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.

STEM Sells

It's Thursday afternoon, and I'm sitting in a lecture theatre at Western Sydney University simply because the professional learning on STEM has been offered as a free seminar. I've heard this acronym a few times over the last year and since it's free I thought I should come see what's it all about. 

STEM stands for Science, Technology, Engineering, Maths. The STEM organisation has grown as a response to Australia's flagging home-grown talent in these areas, in the hope that better ties can be made between high schools and industry to plug the gap. I'm paraphrasing here, but one great opening idea to this lecture ran as thus, "The more connections a young person has with industry, the higher their chance of post-school success". STEM seeks to embed this philosophy into Australian education through the support of the Beacon Foundation and Origin Foundation, in the hope that our senior students will start selecting these subjects in greater numbers.

This chart shows the Top 10 performing countries for Maths, Sciences and Reading (please excuse the poor lighting).

Many students are not choosing STEM subjects at high schools. For example, the number of students who don't study maths at all has tripled in recent times. In Australia, 30% of staff in some STEM sectors are manpower imported from overseas, and coders created in this country are almost all male. The Beacon Foundation seeks to connect STEM businesses with schools in order to build more productive pathways into these industries.

So where do my KLAs English and History fit in? Well, if you want to be a teacher, you will - believe it or not - find that STEM skills are highly useful in working as an effective educator in our increasingly administrative and data-driven profession. It's also believed by the STEM organisation that 1/3 of the jobs of the future haven't been invented yet, so I think we should also therefore consider that current jobs will also undergo additional evolution in conjunction with technology and use of data. The way that teachers teach in the future will be radically different to the way we teach now, in much the same way that current professional expectations contrast quite heavily with the way teaching was conducted 30 years ago. 

From a content-driven standpoint, English in particular can actually contribute to the deficit in STEM industries by addressing gender stereotypes. The sheer dearth of females in STEM jobs in Australia has been borne out of gender stereotyping that continues to persists as an ingrained aspect of Western society. This is where the importance of the English curriculum comes into play, with several opportunities throughout Years 7 to 12 to address our society's cultural constructs regarding gender, which should help encourage more teenage girls to become interested in STEM subjects. Additionally, from a STEM standpoint, we should also be ensuring that numeracy is as accounted for in humanities subjects as we'd like literacy to be catered for in the STEM subjects.

Perhaps the most interesting aspect of this seminar was an interview panel with some industry professionals. From left to right in the picture above, we have:

• Andy McDaid - manager of sourcing programs for Origin Energy
• Sean Barrett - Head of Origin Foundation
• Mark Bernhardt - Senior HSE Business Partner - Origin Energy (Health Sector Environment)
• Ben St Clair - Manager, Market Risk Development - Origin Energy 
• Catherine Attard - Associated Professor WSU
• Scott Harris - Chief Exec of Beacon Foundation

Each spoke about their interest in STEM subjects and the ways these domains of knowledge are imperative for their respective industries. 

This chart shows the motivations behind teachers choosing to specialise in STEM subjects. Blue = 47%, Darker Green = 29%, Light Green = 24%

Barriers to student uptake of STEM subjects. Green = 32%, Grey = 26%, Dark Blue = 30%, Light Blue = 16%, Orange = 16%

How much do we currently engage industry in the delivery of our curriculum? No = 49%, Sometimes = 14%, Yes = 37%.

WARNING: I'm going to get political now, so close this tab if you don't want to think about all of this too negatively.

STEM ultimately wants to prevail in creating an 'innovation pedagogy'. There is, however, one great irony that needs addressing here - in a political regime that promotes 'innovation', why is education funding so poorly considered by Malcolm Turnbull's government? For STEM and other areas ripe for future breakthroughs, our culture isn't going to change while education is so undervalued by the blokes in power (and let's face it, most of them still are men). 

At the time of writing, the government has pledged $12 million towards restoring a focus on STEM subjects. Under a purely equitable model, that equals $8 per school. You can't even buy one calculator for that much. And let's face it, without better literacy in our schools, how are we even going to get students to engage with higher order skills in STEM subjects? With that point, I would say that funding needs to go to all areas of education in order to improve STEM, not just the STEM subjects. 

This is through no fault of the STEM organisation, at least no more than any other aspect of Australian society being the fault of voters. All I'll say is: when you vote, think about how much money that particular political party is willing to put into education. Nothing is going to happen in this culture of ours without better funded education. We talk about the future as being a space that needs to be prepared for, but what about now? Students need us now. 

For more information, check out these websites.

Beacon Foundation

Origin Foundation