As part of our latest staff meeting, after the news about various 5k races, wear pink day, grow-a-beard month, and a survey that we should complete, there was a "roll-out" of our new classroom behavior management system. Now, dear Imaginary Reader, my fairly successful behavior management system up till now has been to treat disruptive students with a combination of stinkeye, direct instruction on poor behaviour, and end with "Do I Make Myself Clear?" It's a model that helped me raise four headstrong teenagers into kind, polite, successful, taxpaying adults. Why, even when members of the Tribe were awarded In-School Suspension for throwing each other into the pool with their clothes on, skipping class or going home for lunch, administration always remarked at how polite and well-mannered they were as they accepted their time in the penalty box. It was a small kernel of hope, that boys who cared little for school could still be polite without being sociopathic. It warmed a mother's heart.
The staff meeting came on the heels of a week where two American teachers were killed in the line of duty, by a student. So I understand where the whole "behavior management" strategy comes from. But over the past two years, we have been introduced to: two data collection programs; two behavior strategies (bullying and just in-general); Common Core standards;test prep importance; along with our new role as scapegoats for the ills of our nation. Data, behavior, and testing seem to be driving the school bus these days. The place for genuine, direct instruction is getting smaller and smaller.
And, PS- teachers are not the ones buying the distracting smartphones for students.
Nothing was said about the two dead teachers at the staff meeting. All I could think of was how I had instructed my five classes in the best place to take cover during a lockdown and why; how I had them divide into quadrants and identify their "safe corner" as per protocol in the event of a shooter, asking them to point to where their "safe spot" was, then, return to a lesson with that image of huddling in a corner trailing alongside of a powerpoint on rhetorical terms. And how this has nothing to do with grammar, writing, or The Great Gatsby, yet we expect kids to just accept this as a part of their life in school. Have we become so inured to school violence that it has become equivalent to anticipating a plane crash on takeoff?
So what's a conscientious teacher to do? One of the first things you learn in adolescence is that safety is essential for learning. We create a school family. We bring food. We bring movies. We have class discussions about fear and loss and kindness and resilience. We encourage the timid, console the frustrated, placate the angry. We listen to both sides, and don't judge. We tell them to write it down,we put on a brave face, tell them it's ok, it's ok, we care about you, high school is not all there is to life. And at the end of the year, we hope all the kids are all right, even if their test scores aren't stellar, even if that means a drop in our evaluation scores. No accidents, no arrests,no hospitalizations, no drug overdoses. That would be a successful year.
Survey question: "Morale in my department is good."
As colleagues worked on the behavior management worksheet for our Staff Meeting Activity, we were a little dismayed. Dismayed because our grades were due in a couple of hours, and the grading program has been glitchy. Dismayed because we knew that tomorrow, when grades are posted, there will be many emails from parents asking us to raise their child's grades, because their 1st quarter average is lower than expected, and their child is: a) scouted for athletics by D1 colleges b) applying to Ivy League schools c) worked so hard. Dismayed because we have to try to teach students who are unprepared for school, who do little reading or writing at home, whose expectations are success without effort. Dismayed because we love our content area, we love being with teenagers & encouraging and coaching them, and dismayed because none of us wants to take a bullet, but we're kind of expected to, now.
The School Where I Studied
I passed by the school where I studied as a boy
and said in my heart: here I learned certain things
and didn't learn others. All my life I have loved in vain
the things I didn't learn. I am filled with knowledge,
I know all about the flowering of the tree of knowledge,
the shape of its leaves, the function of its root system, its pests and parasites.
I'm an expert on the botany of good and evil,
I'm still studying it, I'll go on studying till the day I die.
I stood near the school building and looked in. This is the room
where we sat and learned. The windows of a classroom always open
to the future, but in our innocence we thought it was only landscape
we were seeing from the window.
The schoolyard was narrow, paved with large stones.
I remember the brief tumult of the two of us
near the rickety steps, the tumult
that was the beginning of a first great love.
Now it outlives us, as if in a museum,
like everything else in Jerusalem.
Source: Poetry (September 1999).
Brilliance in a dimly lit room...you.
ReplyDeletei would raise my imaginary hand, if you could
see it. When called upon, all
i would have is gratitude.