1. I was a new face, and the students didn't know if they could trust me
2. For the same reason, the students wanted to test their boundaries
3. The cooperating teacher had not set clear boundaries and instead relied on authority and a case-by-case plan of discipline
4. The cooperating teacher's and my own classroom management styles were dissimilar
5. The grade-level team had relatively poor communication about discipline which led to an entire 60-some students that were used to getting out of hand
6. It was the last quarter, and the students were anticipating summer
Thus, a couple weeks in, I decided that something must change. Taking a card from Teacher Tom, I wanted to take a shot at allowing the students to create their own list of classroom rules they wanted to abide by and consequences for when those rules were broken. The evening after a particularly poorly run lesson, I went home and planned for a classroom meeting the next morning. I thought up a few example rules and consequences in case the students ran out of ideas or didn't hit on something I felt was important.
(There are a lot of details involved in the process I followed, so I've included the rest of the post following the cut.)
I began the morning by creating a space for our meeting before the students arrived. I pushed the tables out of the way to create a large enough space for 22 ten-year-olds and an adult to sit comfortably in a circle, and I wrote on the white board something along the lines of, "Check in and then join me on the floor for a class meeting. Sit around the inside perimeter of the tables." The students were at once taken aback by the condition of the classroom when they arrived. I had their attention. I sensed that they were even a bit regretful of the sour note on which the previous day had ended. They immediately followed the directions on the board and quietly signaled for their peers trickling in to follow their lead.
I began by recalling that the previous day had been tough, but I quickly let the students know that, "an important part of justice is mercy," a concept that I'm not sure they embraced but I wanted to include anyway. I told them that I wanted to recreate the part of our classroom that was our rules, but I wanted their help to do so. Thus, for an hour and a half, we set to work collaboratively developing.
First, we quickly discussed why we have rules in the first place, and then delved into the core of creating rules. (I set the guideline that all rules must be phrased positively, e.g., not using the word "not.") Finally, we set consequences to each particular violation. I wanted everything to be as clearly stated as possible so that there was no question as to expectations. I wanted the students themselves to be able to see that a behavior was an infraction and then be able to clearly determine what the consequence for that infraction was. I didn't want anything to be left up to an authority figure's discretion.
The process turned out to be a little much, even for ten-year-olds, and with our P.E. time approaching and the students beginning to step on each others' metaphoric toes, one child announced that he trusted my judgement enough to allow me to complete the chart alone. This particular student came from a strict military family and was clearly uncomfortable when presented with the opportunity for children to decide upon rules and consequences, but it had been a long morning, and the rest of the class agreed that that idea could be deemed acceptable. I told the students that I was honored by their trust, thanked them again for their discussion, and sent them to the gym.
That night, I tweaked the wording and reorganized what we had come up with as little as possible just to strengthen clarity, and then represented it the next day. When everyone agreed that everything was as nearly close to perfect as we could be at that time, I printed the chart off and we separated into groups to get it on poster paper and on the walls.
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| From 4th Grade Student Teaching |
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| From 4th Grade Student Teaching |
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| From 4th Grade Student Teaching |
(I'd also like to note that "class-wide recess minute loss" was not a consequence. I had been using that consequence prior to our class discussion, but when we talked, it was unanimously voted out the door. It hurt to take recess from anyone, frankly, even just a minute, but the students at this school are lucky enough to receive two recesses a day, three on Fridays, and we did use that time to discuss behavior and how to correct it.)
Unfortunately, it seems that the six reasons listed at the top of the post were still strong enough not to make the difference necessary. My nine weeks were still tough, even with our new student generated rules and consequences. Here are a couple of other things I tried:
The elementary used the school-wide quiet signal of Give Me Five (which, as far as I can tell, is credited to Harry K. Wong), but it was not working for my fourth graders. It may have been over used so much that it had lost its effectiveness, but whatever the reason, I knew I needed to try something new. Inspired by the recent Occupy Wall Street protesters' use of mic check, I considered the possibility of something similar. Not only would it work as an attention getter, it would mandate that students repeat everything the speaker said, hopefully making sure the student understood better by utilizing both his sense of hearing and speech. Plus, it would allow the students to perform the attention getter, which is something I'd been wanting to try. The problem with performing an actual mic check, as I told the students, was that the purpose is to make your message heard over long distance; the mic check is done with shouting.
Thus was born the Whisper Check--performed just like the mic check, but with whispering voices. It only lasted a couple of days in its infant form. I quickly learned that fourth graders have not yet mastered the technique of phrasing. They also are not quite skilled at determining when is an appropriate time to call attention from the class. Unfortunately, I had to retract their privilege of using the whisper check. I also learned that to pull off an efficient whisper check, the speaker must be succinct and prepared for exactly what needs to be said, a skill that I have not mastered. I had to call it quits with the phrasing and repeating thing all together and, by the time the quarter was up, our whisper checks went like this:
Teacher: Whisper check.
Students: Whisper check.
Teacher: Freeze. Eyes on me. *hesitate*
Students: *turn and look (hopefully)*
It had digressed a lot, but I still blame a lot of it on not being implemented at the beginning of the year.
Another practice I instilled was the common voice level chart. I had my two doodlers make them for me in their spare time.
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| From 4th Grade Student Teaching |
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| From 4th Grade Student Teaching |
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| From 4th Grade Student Teaching |
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| From 4th Grade Student Teaching |
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| From 4th Grade Student Teaching |
Finally, at the request of my principal, I created a "Think Sheet" for when the same rule violations occurred frequently in one day or for when the most dire rules were broken (the ones listed with the consequence of "Card punch and contact parents"). Fortunately it only had to be used half a dozen times. I couldn't find a good way to host a pdf online, so I've mere copy-pasted the sheet below.
____________________ (Date)
Dear ____________________________,
Today has been a rough day for me. I have struggled with following the rules my classmates and I created together. Specifically, I have had a hard time with
___________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________
I understand that the consequences I received today were a direct result of my own actions.
I would like to make amends by creating a change. Here’s what I thought of:
___________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________
My teacher has spoken with me about my thoughts. Please talk with me about my behavior and thoughts tonight, too. Sign below, and I will return this sheet to my teacher in the morning.
Teacher: ______________________ Parent: ______________________
