On: The “Curriculum" of Conduct
Colleen Rogers
Today I got to sit in on
three inaugural webinars that featured the latest strands in “educational
trending”. Every teacher has witnessed
many cycles of these buzz-word initiatives. Each initiative is hard to recall
individually, but none of them generally seems to last too long.
My colleagues and I have
been trained “soldiers” in everything from “No Child Left Behind” to “Race to
the Top” to “Common Core”. It is part of
our accountability to assure that the tenants of these “trending initiatives” are
met at the classroom level. We dutifully
attempt to execute each, even if we don’t know how to do so, or we aren’t sure
why the directives remain in place.
The framework for each of
these “movements” is, in an obtuse way, a reflective mirror of the veiled
concerns society has for the “shortcomings”
of our children. Today’s webinars
featured three themes--student apathy, students learning from failure, and teachers
modeling humanity. My takeaway from the
webinars...
1.
Students don’t care
2.
Students give up
3.
Students don’t know how to
treat others
Notice that none of the three webinars dealt with the actual instruction
of content. Essentially, teachers are
not truly teaching much subject matter anymore...they are teaching students
the rudimentary social skills that customarily would have once been parental
responsibilities.
Our first presenter
addressed student apathy indicators with these pointed questions:
What happens when a
teacher assigns a project and only 3/20 students submit completed work? At what point do students have a “wearing
off” of their own motivation for doing things in a class? What gets in a student's way before they
complete tasks? When do students start to “not care” in the classroom?
Our speaker presented the
Self-Determination Theory, and the ways a teacher might re-focus students to value
intrinsic vs. extrinsic reasons for learning.
The key to doing this is threefold:
1.
Give the student
autonomy--example: let students make
independent choices for formatting their class projects
2.
Recognize varied levels of
competencies--example: let students
complete projects at their own level of “understandability”
3.
Promote relatedness or
“connectedness”--example: strive for
human interactions and a sense of community in the classroom
The goal in the classroom
should be to encourage students to thrive without their teacher, and to have
their motivation stem from within. Our
presenter cited studies that concluded that by providing students with an
overabundance of extrinsic rewards (certificates, trophies, etc.), we are
actually decreasing their desire to get internal satisfaction from learning.
The presenter suggested
that instead of having students complete the traditional written “getting-to-know-you-at-the-beginning-of-the-year”
questionnaires, verbally ask students these questions instead:
1.
What is the most important
thing you can learn in school?
2.
What do you think makes
other students lose their motivation?
The answers students provide to these questions should give you some essential lesson planning guidelines.
The presenter on student
failure suggested working toward and emphasizing skill development. Lesson
planning should be directed toward your response to this question:
What do I want the
students to be able to do?
This goal-direction shifts
activities toward student mastery as opposed to the achievement of “test
success”.
Additionally, by posting a
“menu” of choices for student assignments, and by doing project-based
assessments, the fear of failure is minimized for many students. Students should be able to “discuss” their assignment
grades as well, having opportunities to re-vamp their work to earn higher
scores. The teacher should rest on the
motto “if you try, you don’t fail”.
Our third presenter suggested
that teachers achieve more “global competency” by understanding that many
students may be in survival mode before even coming to school. Teachers need to question how students are feeling,
and focus on what students DO bring to school, instead of berating their
students’ deficits.
For example, a student may
be chronically late to school because they are taking their siblings to school
while their Mom completes her night shift.
Rather than focus on this student’s tardiness, tell the student that
you’re “glad they are here”.
Our presenter also suggested
pairing students with peers to help them build mutual empathy. Align the “social butterfly” students with
those who struggle to interact with others. There is importance, also, in consciously displaying
students’ work to help them build self-esteem.
Planning events that are community-based, with students receiving a broader
range of accolades for their school work, goes a long way in helping students
form connections with the community-at-large.
It is now imperative,
according to these presenters, that teachers spend a greater block of time at
the beginning of the school year creating a “climate” for learning. The front-end emphasis on generating
teacher-student rapport, instructing coping techniques for perceived failures,
and modeling interactive social behaviors for students suddenly “outweighs” the
need for outlining content.
Teachers now spend a
greater percentage of their day teaching students “how to become decent human
beings”. What this indicates is the
sense that there is generalized parental abdication.
A teacher’s role is increasingly guided toward the stabilization of students’
psyches in the classroom. Teachers need
to make an effort to understand why students “no longer care”, why they are
more prone to quit in the classroom, and why they lack the anticipated social
behaviors teachers used to expect as standard conduct.
The following article has
some quick, easy ways to generate teacher-student rapport with your students--these suggested techniques can be used daily to continue to
build classroom connections:
“Four Quick Ways to Build
Rapport With Students
(Even the Ones that Are
Hardest to Reach)”
Instead of providing
coping techniques for failure, this article includes some helpful ways
to assist students in completing their class assignments:
“Seventeen Ways to Get Your Students to Actually Do Their Work”
To demonstrate classroom
routines, appropriate behavior and social skills in the classroom, teachers
may opt to use the interactive modeling techniques outlined in the following resource:
“What is Interactive
Modeling?/Responsive Classroom”
https://www.responsiveclassroom.org/what-interactive-modeling/
Teachers might consider these
additional standards to enhance their profile in their school and
community:
“25 Ways Teachers Can Be
Role Models”
https://www.educationdegree.com/articles/25-ways-teachers-can-b
And finally, if you don’t
have a running tab with Teachers Pay Teachers, or are not a devotee of
Pinterest--here are some freebie behavioral charts that may be adaptable for use in your own
classroom:
https://www.freeprintablebehaviorcharts.com/
Continue to have a great school year!
Image From:
https://www.teacher.org/daily/managing-student-behavior/
