Solving Classroom Problems Now and in the Future

By nature, we teachers are incurable optimists. One of the very best aspects of this very busy time of year for busy educators is that we tend to look back on our year to see what we did right and what we could have improved while at the same time we are able to look ahead to a new, fresh year that is just a few months in the future. Even if you are one of those teachers whose school year has already drawn to a close, the chances are good that you have slips of paper or electronic notes filled with ideas that you want to try out next year.

 In addition to the more creative and positive things that you want to change about how you run your classroom and how you will connect with your students next year, you may want to take a fresh look at how you solve classroom problems. Although we may have the best of intentions and plans at the start of a school day, it’s highly likely that within an hour of arriving at school we will have to solve both big and small problems. Often we will have to solve these problems in front of about thirty or more curious students, too.  Often the entire balance of the success or failure of a school day can depend on how well you manage to solve the classroom problems that confront you.

 It’s important to think about the approaches that you want to take when dealing with a classroom problem. To make this easier, think about it in terms of these questions. They can serve as a guide when you are facing a conundrum.

• Who is involved in the problem?

• Who is being harmed by the problem? How?

• What appears to be the underlying cause of the problem?

• What rules, procedures, or policies affect this problem?

• What will happen if I ignore the problem?

• What is the simplest solution to the problem? How workable is this solution?

• How can I treat the students involved in the problem with dignity and respect?

• Where can I find help with this problem?

• How can I enlist my students’ support in such a way that they move toward self-discipline?

• What am I doing that may be having a negative impact on the problem?

 In addition, here are some other basic principles of problem solving that could make the entire process a bit easier for you in the future.

• Begin with small interventions. Save the office referrals for serious problems.

• Solve the problem instead of punishing the child.

• Follow school rules and policies.

• Make sure that the punishment fits the crime.

• Maintain a positive relationship with each student.

• If your first attempt is not successful, try another one. Then another one … as many as it takes.

• Ignore as much as you can.

• Minimize disruptions by maximizing students’ time on task.

• When things are not going well, try to see the problem through your students’ eyes.

• Think before you act.
 

Are Your Students Too Busy Talking to Learn?

One of the most frustrating feelings that any teacher can experience is the hopelessness that comes when our students are so busy talking that they don't listen to us or work productively. Unfortunately, having a class that is excessively talkative is one of the most frequent complaints that many teachers--experienced and novice alike-- share. It is disheartening at best to plan a wonderful lesson that no student is interested in.

The problem of the talkative class is also one that is amazingly uniform across all grade levels and subjects. Large classes, small classes, very young students and sophisticated seniors can all be so talkative that little learning can occur. After all, they outnumber us by thirty or so noisy people to one teacher!

Luckily, there are a few easy approaches that can help your students take charge of their own talking patterns and learn to work well with each other and with you. Try some of these to help control the talking in your classroom.

Scenario


You have a class that talks and talks and talks. They talk indiscriminately to you and to each other. While you certainly don’t want a class that is silent and dull, the excessive talking in this class prevents students from accomplishing everything you have planned for the day’s lesson. You are not just tired of trying to cope with the noise, but even more tired of trying to teach over their constant din.

Your Goals

• To raise student awareness about the harmful effects of excessive talking

• To encourage appropriate talking and discourage inappropriate talking

• To empower students so that they can cope with this issue themselves instead of being nagged by a teacher

Approaches to Take

Spend time observing your students to find the cause of the problem. Are they excited because of the time of day? Bored and restless? Unaware of the effect of their talking? Unsure of how to do their work well? Once you have determined some of the causes for their talking, work to figure out how to turn this into an advantage instead of a class failing.

Be very clear with your students when you discuss this issue. They should know when it is acceptable for them to talk and when they should be working silently or listening carefully. Setting clear limits and communicating those limits reduce your students’ tendencies to test the boundaries of your tolerance.

Be aware that sometimes you may be the cause of the problem. Once your students are settled and working, be careful not to keep talking to the whole class. Work with individuals at that point instead of distracting the entire group.

Take care to pace instruction so that once students finish an assignment they have plenty of other work to do with a minimum of transition time. Students without enough to do will find time to chatter.

Establish signals with your class so that they know when to stop talking. Many teachers find it helpful to enlist students in this process because it promotes student ownership.

If students are excited about an upcoming event, allow them to spend a timed minute or two talking before settling down to work. Clearing the air this way shows students that you are willing to be fair.

Teach students that they must be responsible for their own talking. Use positive peer pressure to your advantage. Chart their successful attempts at managing their excessive talking with a large bar or pie graph and then provide a small tangible reward for those students who are successful. Once students see that they can be successful at managing their own noise levels, they will be likely to continue in a positive trend.

Mistakes to Avoid

Avoid the sound-wave cycle of a loud class time followed by a quiet time followed by a loud time again by being very consistent in how you enforce the rules you establish about when it is acceptable for students to talk. Set clear limits and stick to them instead of appearing the least bit fuzzy on this issue.

Don’t allow students to have a great deal of down time where they don’t have anything to do but chitchat loudly with their classmates.

Don’t forget that it is important to help students focus on an assignment at the start of a lesson and then periodically throughout the class period. Reasonable timed wiggle breaks make it easier for students to not only stay on task but to talk appropriately with their classmates.

Don’t expect students to be quiet all class long. Build in a variety of activities so that their interactions can be positive ones.

Julia Thompson to Partner with Share My Lesson as a Presenter

www.juliagthompson.com

 

Natalie Dean, Share My Lesson

natalie.dean@sharemylesson.com

202-756-0291

 

Julia Thompson to Partner with Share My Lesson as a Presenter

at the First-Ever Ideas and Innovations Virtual Conference for Teachers and Parents

 

Julia Thompson has been named a presenter during the Teaching & Learning: Ideas and Innovations virtual conference, taking place on the afternoons and evenings of March 11-13. The three-day series of workshops is being sponsored by Share My Lesson, the nation's fastest-growing online site for free teaching resources.

 

Thompson's presentation, Creating Self-Disciplined Students, will run from 9-10 pm on the evening of Thursday, March 13. Join in the conversation!

Ideas and Innovations is an online symposium of professional learning featuring over two dozen free workshops by Share My Lesson’s content partners, educational leaders, and expert teachers. Attendees can expect engaging webinars on topics ranging from arts education and civics to the Common Core. With two-dozen webinars to choose from, there's something for every educator and parent.

“‘A self-disciplined learner is one who is willing to do the right thing at the right time.’ Join me as I present ideas designed to help you encourage your students to become the self-disciplined learners they are capable of becoming.” ~Julia Thompson, author of First-Year Teacher’s Survival Guide

“Share My Lesson is committed to reclaiming the promise of public education by supporting educators and parents, giving them the resources and professional learning they need to be successful,” said Scott Noon, general manager of Share My Lesson. “The free conference is a way to support effective practice, help teachers to be aware of our content partners, and provide teachers with opportunities to network and collaborate.”

 

Participation in the conference is exclusive to registered Share My Lesson users. Registration for the site and conference workshops is entirely free, however. For those seeking professional learning credits, registration for each workshop should be done individually to track attendance. For more information, visit www.sharemylesson.com/conference.

 

 

ABOUT SHARE MY LESSON

Share My Lesson was developed by the American Federation of Teachers, a union of over 1.5 million professionals, and TSL Education, creators of TES Connect, the largest network of teachers in the world. Share My Lesson is an award-winning online professional development community where educators can come together to share their greatest teaching resources and collaborate on best practices at no cost. Share My Lesson features a significant resource bank aligned to the Common Core State Standards, including advice and guidance to aid in their successful implementation. Share My Lesson is the 2014 Codie Award winner for Best Crowd Sourced Solution. For more, visit www.sharemylesson.com.

Fifty Don'ts to Save Your Career

1.     Don’t allow small problems to become large ones.

2.     Don’t refuse to honor school rules even if you don’t agree with them.

3.     Don’t try to teach without being prepared.

4.     Don’t touch a student in a way that could be misconstrued.

5.     Don’t model a lack of integrity. Follow the rules for photocopying material and showing movies.

6.      Don’t use food as a reward.

7.     Don’t allow yourself to be alone with a student.

8.     Don’t curse or use nonstandard English around your students.

9.     Don’t neglect to return phone calls within twenty-four hours.

10.  Don’t leave your students unattended even briefly.

11.  Don’t overlook serious student problems such as drug and alcohol abuse, neglect, or weapons.

12.  Don’t give students free time where they have nothing to do.

13.  Don’t be a boring teacher. Mix it up!

14.  Don’t be sarcastic. You are the grownup in the room.

15.  Don’t allow students to make fun of each other or to otherwise engage in horseplay.

16.  Don’t give up on your students who struggle.

17.  Don’t agree “not to tell” when a student tells you confidential information. You may be legally required to act on it.

18.  Don’t take suicide threats lightly.

19.  Don’t allow students to leave campus with an unauthorized adult.

20.  Don’t ignore the signs that your students are restless and bored with a lesson.

21.  Don’t allow students to sleep because they are “not bothering anyone.”

22.  Don’t ignore your own stress levels.

23.  Don’t break the laws regarding confidentiality and privacy of student information.

24.  Don’t try to be a pal to your students. They already have friends.

25.  Don’t neglect to spend enough time learning school rules and procedures.

26.  Don’t act in anger.

27.  Don’t fail to allow for differences in learning styles.

28.  Don’t underestimate the importance of motivation before, during, and after a lesson.

29.  Don’t call in sick when you are not sick.

30.  Don’t hesitate to ask for help.

31.  Don’t assign work as punishment.

32.  Don’t assume students are mastering the material. Monitor carefully.

33.  Don’t lower your expectations when students find the work difficult. Help them instead.

34.  Don’t be inconsistent in implementing your behavior policies.

35.  Don’t hide your mistakes from a mentor or administrator. Ask for help when you are in error.

36.  Don’t confront a misbehaving student in front of other students.

37.  Don’t get in a win/lose situation with a student, student’s parent, or a colleague.

38.  Don’t take the unpleasant aspects of student misbehavior personally.

39.  Don’t punish the entire group for the misbehavior of one or two students.

40.  Don’t hold grudges when your students misbehave.

41.  Don’t forget to teach classroom rules and procedures as often as it takes.

42.  Don’t be too tentative, too permissive.

43.  Don’t give too many negative directions.

44.  Don’t overreact to a simple situation.

45.  Don’t neglect to set boundaries for your students.

46.  Don’t avoid proofreading your own work.

47.  Don’t call parents without being prepared and professional.

48.  Don’t begin teaching without having their attention.

49.  Don’t forget that young people don’t always use good judgment.

50.  Don’t forget to look beyond the behaviors you can observe to determine the underlying causes.

Twenty Ways to Help Students Learn to Be Accountable

                 

 

 

                   If you are like most educators at this time of the year, you are probably more than ready for your students to assume more responsibility for their own success. To be more self-disciplined. To learn to hold themselves accountable for their work and behavior. Unfortunately, our students do not learn accountability quickly or with a few easy strategies or even very predictably. Instead helping students learn to be accountable is an ongoing process that involves consistent effort on our parts. Hang in there. The end result is well worth the effort. Here are twenty things to consider as you move your students forward.

 

           1.        Involve parents or guardians as often as it takes for you to create an effective team of caring adults who want to help a child succeed.

                  2.        Teach your students how to do their work. Students should be taught the study skills they need to reach the standards you have for them.

                  3.        Call on every student every day. Allow no student to be invisible in your classroom.

                  4.        Return graded papers promptly so that students know what they should do to improve.

                  5.        Make sure your comments on assignments are geared to helping students correct their errors and improve their performance.

                  6.        Foster responsibility through the daily routines and procedures you establish for your students. Involve them in routine classroom-management tasks.

                  7.        Teach your students to pace themselves by paying attention to the time it takes for them to complete various types of assignments. Teach them how to estimate the amount of time it will take to complete assignments and how to time themselves.

                  8.        Keep your interactions with individual students brief enough so that your attention can stay focused on the rest of the class as well. Don’t allow your time to be monopolized by one attention-seeking student at the expense of the others in the class.

                  9.        Make sure your students know that you pay attention to them. Students who know their teacher is paying attention to their behavior are not going to misbehave as readily as those students who believe they can get away with bad behavior.

                10.      Hold your students to the same behavior standards for substitute teachers that you expect when you are in the room. Discuss this with them in advance of the time when you will be absent; you will find that your students behave much better than if you adopt a “kids will be kids” attitude.

                11.      Refuse to allow your students to sleep or to do homework for other classes in your class. They should be doing your work in your class.

                12.      Make it a point that you expect 100% accuracy in student work. Some students will aim to just get by with a minimum of work unless you encourage them to do otherwise.

                13.      Have students edit or double-check each other’s work before turning it in. Peer editing works best if you provide students with a checklist of standards to follow while proofreading.

                14.      Instead of having all of your students shout out answers in an oral activity, ask them to write their responses first and then answer when you call on them. This will force everyone to think before responding.

                15.      Plan the procedures you want your students to follow in case they don’t have their materials or textbooks in class. Don’t allow students to get away with not working because they don’t have their materials.

                16.      When you are moving around the room to monitor activity, ask your students to underline the answers they think are correct and circle the ones that puzzle them so that you can work together to make sure they understand how to do all of their work well.

                17.      If you find that some of your students are reluctant to accomplish their work on schedule, contact their parents or guardians. If students know that their progress is being monitored at home as well as in class, they usually perform better.

                18.      If you see that students have trouble grasping an assignment, reteach the material. Don’t allow students to rest on their ignorance.

                19.      When students miss the answer to a question, ask them to write the correct answer on their papers. Students should be held accountable for correcting their papers.

                20.      Make neatness an important component of the work in your classroom. You don’t have to be a perfectionist, but you should expect your students to turn in neat work.

Overcoming a Negative School Climate

In the movies, whenever there is a "tough" school, it's obvious. Lots of graffiti, big really mean looking kids, uncaring teachers, metal detectors, armed guards patrolling the hallways, and a pervasive sense of doom.

In reality, lots of schools can have a negative school climate without all of the cinematic trappings. Just low test scores and the struggle to help students overcome the obstacles to success can take a toll on any school. And that would be just the beginning.

In Discipline Survival Guide for the Secondary Teacher, I offered some small suggestions for those teachers who want to take a constructive stance toward the despair that permeates a building with a negative climate.

The most important thing to remember, though, is that any climate can be changed if enough people work together to make it happen. Start small, but start.

"Despite our best intentions of providing a positive, productive classroom environment for every student, when the schoolwide climate is negative, we struggle to teach and our students struggle to succeed. Contrary to what many people may believe, schools with a negative environment are not confined to the inner city or to impoverished rural areas. Any school can have a negative climate.

 Although there are many influences that can have a negative bearing on the climate of a school, there are some that are obvious: an unsafe location, a history of low academic success, a strong gang presence, a physical plant that is in need of cleaning and repair, a lack of effective procedures and policies, and a lack of administrative support for teachers, just to name a few.

 Unfortunately, schools with a negative climate are easy to identify. At these schools students tend to

• Focus on other activities instead of academics

• Report that they do not feel safe

• Experience little academic success

• Have poor attendance

• Experience problems with their peers as well as with their teachers

• See very little purpose for an education

• Flaunt school rules

• Report that their morale or school spirit is low

• Experience class disruptions due to violence and threats of violence

• Have a high percentage of discipline referrals

   If you teach in a school where the environment is not always constructive, there is a great deal that you can do to make a positive difference in the lives of your students. More than other teachers, the effectual educators in a school where the environment is not positive tend to direct their students toward the future. They help students establish goals and develop skills that will lead to a productive and happy life ahead.

 In order to manage this, though, your attitude should be one of realistic optimism. Teachers who are effective in schools with negative climates are not unmindful of the daily challenges that they and their students face. Instead, they acknowledge their problems and then find ways to solve or at least manage them so that students can be successful.

 Along with a sense of realistic optimism, successful teachers in a school where the climate is not positive tend to acknowledge the big picture of the school and not just focus on the problem areas. This perspective will allow you to acknowledge the problems you encounter at school and then move forward to help students find success.

 Finally, these teachers also tend to believe that change is possible and that they are the agents of that change. With this attitude firmly in place, teachers have been known to inspire entire classes to reach unprecedented and unanticipated success.

 With this attitude, you will have a much greater chance of successfully managing your daily challenges than if you spend your days bemoaning your school’s problems. In addition to these productive attitudes, there are several strategies that you can use to cope with the negative elements of your school’s climate.

• Start small. Keep your classroom clean and organized so that students have an orderly place for learning.

• Focus on the positive elements in your school and work to strengthen them. Become a band booster, football team fan, or sponsor of a student club.

• You should involve as many people as you can to make positive changes at your school. Enlist support and help from student organizations, community groups, the parents and families of your students, and your colleagues.

• Do what you can to strengthen your students’ literacy and math skills. In secondary schools, many of the problems that began when students were younger impede their ability to learn independently.

Fourteen Resolutions for the New Year

It’s a natural combination at this time of year—New Year’s resolutions and a reflective teaching practice. While Winter Break gives us a few days away from school, we have an opportunity to gain perspective. No matter how busy our holidays are, most of us can’t resist the impulse to think about school and our students and the work that we need to do as soon as our break ends.

Now is a good time to use that impulse to create resolutions that can bring your dreams for a well-run classroom filled with successful, high-achieving students closer to reality. In honor of 2014, here are fourteen productive resolutions that you may want to consider adopting as part of your own teaching practice in the year ahead. Pick and choose what will work for you. If you would like to share your own resolutions, feel free to make comments. Learning from our colleagues is a great way to begin a new year.

Resolution 1: Respect your students. I know this seems simple, but too often we overlook what our students are capable of achieving because we are focused on what they don’t know or can’t do. Instead of seeing them as competent learners, we see them in terms of what they lack instead of what they are.

Resolution 2: Manage your stress. The last day of school is a long way away. Start employing as many simple strategies as you can to keep your work life and your personal life in balance. Using brief, purposeful actions to ward off the ill effects of chronic stress every day will make a huge difference in your fatigue levels.

Resolution 3: Plan as far ahead as you possibly can. For example, if you know that you are going to be giving a test in two weeks, you have time to create and photocopy it well in advance of the long line of frustrated teachers waiting their time at the copier on the day you want to give it. Knowing what your students are going to be doing for the rest of the year is a positive step that will make it easier for you to use class time wisely.

Resolution 4: Shake it up. No one says that lessons have to be dull to be effective. Use as many different strategies as you can to reach your students. Let them be creative and messy and loud if they are still learning at the same time. Don’t be afraid to experiment.

Resolution 5: Explore different ways to increase your own productivity. If, for example, you have a tall stack of papers to grade, instead of plowing through it with a red pen, investigate other ways to use those papers to help your students learn. Ask your colleagues. Use your imagination. Again, don’t be afraid to experiment.

 Resolution 6: Use the resources available to you. Create a PLN, open a Twitter account, explore Tumblr, check out the images on Pinterest, invite community members to speak to your students…the list is endless.

Resolution 7: See your students as partners in learning, not little vessels waiting to be filled with your expert knowledge. Involve them in planning, listen to their ideas, and ask important questions. Encourage your students to assume more responsibility for their own learning and then watch the positive results that can happen.

Resolution 8: Make every minute count. Use those tiny blocks of time that can go to waste in any classroom to keep students engaged and learning. Think door to door when it comes to instruction.

Resolution 9: Make a deliberate effort to try a new strategy or technique each week. Some will be fantastic, some will be okay, and some will stink, but you will expand your repertoire of teaching skills and that’s always a good thing.

 Resolution 10: Use your students’ strengths. When you expand on what your students already do well, you will find it easier to remediate their weaknesses. Don’t just focus on the strengths of individual students; capitalize on the strengths of the entire class, too.

Resolution 11: Keep moving forward. At this time of year, it’s easy to get mired in the muck of undone tasks and a seemingly endless curriculum. Take a deep breath. Plan ahead. Look ahead. Bit by bit you can build your students’ skills and knowledge.

Resolution 12: Solve problems. If you wanted to, you could spend your entire planning period complaining about your students and trying to fix blame for what goes wrong in your class. Instead of wasting that time, look at the setbacks in your school day as problems that you need to solve. With this attitude, you can move forward.

Resolution 13: Be the role model your students want you to be. For some of your students, you are the only one who will take the time to show them how to be successful, how to read, how to write, how to speak well, how to behave. Whether you want to be or not, you are a role model and far, far more important than you can imagine. Rise to that challenge.

Resolution 14: Take time to enjoy your students. Share a laugh. Appreciate the unique qualities that they bring to school each day. Rushing through each day robs you of the available joy sitting right there in front of you.