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Sep
6
Yes, it’s still true- A positive attitude is key to maintaining a positive environment in the classroom
Filed Under Behaviour Management, Dealing With Stress, SOS for Teachers, Special Education, motivating students, positive climate, underachieving students | Leave a Comment
A positive attitude is key to maintaining a positive environment in classroom. I’ve been writing this blog for over four years and have shared with you strategies I have found useful. From time to time, I reread the posts I have written to remind myself what works to create a positive environment in the classroom. Yes, I forget sometimes and need to be reminded- that’s OK though because I’m not perfect.
Tomorrow is the first full day of classes, and I am getting a bit anxious. I’m obsessing wondering how best to prepare myself for tomorrow. I’ve got introductory activities planned and ready to go. Yes, all those handouts are ready but still……I’m wondering. After rereading the post below, I feel much better. I’m no longer wondering. I know from experience what I wrote back in 2008 about the power of a positive attitude is still valid today: a positive attitude creates a positive environment in my classrooms. There having just said that, I feel more confident about tomorrow and the up-coming year. I can relax (a bit) now.
I’ve reposted the original post in it’s entirety below. I hope you find it useful too.
A positive attitude is the key to maintaining a positive environment
I couldn’t agree more with Wade Boggs when he says
A positive attitude causes a chain reaction of positive thoughts, events and outcomes. It is a catalyst and it sparks extraordinary results.
In an earlier post, I wrote about how I set about establishing a positive classroom climate at the beginning of the semester and included the Slideshare presentation that I created to summarize the classroom agreements and what they meant. If you want a copy of the Slideshare presentation I’ve created , just email me I’d be delighted to send it to you.
Implementing the classroom agreements of mutual respect, appreciation/no put downs, attentive listening and the right to pass establishes a positive classroom climate where students can feel save and valued. Of course establishing a safe, positive climate and maintaining it day in and day out are two different things. What’s the key to maintaining that safe, positive classroom climate once it is established. Without a doubt, it’s a positive attitude.
If you have a positive attitude you’ll believe and act as if all students will be successful in your class. If you have a positive attitude there are no losers in your classroom despite what you’ve might have heard. Students will live up to your expectations. Think and act as if students are trouble, believe me they won’t disappoint you. I’ve learned that the hard way in my early years of teaching.
Let me give you an example of what I mean. I’ve found that often well meaning colleagues will give me a heads up about the troublemakers they’ve had in their classes. When they find out I’ll be teaching these kids, they tell me how bad the students were. Just for a nanosecond I think great. Just what I need- trouble making students. But then I quickly remind myself that attitude is not a useful attitude to have about these new students whom I don’t even know. I really try hard not to prejudge them. I figure even if these kids were troublesome in the past, it doesn’t mean they are now. Things change.
A few years back I had two students whom I’ll call Chris and Kyle, not their real names of course. They came to my class with a negative reputation and promptly started living up to it. After a few days I decided that I wasn’t going to engage these kids in their battle. It would be totally counter productive to use all my energy battling with these two fourteen year olds, and besides they’d probably win the battle. So I decided that I needed to sit down and talk with them to see what’s going on.
Chris and Kyle proudly told me about their reputation for being bad in class. I told them I didn’t believe they it. They couldn’t believe that I hadn’t heard about them, so they promptly gave me all kinds of proof to support their reputation.
I decided that I would show them I didn’t believe that they were trouble makers and would treat them with respect and worked extra hard to develop a positive relationship with them. Whenever they were disrespectful to me, I’d go to them quietly and ask them why they were being disrespectful to me when I wasn’t being disrespectful to them. I did the same thing when they weren’t listening attentively or showing appreciation. They’d actually apologize for their inappropriate behaviour. I figured being disrespectful had just become a habit with them, and they would learn to be respectful over time. It wasn’t easy, but these two students got to see that they didn’t need to live up to their reputation as trouble makers because I refused to see our relationship as student vs teacher, as them vs me. I really did respect them as human beings and really did expect them to respect me as a human being.
I thank the classroom agreements of mutual respect/no put downs , appreciation, attentive listening and the right to pass for establishing a positive framework that enabled mutual respect to develop. Chris and Kyle became my biggest boosters and did all kinds of positive PR for me and even came back to visit all the time to laugh about how immature they were in grade nine and how they were not like that now. They were proud of being respectful and not of being troublesome.
I truly believe that a teacher’s positive attitude does cause a chain reaction of positive thoughts, events and outcomes. A teacher’s positive attitude is a catalyst and it sparks extraordinary results. Just because I believe this doesn’t mean that I don’t forget this lesson too from time to time because I get distracted by the challenges of my own life, and I regretfully adopt a negative attitude towards a student. I know better, but I also know I’m human and not perfect. When this happens, I apologize to show my respect for them. I want them to see mutual respect in action in my classroom.
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1
School starts next week so it’s time to dust off my Web 2.0 tool kit.
Filed Under "At-risk" students, Behaviour Management, Blogging in and out of the Classroom, Computers In The Classroom, Engaging Assignments and Activities for Students, Learning Strategies, Reading, Special Education, Web 2.0 tools and technologies, motivating students, underachieving students | 2 Comments
School starts next week, and it’s time to dust off my tool kit I use to engage my reluctant and struggling readers and writers. I need to remind myself that there are lots of reasons why my students are reluctant to read and write- learning disabilities, competition from other activities, lack of interest, school not valued. Some of my students have told me they don’t read and write outside of school. Of course they do. They just don’t realize it. I have to make them aware that they read and write outside of school everyday. I need to help my students make a paradigm shift and so they can realize when they text message, email, surf the net or are on YouTube they are reading and writing all the time. My students are very comfortable online. they spend hours and hours on line. I try to use that to my advantage when trying to engage my more struggling and reluctant students.
Good pedagogy states that I should start where our students are. Where are my students? The BBC reported recently that today the average kid spends 44.5 hours a week on-line. Imagine. I can hardly believe that, but when I asked my students whether they thought the statistic was accurate they seemed to think it was pretty accurate.
given that my students practically live online, I decided to build a Web 2.0 tool kit to use in class.I’m going to share with you a slide show I used at a presentation last year to introduce the Web 2.0 tools I use and why I use them. I also give an example of how I used them. Hope you find the slide show useful.
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30
It’s September and the beginning of a new school year.
Filed Under Behaviour Management, Goals, SOS for Teachers, Teacher Support, The way I see it | 2 Comments
It’s September again and the beginning of the new school year. I think of each September as the beginning of a new adventure or a new journey. Just like any journey, there’s always so much to see and do. I know my journey as a classroom teacher will provide me with many expected and unexpected opportunities to explore, experience and contribute to the landscape of school. I also know that in order to enjoy the journey, I can’t over extend myself. I need to limit what I do even though I might want to do it all. So while I’m thinking of what I need to do at the beginning of the school year and how I want to contribute to school life, I also need to think about how to limit what I will do and how I will do that. I have decided to say yes more slowly and even to say no sometimes.Thanks to Brenda, I have some strategies. When someone asks me to do something, I can ask
May I ask why you’re asking me?
Have you asked anyone else?
Have you considered asking X? She’s got some experience with this.
When you say “urgent,” what does that mean? What’s the latest it can be done by?
How much time will this take?
If I could do only part of this, what part would you like me to do?
What does “finished” look like for this?
What should I not do so I can do this?
(Excerpt from Do More Great Work, p. 90-91)
Depending on the answers I get, I can decide what new tasks to take on. Like so many other busy people, I’m often asked to do more and more. Usually, I don’t mind, but sometimes it gets to be too much. Then life isn’t fun any more. I guess people subscribe to the old adage if you want something done give it to a busy person. If I get too busy though, I’m not effective- so what’s the point.
How do you prevent yourself from getting too busy? What strategies do you use to help limit yourself so that you can be the most effective.
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8
Most popular blog about common teacher misunderstandings.
Filed Under SOS for Teachers, Special Education, Teacher Support, The way I see it, positive climate, underachieving students | 1 Comment
There are misunderstandings about what teachers are supposed to do. In this blog post I explore these misunderstandings about what teachers need to teach.
I don’t know about you, but in the last few years I’ve been to so many educational conferences, lunch and learn workshops and professional development sessions during and after school I’ve lost count. I’m not complaining. Far from it. I’m absolutely delighted that my Board is making it possible for me to meet people who have made the commitment to be life long learners and share strategies and insights that they value. When I leave these sessions , I feel energized by what I’ve learned and by the people I’ve met. I usually come away with an insight or strategy that I can use in the classroom for the benefit of my students. I love the internet for that reason, too. I can just google any topic and find the latest developments. When I find something really cool, I take it back to school with me and share it with my colleagues. It gives us something positive to talk about. The internet really makes every day a professional development day.
Oh yes, getting back to all the exciting ideas that have come away during all the PD sessions I’ve attended.. It seems to me that at the end of every PD session, as I walk out the door I hear some teachers saying that they don’t have time to do whatever it was that we’ve just been introduced to because they have so much content to cover the content in their course. They hardly have enough time now to do what they have to.They could never take the time to do x, y or z because they would never get through the textbook. When I hear this argument, with all due respect to all those teachers who tell me this because I do respect them, I think that can’t be the case. But, I’m told time and time again that teachers have to finish teaching all the content which is usually the entire text book so their students will be prepared for the next grade and the next textbook- I presume.
Why does it have to be that way? Do students really have to learn all those facts? Who made that decision anyway? I keep asking that question every time I hear the ” I have to cover the content and textbook” argument. So, when I came across Chapter 5 of Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe’s book Schooling by Design: Mission, Action, and Achievement I was intrigued. I’ll admit I was a little brain dead when I started to skim through chapter 5. It had been one of those more interesting days in the classroom.You know the one that sucks all the energy out of you and leaves you feeling like a zombie.
When I got to the section titled Teacher Misunderstandings and read ” Misunderstanding 1: “My Job Is to Cover the Content”, my brain came to life. What was that? The system was overloaded with content because when content standards committees at the different levels met to decide what was essential, they came up with an overly ambitious list. I can see that happening. When you really love a subject area, it’s hard to draw the line between what’s really necessary to know and what would be nice for students to know. One summer not too long ago, I was on a curriculum writing team for the school district I work in, and we had a really difficult time cutting things out. We sat around the table for a long time debating what to leave in and what to take out. Everyone had their pet area that they wanted included- me too.
Wiggins and McTighe explain that the ‘my job is to cover the content” misunderstanding stems from the best of intentions. The various standards committees are including more content than is absolutely necessary and the text books publishers are trying to include all of the content in their textbooks so that the textbook adoption committees will choose their textbooks over their competitors. Then there is the tendency for some teachers to think that they should only use the textbook to teach the content of the course.I was at a series of workshops last summer and met someone who was going to teach at a brand new school and the department she was in was not going to use textbooks. They were going to use teacher created materials. I don’t know how that worked out. I do know that I haven’t been totally happy with any textbooks I’ve seen, and if I was forced to use just a textbook, I would hate it. I like having the textbook as a resource, but I also like developing my own resources to meet the needs of my students. Fortunately, my Board offers lots of opportunities for professional development. so that I can do this. It’s actually very exciting.
Why do some teachers think they have to cover what’s in the textbook ? According to Wiggins and McTighe, some teachers think that’s what their supervisors want , but they found no evidence to support this. Nor have they seen a teacher’s contract that has stated that a teacher’s job is to cover the textbook. Clearly, it’s a misunderstanding to believe that the textbook has to be covered. The textbook should only be a resource, not the syllabus.
What is a teachers job then if it’s not to cover all the content in a course and not to cover the text book? Wiggins and McTighe argue it is
to cause understanding, as reflected in worthy accomplishments…. facilitating the learners’ insights and coaching them to transfer their knowledge and skill, as reflected in significant performances involving such transfer.
You know, just reading that quotation is inspiring. Yes, that’s what I want in my classroom. I want all of that. I want understanding reflected into worthy accomplishments. I want skills and knowledge to be reflected and transfered into significant performances. I want all that, but I’m not always getting it. What I got this week was three of my almost- eighteen year old male students throwing Lego pieces at one another behind my back. Don’t ask! I think they’re bored with the topic at hand. To be honest, so am I. It’s time for some thing new. The flying Lego made that clear.
OK, let me move on to the second teacher misunderstanding. While some teachers mistakenly believe that the textbook is the syllabus, and they must teach all the content in the text book, other teachers feel that they shouldn’t use the text book at all and prefer to develop their own interesting resources to engage students. Wiggins and McTighe argue that this is all well and good, but sometimes teachers “get lost in the activities and lose sight of purpose as well as results… activities must be seen as a means to important learning ends and not ends in themselves. They go on to suggest that teachers need to ask questions like the following ones about the activities they plan for their students to ensure that the activity is the means and not the end in its self.
- Are the learning outcomes clearly identified and embodied in the work?
- Do they reflect important enduring outcomes( big ideas in the discipline) or simply “nice to now”?
- Do students know the intended learning outcomes and spend time processing the activities in terms of those goals and the purpose behind various activities?
- Can students explain the purpose behind various activities.
- Do we have appropriate evidence of learning important ideas and in meaningful ways?
- Were the time and energy devoted to the activities commensurate with the resultant learning and a wise use of time given all other obligations?
You know, these questions are very useful ones to ask, especially for me. I like activity based lessons and asking these questions would help me stay on track. I certainly don’t want the intended learning outcomes to get lost in the activities I have my students do. Quite the contrary. I want the activities in my classroom to be engaging and effective. That’s one of the challenges of teaching that I relish.
The final misunderstanding Wiggins and McTighe talk about is the one where some teachers think a teacher’s job is to teach to the test. Let me just say something here. I’m on the Literacy Committee at our school and the pressure is really on. Since the government has decided that all students must pass the provincial grade ten literacy test in order to get a high school diploma, there have been meetings ad nauseum on how best to prepare students for the test. Students need to get a grade of 75% on the literacy test in order to pass it. There’s something I don’t get about the provincial standards though. 75% is the provincial standard for passing the literacy test , yet students only need to get a grade of 50% to pass their other courses. I’m sure someone has an answer. If you happen to, please tell me .
Some teachers argue that we should teach to the test so the students will be as prepared as possible for the Literacy Test. What happens then, as far as I’m concerned, is that the test hijacks the regular curriculum, and class time is spent practicing test questions like the ones on the literacy test. It becomes a “drop everything else and teach to the test endeavour”. At my school, we did a blitz where every subject teacher spent one class teaching to the test in some way. Let me tell you the teachers who said they had too much content to cover before we had to teach to the literacy test were outraged. They argued that they don’t have enough time now to cover everything so why was valuable time taken from their class to prepare kids for the literacy test. They’re not English teachers they said, and teaching literacy is the job of English teachers. I guess they don’t really get it. Do they? Every teacher in every subject is a literacy teacher.
Now there is a more compelling argument against teaching to the test than the one I just discussed. Teaching to the test is not best way to go. As Wiggins and McTighe so eloquently noted it, the best way to raise the test scores in the long run is to :
teach key ideas and processes contained in content standards (content that is purportedly tested) in rich and engaging ways; collect evidence of student understanding and transferability of that content via robust local assessments; and, raise standards and quality control for local assignments to gather evidence of all that we value, not just what is easiest to measure.
In closing now, I just want to review the teacher misunderstandings that Wiggins and McTigne discuss. One misunderstanding is that a teacher’s job is to cover content. Another misunderstanding is that a teacher’s job is to engage learners with interesting activities( no flying Lego, please) , and finally a teacher’s job is to teach to the test. If these are the misunderstandings about what a teacher should do, what then is a teacher job?
It’s to cause understanding, as reflected in worthy accomplishments … facilitating the learners’ insights and coaching them to transfer their knowledge and skill, as reflected in significant performances involving such transfer.
Let me say that again- a teachers job is to cause understanding, as reflected in worthy accomplishments … facilitating the learners’ insights and coaching them to transfer their knowledge and skill, as reflected in significant performances involving such transfer. I just love the eloquent way Wiggins and McTigne define our job as teachers. They make it sound so noble. I especially like “worthy accomplishments ” and “significant performance”. Of course, Wiggins and McTigne apply these terms to students, but I want them to apply to teachers as well. I want them to apply to me- worthy accomplishments and significant performances. That’s my goal for myself and my students. My worthy accomplishments and significant performances are their worthy accomplishments and significant performances and vice-versa.
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