Classroom Management vs. Discipline
Written on March 9, 2008
It’s Spring Break, and I’m desperately trying to get back to regular blogging. You know you’ve been gone too long when the only people who want to comment on your blog are those selling flyxmiglpluff and other helpful remedies and vague services.
Anyway, if you haven’t noticed the recent debates/commentaries on classroom management, you don’t get out into the blogosphere enough, so I’ll bring it to you.
dy/dan posted about classroom management, Dangerously Irrelevant then one-upped with some youtube videos of teachers gone wild (and not in the high-spirited Spring Break fashion, but perhaps with a similar after-thought of “Oh, man, I hope my parents don’t see this.”). Then Mr. K at Math Stories chimed in with what was a complete “aha!” comment for me:
“What the “good” teachers do:So, at this school at least, discipline is a huge part of being able to teach at all, much less well. Many of the teachers are successful. They have well run organized classrooms, their students are engaged and learning, and succeeding at it. In talking with one of them, we came to the realization that there are a lot of different styles, but they all have at least one thing in common:
The classroom is culturally isolated from the rest of the school.
Teachers stand at the doors, and do a brain check on each kid as they come into the classroom. Every kid is given some sort of reminder that that door is a threshold, that when they cross it, the rules change, the expectations change, and their behavior better change. Those classrooms are little individual fortresses, and the successful teachers bring in the kids, but have set up barriers to keep the bad behavior out.”
I do, in fact, stand at the door between each period, but what is so illuminating about what Mr. K says is that I do often feel as if I’m establishing a contract with students in which certain behaviors will not be indulged in my classroom, and I know the other effective teachers out there do the same. Over at Joanne Jacobs, I commented about the gray areas between “show ‘em who’s boss” management styles and the fallacy that its only alternative is some sort of “let’s all gather and hold hands” soft approach.
It’s a social contract, with the heavier responsibilities and behavior restrictions actually lying (rightfully so) on the teacher’s shoulders. In return for the students’ agreement to behave civilly and responsibly, to communicate their needs and dissatisfaction in an appropriate manner, and to reject inappropriate behavior within the classroom walls, the teacher’s portion of my personal, internal contract (the one I relay to them through my actions throughout the year) reads something like this:
1. I promise to make my directions, daily agendas, and expectations clear. I promise to clarify them when you are confused without expressing frustration or impatience with you.
2. I promise to be consistent with any disciplinary consequences I may have to enact. I promise to give adequate warning and opportunities to change your behavior before enacting disciplinary consequences. I promise to notice and express gratitude for changes in behavior, especially if they occur spontaneously.
3. I promise to keep your working environment clean and organized. (This is one I hold especially dear, which I know a lot of people don’t. It’s one of my personal notions of professionalism, which extends to the classroom where students are required to be.)
4. I promise never to enact group punishment for individual behavior, nor to threaten it in order to gain your attention/compliance.
5. I promise to communicate my dissatisfaction with inappropriate behavior in a calm and responsible way, not to let it build up until I explode.
In the end, though, I’ve realized over the years this contract isn’t solely for the benefit of students - it’s also for my own, and often benefits me more than them. This is the contract I make with myself, for the students of today, tomorrow, 2009, 2010, and etc. I make this contract with myself every year before I make it with the students, because I know that in holding myself to these expectations I am consciously establishing the behavior with which I will approach adverse situations, the parameters within which I will create an atmosphere of high expectations and rigorous learning for students, and the behavioral model for myself that I will consistently strive to achieve.
Now, I realize I may have lost a few readers with the paucity of my posting of late, but if you do go and peruse the blogs and muse over the issue, I hope you’ll leave some thoughts here to add to the conversation. What’s in your contract? What events have tested that contract? How do you approach classroom management? Etc.
Filed in: ELA.
It’s interesting because I try to do a molding of two ideas: making the kids understand that they’re part of a team but also making sure that individuals are responsible for their own behaviors. Unfortunately, that’s also something that’s lacking: the lack of teamwork. Nonetheless, I like the contract you’ve established. I’m still trying to build that as time goes on. The contract’s finer details changes in middle school. I swear I had an easier time with this contract when I was in 8th grade than in 6th, which I’m in now. Wow.
“I swear I had an easier time with this contract when I was in 8th grade than in 6th, which I’m in now. Wow.”
This is so true, and it’s a subtlety that I think only the most effective teachers realize. I’ve been teaching either 11th or 12th grade now for a few years, so it’s been easy to be consistent with this contract. When I was teaching 9th and 10th grade - like you said, wow. And never mind back when I taught 8th grade! The “contract” sometimes has to be fluid as well.
I’m glad to see you acknowledge the fact that your contract is a much more effective strategy at the 11th and 12th grades than it is in middle school.
I would suggest that a major reason for this is the fact that most of the students who would resist this strategy have already dropped out or been expelled by the 11th and 12th grades.
In my district, we have freshman cohorts averaging 1,000 students. Less than half of them graduate. I was expected to teach all 1,000 of them in middle school.
I may not be clear on what you’re saying. Our students don’t really have the option to drop out at that rate by 11th or 12th grade, and expelling is not a very often used technique. I find it so curious that teachers keep trying to one up one another by claiming this or that grade level is easier to manage due to whatever perceived factors are in place. Have I misconstrued your intent?
The general idea of the contract stays the same, no matter what level I teach. There are none of these ideals I would throw out if I was teaching middle school again. There would be, however, a few additions in terms of things like organizational strategies, reward systems that high school students don’t necessarily respond well to, and etc.
I thought your first comment on this thread was an acknowledgement that this method is more effective with more mature students, and that middle school students are a more difficult problem than juniors and seniors. Are you now saying that this isn’t true? At every high school I’ve ever worked at (and I subbed in three different multi high school districts for 7 years) that was one consistent pattern. The teachers with the most tenue taught the juniors and seniors, and the new teachers taught the freshmen.
Where do you teach that drop outs aren’t a problem? Here are the numbers for the high school my school feeds into:
9th grade - 1437 students
12th grade - 787 students
Gahrie,
I see what you’re saying now. I think I was unclear, my fault. Let’s see, if I were to back up and re-think my intent there, I would say what I was trying to relay through my agreement with Jose is not that this “contract” isn’t more effective with more mature students, just that its implementation requires less in the way of prep work and, well, training. For instance, my number 1 point is much easier with high school students as far as implementation. Once we’ve gotten through the first 2 weeks or so, they tend to become familiar with the daily agenda, calendars, and grade graphs I give them for their own use. Given time in the classroom, they can notate and use these things after being shown only once how they work. Middle schoolers take much more repetition and guidance in organizational tools. High schoolers (in my experience) tend to be more willing to ask questions. Middle schoolers need a lot of prompting to feel comfortable taking that chance. So effectiveness, I believe is still equal. It’s implementation and customization that I’ve felt were radically different in each setting.
I teach in Texas. I don’t know the numbers for our high school off-hand. I do know at this particular high school it’s very difficult to drop out, but not as difficult to get into an alternative program which offers a GED or diploma in a different way. You can’t “drop out” of school completely, but you can apply for one of these programs which offer self-study and etc.
There’s no real “tenure” in schools here, not at least as I’ve come to understand it in other states. I can (and will) be assigned to teach at whatever level I’m needed at. For instance, last year I taught 11th and 12th grade. At the end of the year I was told I would do so again. Then the numbers for our junior class sky-rocketed, and about a week before school started I was told I would teach all juniors. Next year will be as much of a toss-up. I can almost assume I will teach some juniors, since I’m the junior level team leader, and they don’t like having to switch team leaders if they can help it. But the other courses - I may be teaching freshmen again, or any other grade. We have a pretty fluid population here, depending greatly on economy and job opportunities, so I know that effects our numbers as well.
Do your numbers account for transience and early graduation? Thanks for your thoughts.
wow!
Beautiful!
This may be slightly off-topic but I thought of you today while reading an article on motivation in the ADI newsletter.
That article advocated using group rewards in certain instances (I’ll get it typed up at some point).
What do you think of that?
I was intrigued. Having had my own kid subjected to so much group punishment over the past two years, I’m strongly opposed to any and all use of group punishment. So my first reaction was to ask whether group reward is too close to comfort. (The group could lose the reward if one student didn’t do well, although the exercise was explicitly structured so as to make sure the class did earn the group reward.)
On the other hand, it struck me that the wisdom in trying to form “communities” of students may be the wisdom of teamwork.
It occurred to me that the constant focus on community and family and whatnot in middle schools might be OK if it’s always done with positives and never with negatives.
But I don’t know.
I am also interested in the group reward/punishment meme.
As the parent of well-behaved students, I’d say they experienced the group meme negatively — capricious/arbitrary enforcement (i.e., you are part of a group that is doing well, then seats are reassigned, and all ‘positive points’ you contributed to are lost, because you are now in a deficient group); you have no control/authority over negative behavior/outcome generated by the group; you are younger than junior high/middle school, when group dynamics/peer evaluation has ultimate sway.
Catherine, CJ,
wrote a post about Catherine’s question. Hope to see your feedback on it.