At the End of the School Year: Did You Do Enough to Help At-Risk Students?

 

On the last day of school, there are few teachers who don't look back on the year and wonder how they could have been more effective at reaching every student. Many teachers regret the opportunities that we missed to help students who are at risk of dropping out instead of graduating to a better future. We tend to question the many decisions we made during the school year regarding the students in our classes who were seriously struggling with tough problems such as attendance, academics, poverty, lack of readiness, or peer pressure.

 

While there are many promising programs and a great deal of support available for at-risk students, too many students still drop out of school. Perhaps one reason for this continuing problem is its complexity. Students can be at risk for dropping out for many reasons. Here are just a few possible contributing factors:

•        Family problems

•        Poor academic skills

•        Substance abuse

•        Pregnancy

•        Emotional problems

•        Chronic peer conflicts

•        Repeated failure in school

•        Inadequate parental supervision

•        Undiagnosed learning problems

•        Chronic illness

            It is undeniable: at-risk students depend on their teachers to help them stay in school. Instead of mentally beating yourself up for not taking full advantage of every chance that you had to help all of your students, think about how you can incorporate some of these simple, common sense strategies into your plans for the new school year that lies ahead.

•        Be persistent in your efforts to motivate at-risk students. Do not hesitate to let them know you plan to keep them in school as long as you can.

•        Spend time helping your students establish life goals so that they can see a larger purpose for staying in school. Without a purpose for learning, school seems like an exercise in futility to a student who wants to drop out.

•        Set small goals that will help students reach a larger one. If you can get them in the habit of achieving at least one small goal each day, they can build on this pattern of success.

•        Involve students in cooperative learning activities. Feeling connected to their classmates empowers and supports students who may be considering quitting school.

•        Invite guest speakers or older students to talk with younger ones about the importance of staying in school.

•        Offer open-ended questions so that at-risk students can attempt answers without fear of failure.

•        Be generous with praise and attention. Your kind words may often be the only ones your at-risk students will hear all day.

•        Assign work that is relevant and meaningful. If students see a purpose for their work, they may decide to stay in school.

•        Seek assistance from support personnel and family members. It takes many determined adults to change a student’s mind once he or she has decided to drop out.

•        Check on students when they are absent. Call their homes. Show your concern.

•        Create situations in which at-risk students can be successful. Perhaps they can tutor younger students, mediate peer conflict, or help you with classroom chores. Focus on their strengths.

•        Offer extra help and assistance to all of your students, but particularly to those at risk of dropping out.

•        Tailor activities to students’ preferred learning styles. When the work seems too difficult, at-risk students can often be successful if their teacher uses another modality to teach the material they need to know.

•        Connect to at-risk students in a positive way. Make sure that they understand that they are important to you and to their classmates.

To learn more about how you can help your at-risk students, begin with the Education World Web site (http://www.educationworld.com). You can access a wealth of information on how to help your students at risk of dropping out of school by using “at risk” as a keyword to search the site. You will find links to other sites, articles, motivational tools, and strategies for teachers.

Sometimes You Just Have to Let Go

It’s a hard lesson, but it’s important to realize that you are not going to win every battle you get into with your students. A while ago, I was asked to help a teacher who was in an absolutely awful situation—four weeks of school left, and she had just taken over as a long-term sub after several other subs had come and gone.  If you have ever been in this miserable position, I bet you just shuddered at the memory.

               The kids were pretty much running the show. There were not many procedures in place and no clear expectations. Students were doing the parts of the assignment that they felt like doing. They were off task. They were argumentative. They were acting like kids do when there is not someone to guide them. It was unpleasant to be in that class—for the kids and certainly for their teacher—who, even more heart-breaking--was brand new to teaching.

               As I talked with the teacher to help her create some sort structure for her class, I realized that she was not taking in anything I had to say. She was so focused on an unpleasant incident involving a disrespectful student that she simply could not listen. All she could focus on was that a student had been rude to her and had refused to apologize when an apology was demanded.

               Instead of talking about what she could do to make her classroom more productive, our conversation kept circling back to the rude student. Even worse, the incident had happened two weeks earlier. For two long weeks, this teacher had been mentally replaying the incident. She wanted to resolve the situation in such a way that she won. No matter what I said, I could not convince her that she was not going to win this battle. Not ever.

               You have probably done something similar. You’ve taken the unpleasant parts of your school day home with you or lain awake worrying over something that went wrong in class. Working with students of any age can sometimes be discouraging and stressful. You just can’t take any of the bad things that happen at school personally. Sometimes the only way to really win is to just let go. Focus on what you can change. Let go of the rest.

Ten Quick Review Ideas for the End of the School Year

By this time in the school year, many of us are out of fresh ideas when it comes to reviewing for exams or standardized tests. While you may already know some activities that will appeal to your students, you may want to break up the routine just a bit. Try some of these activities to increase retention and have fun at the same time. Ask students to:

1. Use individual whiteboards to write and then share responses to questions.
2. Have students make three dimensional graphic organizers with main ideas. See who can make the most complete graphic organizer within a set time limit.
3. Divide a paper into several blocks and write a review fact in one of the blocks. They then ball up the paper and toss it to a classmate who adds a different fact. This continues until all blocks are filled.
4.  Create flashcards and study them together. Quizlet.com is a great online site for this activity.
5. Write captions to photos, cartoons, and other illustrations about the topic.
6. Play board games based on the topic or create and play their own board games.
7. Tell classmate two facts. That classmate has to repeat them and add two more. Continue around the room
8. Hold a contest to see who can write the most about the topic within a time limit. Share with the class.
9. Create their own “legal cheat sheets” to use during a test.
10. Have students record a series of facts or other important information on their phones and listen to the facts over and over until they know them.

 

Six Sure-Fire Strategies that Will Help You Make It until the End of the School Year

School is almost over for the year. If you are like most of us, your students’ plans for the school day are vastly different from yours. While you are thinking of lofty goals such as success on standardized tests and productive learning until the very last day, your students are focused on absolutely avoiding all work, playing around in class, and annoying every adult within sight. Those children you found so lovable in January are now unmotivated, bored, restless, whiny…and you are out of patience.

Since snarling threats just does not seem to be an effective deterrent for most students, it’s time to make a solid plan to make it through to the end of the year without losing your enthusiasm and sanity.  Try these strategies to see if you can’t redirect those end-of-the-year impulses into more positive school experiences for your students and yourself.

Strategy One: Reduce distractions. The old image of restless students staring dreamily out of the window has much truth in it. Students of all ages are always able to entertain themselves by paying attention to distractions rather than focusing on the teacher. Some obvious sources of distractions might be windows, desks too close together, doorways, pencil sharpeners, trash cans, bees or other spring bugs in the classroom, graffiti, or—the most enticing one of all—other students.

Strategy Two: Monitor constantly. Monitoring your students is of primary importance for the smooth running of your class for a variety of reasons, not just for efficient time use. Walking around the classroom instead of sitting at your desk will allow you to help students while their problems are still manageable.

Strategy Three: Become supremely organized. If your students have to wait while you find your textbook or a handout, that is a poor use of their time. Make it a point to be so organized that you will be able to keep yourself and your students on task. Now is not the time to expect students to wait quietly while you rummage around trying to find more handouts.

Strategy Four: Have a backup plan for your backup plan. If a lesson isn’t going well, if a guest speaker cancels, or if the equipment you need to use isn’t working, you will need an alternative way to teach the material you planned to cover. And, since warm weather has a way of knocking out even the best back up plan, be sure to have another one handy.  Keep in mind that since students are so easily bored this time of year, you will need to offer several small activities instead of one or two longer ones.

Strategy Five: Take a door-to-door approach. Engage students in learning from the time they enter your classroom until the time they leave. Many teachers make the mistake of thinking that students need a few minutes of free time at the start of class and at the end of class to relax. Although students do need time at both ends of class to make effective transitions, they do not need free time to do this. Free time and the end of the school year is a miserable combination destined for trouble.

Strategy Six: Assign enough work. If students finish a task, there should be another waiting for them. For example, students who sit around after a test waiting for others to finish before going on to the next activity are obviously wasting time. Always make sure that your students know what they are supposed to do after they finish their current assignment. Keep them engaged.

DID YOU CREATE YOUR OWN BAD DAY?

The good news is that sometimes we are the problem. Not our students. Us. If we stop to think about the things that go wrong in our classes, lots of times a problem could have been avoided or at least minimized. If we are the ones causing the problems, then we can be the ones to solve the problems. It is much easier for us to control our own behaviors rather than the behaviors of our most unruly students.

To help you with this, here is a little list that you can copy and print out to help you reflect on what you may be doing to cause discipline issues in your classroom and, more importantly, what you can do to solve those issues.

 

Mistake 1

You are unclear in the limits you set for your students, resulting in a constant testing of the boundaries and of your patience.

Mistake 2

You are too vague in giving directions to your students.

Mistake 3

You are inconsistent in enforcing consequences. This will lead students to a steady testing of the limits of good and bad behaviors.

Mistake 4

You go to school each day without the belief you must have in order to help your students succeed: that students can learn and achieve the things you want for them.

Mistake 5

You overreact to a discipline problem by becoming angry and upset.

Mistake 6

You refuse to listen to your students when they are trying to express their feelings about a problem.

Mistake 7

You present yourself in too tentative a fashion—too easily side-tracked, too tentative, too permissive.

Mistake 8

You give too many negative directions. This sets an unpleasant tone for your students.

Mistake 9

You try to solve discipline problems without trying to determine the underlying causes.

 

Mistake 10

You neglect to command attention. Teachers who talk even though students aren’t listening are not productive.

Mistake 11

You have lessons that are poorly paced. Students either have too much work to do and give up or they don’t have enough work. You also make this mistake when you have lectures that are so long that you can’t keep your students’ attention throughout.

Mistake 12

You make mistakes in assigning punishment by doing so without proof or by blaming the wrong student.

 

 

Have You Asked Yourself These Questions Lately?

Highly effective teachers soon realize that no one is a natural teacher. No educator can just rush through the hurly burly of a school day paying cursory attention to what we are expected to accomplish and then expect to be successful. Reflecting on our teaching should be part of every aspect of our professional lives. Such reflection needs to systematic, methodical, and purposeful.

Whether you choose to maintain a journal online, in a computer desktop folder, on paper, or even in an audio version, it is important to be diligent about recording regularly. The questions below can help you use the time that you want to reflect on your teaching practice as efficiently as possible.

1. Are my goals for lessons reasonable and appropriate?
2. Are my students challenged to do their best?
3. Do students learn what they are supposed to master? How can I ensure that they always do this?
4. At what points in a lesson do I have to change strategies or activities? Why? How productive was this flexibility on my part?
5. How can I offer remediation or enrichment activities to the students who need them?
6. What data do I need to collect before moving on to the next unit of study? How can I gather this information?
7. What can I do to improve my skills at collaborating with colleagues?
8. How do I want my students to interact with each other as a whole group?
9. What can I do to help my students collaborate with each other in small groups?
10. How can I integrate technology into my lessons?
11. What problems did I have to manage today? How well did I manage those problems?
12. How well do I listen to my students? What can I do to make sure that I model good listening skills?
13. Which students were off task? What caused them to be off task?
14. When were my students on task? What can I do to guarantee that continues?
15. How did I show that I was enthusiastic about the subject matter?
16. How can I foster an atmosphere of mutual respect and courtesy among my students?
17. How well do I manage my classroom? What can I improve?
18. What should I do to help my students learn to be self-disciplined learners?
19. How can I use my strengths as a teacher to full advantage in my classroom?
20. What are my strengths as a classroom leader?

Are You Using Best Practices to Inform Instruction?

“Best practices” is a term that seems to be kicked around lots in discussions among educators. Although we all may have a general idea of what the term means (the actions that teachers can take to insure that their instruction is effective, appropriate, and productive), and that we should be using these practices to help our students learn, you may not be sure that an instructional method that you are using is really a best practice or not.

               With this in mind, take this little assessment. Below you will find a list of just some of the more common strategies that are considered to be best practices. If you are already using one of these practices in your classroom, place a checkmark in the blank before it. If you intend to use one of these in the future, place a + in the blank. If you would like to research to learn more about one of these best practices to make sure that it would be appropriate for your students, place a ? in the blank.

1. _____Portfolio assessments
2. _____Alternative assessments
3. _____Formative assessments
4. _____Personalized instruction
5. _____Service learning
6. _____Rubrics
7. _____Response to intervention
8. _____Cooperative learning
9. _____Tiered instruction
10. _____Scaffolding instruction
11. _____Literacy instruction
12. _____Anchoring activities
13. _____Graphic organizers
14. _____Essential questions
15. _____Project based learning
16. _____Student-directed learning
17. _____Workshop approaches to reading and writing
18. _____Interdisciplinary instruction
19. _____Inquiry based instruction
20. _____Authentic experiences
21. _____Data-driven instruction
22. _____Integrated technology
23. _____Standards-based curriculums
24. _____Benchmark testing
25. _____Capitalizing on background knowledge
26. _____Differentiated instruction
27. _____Learning styles
28. _____Multiple intelligences
29. _____The teacher as coach and facilitator
30. _____Student research