Oct

28

Thanks to the classroom facilitator, I don’t have listen to my students whine any more.

Filed Under "At-risk" students, Behaviour Management | 5 Comments

I don’t know what it is about my Advanced Learning Strategies Class. Many students in that class constantly whine about things like being tired, being hungry, having a stomach headache, having a headache, having a sore arm, leg, shoulder etc. It drives me crazy because all that complaining interferes with my teaching and the learning of other students. I waste so much classroom time and energy dealing with those endless complaints everyday. I absolutely hate the whining.

Now, I haven’t forgotten that many of the students in my classes are reluctant learners. After all, that’s why they are in my class. I’m supposed to teach them strategies to make school and life easier. Among other things, I’m supposed to teach them goal setting and the value of perseverance. But, the goals they’re supposed to be setting are not ones that include working less in my class and thwarting the teaching and learning that needs to go on.

Some days anything I ask them to do is too much.They don’t want to read. They certainly don’t want to write. All I hear is complaints, complaints, complaints. Last week all that whining finally got to me. When one of the most persistent whiners, K, started to whine and complain again about being tired, hungry and sore for some reason or other I heard myself saying,

OK, class. Listen up! From now on, all complaints will be directed to K. K is going to be responsible for listening to any complaints today. So, if you have any complaints, tell K- not me. Tomorrow, C will be listening to any complaints and the next day after that , M is going to be responsible for listening to complaints.

The reaction to that announcement was amazing. I have to confess I was more than a bit amazed myself when I heard myself saying that I would no longer be listening to any complaints and that K was assigned to listen to them. Where did that idea come from? I really have no idea. I’ll consider it a gift from the ether, and I’m immensely grateful.

Surprisingly, none of my students said that directing complaints to a student listener was a stupid idea. Oh, believe me they’d tell me that if they thought so. They’re always quick to tell me things at school are stupid. No, they didn’t tell me my idea was stupid. In fact, I think they found it rather amusing and liked it. When I looked around the room I saw smiling faces and heard students volunteering to be the next listener. Now when they complained, they complained with a smile on their face, and the other students listened with a smile on their face, too.That’s when I knew I was on to something.
Just an aside here, I don’t want you to think that my students are disrespectful to me. They aren’t. When they hear things they don’t like, they’ll say things like “Common Miss, really. That’s stupid” with the utmost respect. When I tell them they’re being disrespectful, they look absolutely puzzled. They don’t see it that way at all. I don’t know why that is. I can’t imagine why they don’t see that telling a teacher something they have been asked to do is stupid. I guess that’s the disconnect from home and school coming through. I’ve had lots of conversations with my students about student/teacher and teenager/adult relationships. Believe me, some of what I hear is disconcerting, to say the least. They just don’t see it the same way as I do. Now, most of the time I teach kids who need additional support because they are at risk academically, so maybe I’m out of touch with what goes on in other classrooms. I sure hope so.

Back to the topic at hand of having a student listener in class who other students direct their complaints to. It was wonderful! Students would start to whine about something to me and suddenly remember that K was responsible for listening to their complaints and then they apologize- sorry, Miss and then go on complain to K. K would listened politely and really not say much. He just listened. That’s exactly what I wanted him to do. He wasn’t to solve problems, just listen. The number of complaints during that class dropped dramatically. The next day the same thing happened. Kids would start to complain to me and then apologize and complain to C. By the third day, there were hardly any complaints all. Go figure.

The kids who complained the most were the first to volunteer to be the listeners. Remember, all they had to do was listen to the person’s complaint. I didn’t expect them to solve the problem. Although when it was M’s turn to be the listener, and a student came in late after I had already taught the lesson and said he didn’t know what to do, M told him. Now M is usually the one who tells me he doesn’t know what he’s supposed to do, so I was really surprised that M had been paying enough attention that he could explain the complicated assignment to another student. Maybe not knowing what to do is an excuse not to do. How can you do anything when you don’t know what to do. Maybe making a point of not knowing what to do is an avoidance strategy. Interesting thought.

I haven’t decided for sure yet what to call the student listener. I don’t want to use the term “student listener” . That sounds boring. When I asked my colleagues about this, Diane suggested the term class facilitator. She said that being a facilitator sounded important and that being important in class for these reluctant learners would be a good thing. I agree with her. So think I’ll use the term class facilitator unless someone reading this has a better name for this job. I’m open to suggestions. So, if you think you have catchier name for this job, please leave it as a comment. I’d really appreciate it. In fact, I’d really appreciate any feed back about what I’ve said here. I want to thank everyone who took the time to make a comment about earlier posts or emailed me privately with a comment. Feed back is so important, not just for our students but for us as well.

It’s amazing that this works so well. Students seem to have have stopped whining so much when they have to complain to one of their peers. It makes me wonder if they just wanted my attention so they complained, or whether they complained to me to avoid work or what. It wouldn’t be the first time that students develop somatic symptoms in order to avoid school.

In thinking about this whole thing of class facilitator, I’ve realized that I need a coordinator to organize it all. On Monday, I’ll ask for volunteers to organize the whole thing. That should be interesting. Someone said something about pictures on the wall. Who knows. I do have a camera.

Now I know that this strategy isn’t going to work forever. Nothing does. But, you know what, I’m going to enjoy it for as long as it does and when it no longer works, I hope I get another gift from the ether. I’ll keep you posted on how things go.

 
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Oct

11

Class Disrupted: Disorder and Its Effects on Learning and School Culture

Filed Under Teacher Support | 1 Comment

I’d like to pass along the link to a conference, Class Disrupted: Disorder and It’s Effects on Learning and School Culture ,that Alison Kleigman of The Common Good Organization sent me today. Here’s the link http://cgood.org/schools-events-76.html. Now I don’t have any affiliation with The Common Good Organization whatsoever, but I thought people might be interested to know about the Organization and the conference. Even if you can’t attend the conference, there’s interesting reading to be found. Take a look. The topic for the conference is certainly timely.

Oct

11

Fear Not- a new role playing game to help stop bullying

Filed Under Bullying | Leave a Comment

I have written here and here before about the topic of bullying. Bullying is an on going problem in and out of school. So, I was especially encouraged to read there is a new computer game called Fear Not that is being piloted in Europe. The player takes on the role of an invisible friend of someone who is being bullied and helps his friend by discussing possible solutions and ways of coping. The advice the player gives affects the victim.

I like the role playing aspect of the game because it allows kids to explore strategies for dealing with the issue of bullying safely in the virtual world and then use the successful strategies in the actual world.

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