What Are You Looking For? (Things That Have Worked For Me #3)

This post is part of a series of things I've picked up over the last 9 years that have turned out to be incredibly helpful. Obviously their mileage will vary depending on your context and I don't expect them to work for everyone, so feel free to either take these on board or put them in your brain-bin - I won't mind either way.

3. Look for the Positives rather than the Negatives

This one sounds so simple on the surface but in practice it can be quite difficult to maintain. Any cursory look at a behaviour monitoring database held by a school will include entries that cover various behavioural events. These can be positive or negative, including things like a student completing a particular lengthy and high quality piece of classwork (positive) to a student becoming argumentative with the teacher (negative). In a lot of cases there will be an imbalance between these events, with a higher quantity of negative events being listed because these are the sort of things we've been trained to 'jump onto' as quickly as possible.

But when we think about it (or even look more closely at the data) there is often a pattern that reveals that the negative events are restricted to a very comparatively-small percentage of the student population. A look at the complete roll of students in any class will make it clear that the vast majority of students are doing the 'right' thing or, at least, not doing the 'wrong' thing (which in most eyes is considered the 'right' thing by default).

Child psychologists (such as Doctor Roberto Parada) will be among the first to tell you that recognising desired behaviour in children has a much bigger impact than acknowledging the kinds of behaviour we don't want. In a classroom, this can be admittedly difficult, but the long term effect of pushing further in this direction cannot be be underestimated and undervalued.

Here's a scenario called 'Picking Your Battles' that makes the thinking a little more explicit:

1. A student with a history of defiance comes into the classroom late while wearing a hat or listening to headphones. He sits down and begins working on the class activity like everyone else in the class, perhaps doing some work for the first time in weeks.
2. The teacher pulls the student up on breaking the school rule about wearing hats, listening to headphones, or coming to class late.
3. The student responds defensively, or aggressively, or both.
4. The student stops working on the class activity.
5. The student continues to break the original rule AND/OR gets detention for arguing. 
6. Any opportunity to build a positive relationship with the student during this lesson is now gone, PLUS no work has been completed.

If the student had gone unchallenged then we would've had a different scenario play out. The undesired behaviours, such as coming late or listening to headphones, could be dealt with afterwards when the student doesn't have an audience.

U.S. Educator Annette Breaux makes a few points that relate to the above scenario:

• If a student is angry, leave them alone and give them space.
• Weigh up the reality of what you're asking them to do - are they going to react favourably?
• If there is a choice of you having them working while breaking a minor rule, or not working at all, then what is more important in the long run? 
• Is it more likely that the student will listen to your instructions about following rules if you show them first that you care foremost about them getting the work done rather than having them accept your authority? 
• Is challenging a disruptive student going to ease the issue?
• Is their education the most important aspect of their being at school? How can we make this clear to them?

I'll add to the above that our syllabus doesn't include behaviour management. I'm not saying that behaviour management isn't a part of our job (that would be insane) but I'm saying getting students to meet syllabus outcomes is the first priority. If you can manage to get students to meet syllabus outcomes then the chances are that they won't have time to be able to break rules too much. Besides, what is a parent going to query more - the teacher disciplining their student or the teacher educating them in line with the syllabus requirements? If we're successfully teaching a student our subject then I'm arguing that that's the better goal.

I know it's not ideal but it's preferable... we don't live in an ideal world and there's a higher chance of teacher burnout when we strive to create an ideal world in our classroom. As Breaux suggests above, a student (and their parent) are more likely to listen and respond reasonably to our management of undesired behaviours if we're actively demonstrating that the student's education comes first (more on that in the next blog) or if we're waiting until after class to discuss the issue (proving that it isn't about humiliating them in front of their peers).

There's another really clever chap called Adam Lefstein who talks a lot about 'face-work', which is the idea of teachers becoming preoccupied with looking a certain way in front of their colleagues. This is nominally because we're worried about having our behaviour management judged. The more we can break the appearance of judging our colleagues, keeping an open door to our classrooms, and being honest about the challenges we face, the more we can start changing the conversation to being about the things that students are doing right in the classroom. Yeah, okay, there's four kids chatting and not focused on their work, but look at the twenty-odd other students who have done everything you asked! Is the visiting teacher seeing that part of the lesson?

The challenge here is to walk into a 'challenging' class you have this week and decide to only acknowledge the 'good' things happening, even with the students who are still exhibiting undesired behaviours. This could be awarding points in a system of some kind, chucking out some lollies, giving award certificates, promising a positive phone call home to their parent... but whatever you do, unless something completely un-ignorable happens, try to avoid even seeing the 'bad' stuff. We've all had enough lessons like that. We've had plenty of lesson where we only saw the things that went wrong, so what's the harm in trying the opposite just once?

Don't approach this as a sentimental or emotional exercise; try to drop any preconceived ideas you already have from your time teaching these same students in the past. Approach the lesson as scientifically as possible, identifying and rewarding desired behaviours only, and watch to see if student completion of work improves.  

Settling the Class (Things That Have Worked for Me #2)

This post is part of a series of things I've picked up over the last 9 years that have turned out to be incredibly helpful. Obviously their mileage will vary depending on your context and I don't expect them to work for everyone, so feel free to either take these on board or put them in your brain-bin - I won't mind either way.

2. Don't Wait for the Class to Settle

If you're nearly 7 foot tall, and look like Conan the Barbarian, then you'll probably have no problem quelling the dissent of the class with a booming voice and a threatening neck-vein the size of a rope. For the rest of us, however, relying on physical intimidation or authoritarianism isn't necessarily going to work. I spend a lot of time telling student-teachers they should play to their strengths and that, if their strength isn't in presenting a strong and authoritative presence, they may need to rely on other strategies to shape a learning environment based on engagement. 

The time spent waiting for a mixed-ability class to become quiet is almost never time well spent. There are likely somewhere between 20 and 30 individual students (all with their own drama going on) and waiting for every single of one of them to simultaneously fall silent and pay attention can be an immense challenge. The probability of different interactions between this many people is so high that you can't predict how settled the class will be each time you see them (think about it - if you have 25 students then how is each individual potentially going to react to any combination of their 24 peers on a particular day? I'm not a Maths teacher but I'm sure the figure for the amount of student-combinations is quite high). 

I've most often fallen into the trap of waiting for the class to be quiet usually just before I'm about to play a film clip of some sort. Waiting for the students to be quiet before I play the clip (while forcing myself not to yell at them in order to make it happen) is almost always futile. This can be the same for a range of other activities, including whole class instruction. 

What surprisingly sometimes works instead is just moving straight into the clip or activity while the students are still unsettled. The activity becomes the thing that settles the students. If I have a task that requires instruction then I'll put the instructions up on the board or hand out the sheets... this will get those who understand (and are willing to work independently) to engage with the work. Then, while this half of the class is getting underway, I'll start moving around and instructing the other students one-on-one. This works because:

• The amount time spent moving around and doing one on one instruction tends to be equal to the amount of time it would get me to settle the whole class at once.
• Even if I do manage to settle the entire class and they become quiet, this doesn't mean that they are all attentive or capable of understanding the instructions. Just because a class is quiet and compliant it doesn't mean that they're listening. Once the activity gets underway, speaking one-on-one guarantees a higher level of engagement across the class as it allows for differentiated instruction. There are students who struggle to follow the more traditional lecturing-style of whole class instruction and moving around to them once their peers have started working gives them an opportunity to listen and interact with you.
• Even if I do decide to try and settle the whole class at once and it somehow takes less time then just putting the activity in front of them, I can usually be fairly certain that my personal stress level will be higher as a result. I want to be in this for the long haul, so it's better overall if I don't break myself trying to get over 20 students to simultaneously be quiet. If I can let go of the idea that my authority needs to be recognised (and let's be honest here, no syllabus includes 'recognition of teacher authority' as an outcome) then I find myself a lot less stressed by the settling section of a routine lesson. If being authoritative works for you then that's fine, but for myself it's not one of my strengths so I've had to develop and adopt the other aforementioned strategies to save my sanity.

Non-verbal cues are also good. This can include the tried-and-true methods of:

• Holding my hand up and waiting for silence. Students should reply by putting their own hands up so other students can see that I want some quiet. Yelling for silence has always felt counterproductive and contradictory to me so I've found modelling silence in this way a bit more logical. 
• The above can be accompanied by quietly counting from 1 to whatever until the class settles. If I have to, I'll resume from whichever number I got to at any point in the lesson and this becomes the amount of time some individuals from the class might owe me.
• Proximity. Standing near the most disruptive students usually has a dampening effect on their off-topic conversations. 
• Walking around and pointing to clear, simple instructions that have been written on the board can be effective too. Many students are disruptive or disengaged simply because they don't know what to do and they aren't able to understand verbal instructions. 
• Write personalised instructions on a note and quietly place it in front of the student. This works especially well for students with Autism Spectrum Disorder. 
• This isn't exactly non-verbal but choice theory can be really effective with students who might be categorised as naturally oppositional. Quietly give them two choices (both choices need to be positive ones, EG. You can do this work, or this work) and then walk away and let them decide without you hovering over them or waiting for a response. The act of waiting for a response can often exacerbate the opposition we're trying to circumvent. 

One more caveat before I finish up. I'm aware that behaviour management is very subjective and can be complex in light of school policies, and I'm also aware that nothing above is particularly revolutionary. My recent experiences teaching English Method to pre-service teachers has had me thinking a lot about articulating my processes and, as a result, I've been thinking of these blogs as living documents to help me sort and solidify pedagogy that I've found helpful. 

Hopefully there's something here that might prove useful to you too. 

Classroom Schematics (Things That Have Worked for Me #1)

Followers of this blog may have noticed that I've slowed down a little in the last few months in terms of sharing resources.

There are a few reasons for this, chief among them is the fact that recent times have been awfully hard for myself and my wife. I look at this blog sometimes and, much like George Harrison and his guitar, my life goes on while it gently weeps. Another reason for the absence is a much more positive one though, being that I've been working on a range of writing projects in various stages of germination. This includes a textbook on Under Milk Wood for Into English, some writing on Aboriginal history, and a few other projects that should hopefully cement themselves in the near future. 

As of last week I just finished supervising my tenth student-teacher. It's a nice round milestone and one that has given me pause for thought. I always find supervision of student-teachers to be a very fulfilling practice as it provides a great open dialogue around pedagogy, and it re-positions my daily focus onto the part of my job that matters most: the actual teaching. The idea of articulating the teaching process becomes more concrete and it always forces me to reconsider the reasons why I do particular things, and observing someone else as they teach across a block of 5-6 weeks has consistently proven to be a valuable learning experience. 

Anyway, thinking about my teaching habits led to the question: what are the main things that I do that have worked well for me?

This post is the first in a short series of five things I've picked up over the last 9 years that have turned out to be incredibly helpful. Obviously their mileage will vary depending on your context and I don't expect them to work for everyone, so feel free to either take these on board or put them in your brain-bin - I won't mind either way.

1. Classroom Schematics

When I started teaching I was working as a day-to-day casual. This meant that I was often teaching outside of my subject area and was a complete unknown to the students. When students don't know who you are, they often jump to the conclusion that you don't know who they are either - and when you're a new teacher or working casually this can very likely be true. 

And if you don't have their names then it's all over. 

They'll pretend to be the wrong student, run away from you when you try to hold them back after class, or completely disengage on the basis that you can't identify who they are without their help. The one chance you have to get their name is when you mark the roll, because most students realise that they'll be marked as truanting if they don't answer truthfully at this point. So you have to use this chance wisely.

Here's what I do. I can't remember who I picked this up from but it's been such a useful thing to do, and I still do it every time I start with a new class. 

1. Draw a map of the room. 
2. As you mark the roll, ask each student to put their hand up so you can see them. Don't move onto the next student until you have sighted each one.
3. Write the names of each student onto your map/schematic of the room.

It doesn't matter how long this takes it's always worth doing. Even if the students are noisy or wandering around or if it takes a full 10 minutes, spending the time doing this will be the best thing you can do with a complete group of strangers because - once you have their names - you have the basics of behaviour management in your hands. Anything can be followed up if you know exactly who each student is.

A positive impact from this is that it also allows you to address each student by their name, which can help build valuable rapport. In my teaching context, Western Sydney, students tend to become significantly less stand-offish once you address them by their name. You're letting them know that you see them.

Categorising Heroes: Literacy, the Soviet Union, and Differentiation in the Modern Classroom

The Khirgiz, once part of the Soviet Union, are still renowned for practising the ancient art of Eagle-hunting

A key part of early literacy for children is the development of a schema or model for understanding the world around them. We construct meaning by ordering new experiences and words into our own self-constructed epistemologies, and we can decode the unfamiliar with increasing confidence as a result. In simpler terms, a child's extending of vocabulary is made possible through their ability to classify words into self-determined categories based on what they already know. 

This now-commonly accepted theoretical underpinning of literacy was supported by the groundbreaking work of the Soviet neuropsychologist Alexander Luria in the 1930s.

(What follows is an explanation of the way that thinking is tied to literacy. Skip to the end if you just want the 'Heroes'-based Stage 4 resource, but read on for some interesting stuff on how literacy works!)

Luria hypothesised that some cultures understood the world differently if they were non-literate, and thus used the Soviet-controlled Central Asian states of Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan to support his work. The research that the Soviet socio-scientist conducted in these places revealed very strong links between literacy and the ability to think abstractly. 

Luria, circa the 1940s.

Context

As Luria's fieldwork was conducted in the 1930s, when Stalin's hold over the Soviet Union was at it's most stifling, this meant that several factors contributed to him being in the right place at the right time. The country was undergoing a process known as Collectivisation, in which farms and other peasant holdings were grouped together to allow for easier control by the state. Joseph Stalin was undeniably one of the most brutal and totalitarian dictators to ever walk the Earth but one upswing of his regime was a historically-unparalleled rise in literacy. Luria's studies in remote Uzbek and Khirgiz societies were therefore quite serendipitous as they came at a point in Russian history that allowed for observation of completely non-literate communities prior to rapidly-increased literacy. 

It would probably be most accurate to identify Luria's work as something firmly grounded in a Marxist context reliant on class distinctions rather than cultural ones. This is most clear in the way that the neuropsychologist delineates between the literate and the non-literate on the basis of the 'old' non-literate peasantry vs. the newly-educated and unified Stalinist proletariat (working class). 

(I should note here that Luria's writing on this matter is very much a product of its time in terms of the attitudes portrayed therein - he often uses the word 'we' to refer to mainstream Russian society and marginalises minority groups such as the Uzbek and Khirgiz in the process. He also, problematically and Eurocentrically, uses the word 'primitive' to describe non-literate societies). 

The Research

Luria examined five different groups in his field study, roughly half of whom were completely non-literate. I use the term 'non-literate' here rather than illiterate as 'illiterate' implies the option of literacy; these societies were non-literate in the sense that they had not even been exposed to writing (as opposed to illiterate members of Western societies). 

Luria conducted extensive interviews in the native languages of these groups, concentrating on three central questions:

• How do people linguistically code basic categories of experience as colour and shape?
• How do they manage classification and abstraction?
• And then, what about verbal problem-solving and self-analysis?

Results

The Soviet researcher found that the non-literate groups were able to classify drawn shapes only by referring to them as objects from their everyday life (EG. A circle was a 'plate', a triangle was a 'tent'). They did not have abstract terms for these shapes that could be used to classify all circular or all triangular objects. If pressed to arrange two shapes together, they did not classify them through shared shapes but by shared use (EG. Two objects might appear to be tools and classified as similar in this way despite being different shapes). 

This appears to reveal that a lack of written language means that the non-literate groups lacked the language skills/tools for abstraction. The written alphabet is, after all, a series of symbols and therefore an abstract concept. By learning how to work with the abstract concept of written language, literate societies are able to develop a greater level of abstraction in their thought, and can therefore categorise ideas in more complex ways. 

For the Khirgiz and Uzbek groups, colour was even more problematic than shapes. Instead of assigning a name to things that literate groups might classify as 'green', they would instead describe certain things as 'the colour of grass in the spring'. When challenged, they lacked the ability to group colours in any way whatsoever.

When forced to group objects together, the subjects always needed to theorise a shared situation that had a practical use. For example, a log and some tools would go together because they could be used together to build a house. It seemed impossible for the subject to separate one of these things from the other because they could only think in practical terms.

Developing Taxonomies in the Classroom

In Stage 4 English the teacher will often still come across students who struggle with abstraction and this is almost always tied to the students' lower literacy levels. In order to deal with this in English the teacher can combine symbolism with categorisation so students can begin to experiment with building their own taxonomies for better understanding.

The activity here is in connection to a visual literacy unit on Heroes and Villains. Before starting, get students to brainstorm as many different fictional and real life heroes as possible. This should be done independently.

Click here for the Categorising Heroes activity.

In the activity, students use the symbols attached to categorise the list they've created and then assign themselves a 'diversity' score using the criteria. This can then be used to prompt discussion about things such as:

• Representation of heroes in the media.
• Who can be a hero?
• What makes a hero?
• How aware are we of the kinds of heroes in our world?

A while back I wrote about using an Assessment for Learning task in connection to this same Heroes and Villains topic. This diagnostic assessment can be used to differentiate students into streams of ability. The activity above can be targeted towards the 'mainstream' portion of the class, whereas students identified as more gifted can be targeted with an 'extension' version of the activity.

Click here for the Extension version.

In this version it's left up to students to create their own symbols/categories, and their own criteria to judge them against. This requires more independence, imagination, and willingness to take risks in one's learning.

Alternatively, here is the Adjusted version for the students with typically lower levels of achievement.

In this version the students are given a higher level of scaffolding; an array of heroes are provided in case these students have been unable to put a diverse-enough list together. This works well for students with low literacy as they can then monitor and interact with the lesson without having to write.

For more on Luria's research on literacy, see the chapter 'Cultural Differences in Thinking' from his book The Making of Mind.

What Could I Be Doing Differently?

Most of my blog tends to focus on the practical and pragmatic. Well, I at least hope that's the case - it's up to those of you who read it to decide if these lessons and resources have been practical. The point is that I like to focus on what it is that we, as teachers, can do in the classroom to make things run more efficiently and effectively. 

It's not a perfect world though, and things can and do occasionally go pear-shaped in the classroom. There's a tendency in teaching for people to externalise these issues and look for blame-factors - heck, it's something that lots of people do in life in general. I'm not saying that external factors don't exist but there's little point in stressing about what you cannot change.

Therefore, if something ever goes askew or wrong then I like to internalise the problem and look for what it is that I, the classroom teacher, could be doing differently to avoid or fix the situation. There are three things that I always come back to in my head, and they work like a mantra:

1. If I don't like something, then I'm the only one who can fix it - and that extends to fixing my perception. I might just be looking at the whole situation the wrong way. What could I be doing differently?
2. If I want something done the way I want it done, then I should do it myself. That's how things get done. No one else is going to do something for you, they have their own things to do.
3. Don't ever ask anyone - parents, other teachers, students - to do something that I myself would not be prepared to do. 

I recently read 101 Answers for New Teachers and Their Mentors by Annette Breaux. It's a fantastically positive book for educators that has given me a whole bunch of great ideas and reaffirmed my teaching philosophy. I think that we all, at some level, want to be appreciated by our clientele - the students, the parents, and even the administrators/executive branch that we work for. It's their taxes that generate our salaries - we owe it to each of these groups to do a good job. 

At the end of 101 Answers is a section from one of Breaux's other books, Seven Simple Secrets, that details what makes for effective and appreciated teachers, and a lot of it just makes sense to me. I read over it and came up with this list on how I reinforce positive teaching practice:

Things that students like:

• Teachers who are nice to them
• Teachers who make learning fun
• Teachers who help students succeed
• Teachers who challenge students
• Teachers who are clear and consistent with expectations 
• Teachers who are willing to start each day afresh
• Teachers who get to know their students as people

Things that parents like:

• When teachers treat their child as fairly as we would treat our own
• Teachers who do their best to keep them informed
• When teachers make an effort to communicate positively
• When teachers listen to what they have to say 
• Teachers who never give up on their child
• Teachers who challenge students while making learning fun 

Things that the executive like:

• Teachers who prepare their lessons well before they teach them
• Teachers who handle their own discipline problems
• Teachers that make decisions based on what's best for students
• Teachers who maintain professionalism when interacting with non-administrators (parents, students, other teachers)
• Teachers who continue to educate themselves
• Teachers who manage their classroom efficiently 
• Teachers who treat every child with respect and dignity
• Teachers who cater for all stakeholders 

I'm not saying that I'm a great teacher, but I think that if I continue to work on doing each of these things to the best of my ability then I'm going to get there eventually. We can always be better at what we do.

I realise that not every teacher reading this will be willing to focus their frustrations entirely on themselves but I figure that there's more than enough negative stuff out there so a little bit of positive practicality can't go astray.

How to Help Students Achieve in Assessment Tasks

Today and yesterday I had the pleasure of attending the 2015 Assessment in Schools Conference at UNSW Global in Sydney. One of the key sessions that had an impact on me was Professor Andrew Martin's work on Personal Proficiency and how we can 'optimise' the academic potential of students.

Within the first five minutes of Professor Martin's seminar I felt like a great cloud in my head had been dispersed. Since becoming a teacher I've becoming very familiar with the word 'resilience'. Not in the sense that I'm expert on it, simply in the sense that I hear about it nearly every day.

"Davey McHuddlestein is a really resilient student"

"That Rita Wong has no resilience"

"I wish I was a bit more resilient whenever I hear the music of Nickleback"

It got to the point where I was hearing the word so much that it had lost all meaning. During a recent Year 10 unit on Jasper Jones we did some work around the idea of resilience but, I must admit, I let the students lead on this theme because I didn't have much to say about it. 

Professor Martin's work around optimising potential involved a framework on the personal proficiency of students that struck a beam of clarity into my overcast brain. Resilience wasn't quite what I thought it was.

He asserts, as a research psychologist and educator, that there are three major variable traits within students that regulate the way they react to external factors. By extension, this no doubt applies to non-students too. They are:

1. Buoyancy

2. Resilience

3. Adaptability

Martin states that buoyancy (or academic buoyancy) is a student's ability to deal with every day adversity - the deadlines, the poor marks, the criticism, a fight with friends or at home, etc. This is interesting because these are sorts of things often heard bandied about in connection to the 'R' word. 

Resilience on the other hand, as Martin says, "was born on the street, in poverty". This is a person's ability to deal with chronic or acute adversity... things like poverty, disability, suspensions, chronic under-achievement, poor mental health, learning, repeating a grade, etc. Heavy stuff. Martin is very emphatic in separating resilience from buoyancy. Resilience is not a student's ability to deal with every day adversity.

The third of these factors, adaptability, is someone's ability to deal with change and disruptions to routine. Things that aren't really forms of adversity but can still throw a spanner in the metaphorical works.  Some people can deal with change well, some can't.

These traits are only the smallest fraction of what Professor Martin spoke about today - he also talked in detail about adopting a multi-dimensional approach to boosting academic growth, and the various factors that impede student motivation. 

One more thing that I will mention, however, is the Five Cs of Academic Buoyancy, which Martin listed as observed elements for good academic buoyancy. These are, in no particular order:

Confidence

Coordinartion

Commitment

Composure

Control

If students can maintain these then they should have no problem 'bouncing back' from every day adversity (which is the majority of what they'll actually face in a regular school environment, as opposed to chronic or acute adversity). For non-teachers reading this, all of this stuff is just as relevant for our own lives if we want to find any kind of success. 

It makes perfect sense to me in hindsight. I guess this is the epitome of one of those moments where a light switches on in your head, where a great educator like Professor Andrew Martin illuminates something for you.   

Click here for more information about Professor Martin and his research.