls to be teachers, so we can do it!
Third, we have to step up to be part curriculum teams. We need to point out to students that textbooks don’t always get it right. And we need to promote thinking in our students, not just memorization of facts and figures.
I believe education is the most important activity in which a society engages because it shapes the future of that society and the world. I believe educators are the most important part of education. They can sit back and let others shape education for them, or they can stand up and help do the shaping.
There are an increasing number of news articles, opinion pieces, and anecdotal evidence that students are becoming increasingly disrespectful, verbally and physically violent. Many teachers I know have described teaching as becoming more and more difficult and exhausting.
A recent television news report described how teachers in Des Moines, Iowa, feel unsupported by administration and parents as they try to deal with children (grades K-12) who used foul language towards peers and teachers, and children who “lose it” so violently that the teacher must evacuate the rest of the class to the hallway while the student destroys the classroom. https://whotv.com/2019/05/31/extreme-violent-student-behavior-pushing-iowa-teachers-to-breaking-point/
Extreme and Violent Student Behavior Pushing Iowa Teachers to the Breaking Point, WHO-TV, May 31, 2019
When I did an internet search on “violent children elementary”, I got thousands of hits, from almost every state in the US and from many countries world-wide. Clearly this phenomenon is not isolated to Iowa, let alone the US. And it is not confined to elementary student either.
These articles offer dozens of ideas on why this behavior seems to be on the rise. They suggest or lay the blame on many different reasons, like the following:
parents who raise their children too permissively,
teachers who do not know how to manage a classroom
colleges that do not prepare teachers properly
unmet physical or emotional needs,
integrating special needs children into the mainstream before they are ready,
too much “screen time” or exposure to violence through media and video games
a lack of free time to play
overwhelming boredom with and lack of engagement in school
experiencing childhood trauma,
social disrespect of teachers
a society that idolizes teaching as a calling and expects teachers to do it all without compensation or support
administration that is unable or unwilling to deal with disrespect or violence harshly enough
in Iowa, the law that says students may not be restrained or isolated even if they are having a violent episode unless it is to prevent them from hurting themselves or others
a lack of money for mental health services for students
a lack of social support for mental health services for young children
Probably for every proposed cause, there is another article refuting
that reason and proposing another.
There are fewer, but many, opinion pieces written by parents
that say that whatever the reasons, their child deserves an education free of
the fear of violence, and an education uninterrupted by disrespectful and
violent classmates.
As many articles as we see on violence and disrespect, we see
and equal number telling us
we need to engage students with media or
interesting projects,
we need to keep students entertained
we need to teach social and emotional skills
we need to teach self-regulation skills
we need to make education relevant
we need to reward students who do the right
thing
Teachers are Frustrated!
Whatever the causes or solutions, it is very difficult to hang on to the reasons why one became a teacher when one feels surrounded by chaos and are constantly struggling to keep control. And the constantly changing initiatives to try to resolve the situation is liable to give a teacher whiplash.
There is often a kernel of truth in every article on the causes or solutions for extreme behavior and violence in the classroom. I have opinions on many of the proposed causes and on ways to confront these. In addition, walking around in schools and observing in classrooms has shown me that there are classrooms where students appear to be better behaved than in others. I also have opinions on the myriad of proposals to keep students interested in school and to keep them engaged enough to behave in ways that educators call “appropriate.”
What I would really like to know is this:
What do teachers
see as the difference between classrooms that are relatively better behaved
than others?
What do teachers
believe is the main cause of violence among school children in K-12?
What are the top three things teachers believe need to be done
to turn this problem around?
Please comment or visit my Facebook page (Roe’s Rules: Classroom Management for THAT Student) and join the discussion there.
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!
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