My new school is an environment that is completely different than anything I ever expected form teaching. Some days there are four students in class, and others there are eight. I have yet to have full attendance. Some students are constantly tardy, and it doesn’t seem like there are any consequences. I don’t know what consequences would work if any were put in place. It’s possible that consequences will just drive the students to be truant more often. Most of the students that do come everyday are ideal students. They are attentive, for the most part, and contribute to the class discussions. However, very often there will only be one student who offers information and you have to work to get the others to speak up. We’ve tried the “I want to hear from someone else” technique, but some students just don’t want to talk. I feel like I thrive on student involvement, but I also know that some people are listening even if they don’t respond.
The students do respect my cooperating teacher and if they don’t she let’s them know that that kind of behavior is not to be tolerated. I wish I was here at the beginning of the year to see how she created such a report. I think it took them a little while to realize that I am to be treated the same way, because I will treat them just as my CT does. During a group reading, one of the teachers team teaches with us went to the other side of the room. Upon her departure, a boy pulled out his phone and started texting. He must have known that I was behind him because I was doing most of the reading. If he did, he obviously didn’t care. When I said his name, he acted like he wasn’t doing anything wrong so I had to tell him to put his phone away. He did, and this is a trend that I have noticed; the students respond well to redirection.
One thing that I enjoyed last week happened during the district PLC meeting. We were going over the rubric used for written responses and trying to come up with some more specific items we would look for in a “4” paper, and how a “4” differs from a “3” and so on. It was enjoyable because not only did I speak up, I was nervous at first but I became comfortable, but we also made progress. In the various meetings that I have attended (i.e. PLC, child study, staff meetings) it seemed that there was a lot of discussion that went no where. It was nice to see teachers come to a consensus. I heard about a meeting that was held to define consensus and people couldn’t even come to a consensus on the meaning of the word. This PLC was also very equality oriented. My last district PLC had a leader that made sure everyone knew she was the leader (even though she was a co-leader). She wanted everything to be done her way. This PLC has two co-leaders, but if you sat in on a meeting you might not guess who they are. They did lead the meeting, but they also respected the fact that the rest of those people in attendance had opinions that matter.
In the first paragraph you mention wanting to implement a consequence for being late or tardy, but doing so wouldn't make students want to come. Do you have a reward system? Like if everyone is here for X amount of days in a row then you have some kind of celebration? It might help to start out on an individual basis then work up to a whole class reward system. That way they end up encouraging each other to attend. I think positive reinforcement can be a great tool in a classroom especially for motivation.
ReplyDeleteIt's great to hear about progress being made at a PLC meeting. I have been to many meetings at my new school and I don't think there has been much progress made in any of them. I was able to attend a PLC meeting for 6th grade LA and the teachers were talking about the 4pt scale for the district assessments. Their goal was to make the 4pt grading scale easier to use and differentiate between the numbers. Someone got on the topic of how the district assessments weren't following curriculum and it escalated from there. The entire two and a half hour meeting was about the teachers complaining about the district assessments. Someone tried to ask how they could be used differently or how could we change them to still get the data we need to give to the district but still make them beneficial and purposeful in the classroom. No one had any suggestions. It was great to see teachers wanting to make things line up, but yet nothing is being done except for the complaining during the PLC meetings. I wonder how much progress is typically made at any PLC meeting?
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