Oct

22

I’d Come To School If I Got Paid.

Filed Under "At-risk" students, Behaviour Management, Goals | Leave a Comment

I heard it again last week:”I’d come to school if I got paid.” Oh, how many times have I heard that over the years. Every year some kids tell me their attendance would be better if they got paid to go to school. I’ve had numerous, long discussions with students about the fact that they do get paid: they get paid in credits that give them a diploma. But, they don’t care if they earn credits towards a diploma. They don’t care about deferred payments for a better future. They want money now - don’t we all in today’s consumer society.A

few years ago, I had a particularly unmotivated group of students who were always whining about not getting paid for going to school. I thought about all this and decided that I would pay them. I would pay them for going coming to my class. I would pay them for being good students. I created my own “money” which my students could earn when I caught them being good. I designed a “dollar bill” , a Hartjes dollar, and photocopied it on green paper We had a lot of fun with it. The kids threatened to counterfeit it by photocopying it, but no one ever did.( Each dollar had my signature on it) There was intense competition to see who could earn the most Hartjes dollars. I told them I would not replace any Hartjes dollars that were lost so they better take care of them. Some kids even put my dollars in their wallets for safe keeping. It was great fun.
What could the kids buy for their Hartjes dollars? They could spend the money they earned in my class to buy certain things: to get 10 minutes of free time on the computer, to get out of writing a quiz, to get out of class 10 minutes early; to get to come to class ten minutes late, to get to sit and do nothing for ten minutes etc. I asked the students what they would like to buy and that’s what I “sold”. I also had monthly auctions where they could bid for things like movie passes, gift certificates for CD.s, and gift certificates for food at local fast food restaurants. The auctions were wild.

The Hartjes dollar not only motivated my students in my classroom but also provided an opportunity to talk about money in general: what people chose to spend it on, why some people saved their money while other spent it right away, why we had money in the first place, using credit wisely etc. The Hartjes dollars were a hit.

Oct

20

l Can’t Read Faces. All My Teachers Hate Me.

Filed Under "At-risk" students, Special Education | 3 Comments

” All my teachers hate me.”  I can’t begin to tell you how many times students have told me this. While it may be true that these students try the patience of their teachers, I doubt very much that all their teachers hate them.  Why? Because, teenagers are not good at reading the  facial expressions and often think that  adults are mad at them when the adults aren’t.
I show my students a video about the teenage brain.  It is, in fact, called “The Teenage Brain”, and I got it on line from PBS. ( Wait a minute, I just remembered that I lent it to someone and haven’t got it back yet. It’s a great video. I better track it down.)  The kids like watching it, and I like showing it.  It generates lots of discussion.  I especially like the part in the video where it  shows teenagers  looking at pictures of adults and being asked to read the different expressions on the adults’ faces.

The results were very interesting. The teenagers often misread the expressions on the faces of adults and thought the adults were angry when they were not. Given what so many of the students I see tell me, this make sense. The students are  misreading the expressions on their teachers faces , never mind the vice-principals’ faces, and think that the teachers hate them.  I’ve tried talking to them about this, but they don’t seem to get it. They tell me, “No really Miss, all my teachers hate me.”

The video suggests they see it this way because their brains haven’t developed fully. Their brains aren’t mature enough yet.  My apologies to any expert who may be reading this and is cringing at my simplistic explanation, but I think you get the point. Not only is it that my learning disabled  and at risk students can’t read text books well, they can’t read faces well either. Bless them. No wonder they have problems with school.

Oct

17

Three… Two… One…Start Writing !

Filed Under "At-risk" students, Learning Strategies | 3 Comments

“Three, two, one go,” I said with enthusiasm. I look at my students and smiled because they were laughing and writing furiously in their journals, but it wasn’t always so. Before I hit upon this strategy I wasn’t smiling, and they weren’t laughing. Getting my students to write paragraphs in their journals used to be very frustrating for me and for them. I would assign some topics; they would sit and whine about how much they hated writing. Thankfully, that is no longer the case.
Why? Well, for a few reasons. First, I went to our local Dollar Store and bought some thin notebooks which I cut in half horizontally, and a timer. Now, when the kids open to a page, the page doesn’t look as intimidating because there are not as many lines to fill with writing. In fact, there are only half as many lines to fill. Fewer is better, as far as my student are concerned. Second, they no longer have to worry about how many sentences they have to write, or about spelling and grammar. All they have to do is write as many words as they can for five minutes. I set the timer for five minutes, and they write until the time is up. I told them that some days they will write more words, and some days they will write fewer words. That’s just how it is, and they shouldn’t sweat it. The last thing I have them do is count the number of words they have written on that day and then graph that number using a bar graph. I usually review how to do a bar graph.
As you can imagine, at first not much writing gets done. I find this phase only lasts about three days and then things start to happen. They start to compete with one another. They compare the number of words they have written. Talk about peer pressure! It’s amazing. They’re laughing and having a great time writing furiously, egging each other on and comparing bar graphs. There’s lots of energy in the classroom. They love the timer and remind me to use it.
After they have written five entries, I ask them to choose one entry that they are to edit and hand in to be marked. I invite them to affix their bar graphs to the walls of the classroom. They do so with pride. I read their daily journals and write a few words back to them. Some kids who hardly say anything in class will tell me the most amazing things in their journals. We’ve had some great private conversations in those journals. It’s amazing.

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