Peter Greene makes the case for gentleness in the classroom.
First he quotes the guru of gentleness, who says it is a sign of strength not weakness.
Then he cites a teacher who lasted one year in a NYC public school and gave up when he couldn’t control the kids, who were disrespectful and challenging.
“Look, I don’t want to sit here in my comparatively comfortable small-town teaching career and in any way minimize the challenges of working in a tough, poor, urban school. But if your theory of classroom management is that you must get control of your students, forcing them to comply with the rules, and only once you have beaten them down, overpowered them, and gotten them to respect your authority– only then can you start teaching…. well, you are doomed to failure no matter where you teach. The only real question is just how spectacular that failure is going to be. As a commenter on facebook put it, “If you think it’s a war, you’ve already lost.”
“But Bolland is pissed. He talks repeatedly about the kids he hates. Never expressed, but there behind his words, is that liberal savior anger that he has brought these poor, downtrodden kids the hgift of himself, and they are rejecting it. Doing this was supposed to feel great, but instead it makes him feel terrible.
“Make no mistake. The students are at times brutal to Bolland, making him the object of behavior that nobody deserves. But it is clear that nobody ever taught him how to manage a classroom (a critical piece of training for any business executive type transitioning to a classroom because, guess what, these students are not your employees and they are not paid to treat you with deference), and it is clear that he has no idea of how to be truly gentle or truly strong. He takes it personally. He demands compliance. And he ultimately decides that his failure is the result of a terribly broken system and unsalvageable kids. Of course, he’s got a book deal and I’m writing this blog for free, so who knows.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
We should never lose our humanity or civility, especially when teaching. A sense of humor goes a long way. Pleading is something else entirely, I’ve seen a lot of that. It demeans the teacher.
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For wonderful ideas on how to have a great classroom at the HS level I strongly suggest the work of Hal Urban. He has a number of books but this one is terrific and very helpful/clear. Lessons from the Classroom: 20 Things Good Teachers Do https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/8758375-lessons-from-the-classroom
Now a retired teacher/professor he was organized but had a wonderful community in his HS social studies class in Calif.
Not sure he is still giving talks, but he is a great speaker, too.
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Having spent my entire adult life with the knowledge that I live under the specter of multiple iterations of the Parents & Teachers Curse (you all know it: “When you grow up, I hope you have a kid JUST LIKE YOU!”), I have to say that while I see Peter Greene’s point, I feel for Mr. Bolland too.
While it seems unlikely any of my former teachers will see this, if they’re even still alive, I ask the many current & former teachers who comprise a large portion of this readership to act as proxy & witness this, my public apology to the large percentage of my teachers throughout my grade- & high-school career whom I put through hell when they had the misfortune to have me assigned to their classes. 🙂
Just know that even some of those students you may consider the most difficult *are* benefitting from the instruction & guidance you provide, & will move on to productive, successful, & satisfying lives, feeling, however belatedly, deep appreciation for the positive difference you’ve made for them.
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Lenny,
I understand your pain, because I was a definite pain in the butt in school. Although ‘bright’, I was a behavioral nightmare. I’m sure none of my teachers EVER thought I would join their profession (except, perhaps, my First Grade teacher).
Funny thing, though. I found myself so well equipped to spot a ‘wise-ass’, having been one, and deal with him or her in a firm, yet sympathetic manner. In fact, I often preferred their ‘spunk’ to docility. They sensed my position, as the antennae of the young do to such a remarkable degree, and they almost always became an integral part of the class (not always, but the failures I could count on one hand). One cannot move society forward without challenging the status quo (I majored in astronomy and physics before deciding to teach in high school. But, I prepared myself in the Graduate School of Education, and even that left me with a few years of ‘practical experience’ under the softly-guiding hand of a wonderful, sympathetic and intelligent administrator before I began to see the light).
Many of those ‘difficult’ kids who just can’t stand to sit in their seats, eyes forward, and follow orders are, in fact, the brightest kids in the room. But they need to learn to shine their light about in a way that illuminates for their classmates instead of blinding them. They don’t need punitive rules, they need guidance.
But, as I said, I taught in High School, and chose that arena because I realized that I wasn’t all that good at dealing with the rather wild irrationality of the blossoming Junior High kid. No pedagogy is good for every kid, and I’m sure mine wasn’t, either.
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I find it interesting that so many don’t want to deal with junior high. I LOVE teaching junior high. I love their energy and enthusiasm. Granted, sometimes it can get a little too much, but overall, I love what I do.
We just had a teacher retire who taught 44 years at the junior high where I teach. She is all of five feet tall, and she loved students, but if she needed to be firm, she could be. She could have a six foot tall football player quivering. I don’t know how she did it, but I know from having son in her class that she was also very welcoming and gentle, too. A perfect combination. She was an institution at my school, and she is sorely missed.
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I am curious, Lenny, how you would have graded your teachers (perhaps at different ages).
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John-
Thank you for your helpful perspective. I was also ‘bright’; probably a bit too much for my own good! Knowing that The Curse was hanging over my head just waiting for an opportunity to pounce, I made a point of avoiding becoming a schoolteacher. 🙂
I *was* bright enough (usually 😦 ) to know just how much I could get away with, with any particular teacher, which probably made my behavior even more maddening; & there were certain teachers I knew not to mess with. The fact that I was capable of performing these evaluations internally & scaling my behavior accordingly shows I was making a choice. The only thing I can say in my defense is that there certainly were issues at home that influenced those choices, but I regard that as an explanation (i.e., even as a child, I feel I was responsible for my choices), not an excuse.
Your insight about guidance also hits home for me. Over the years, there were definitely teachers, even some of those to whom I gave a hard time, who reached me & inspired me to do better. I don’t know if they ever realized, so I’m sharing it here.
Thanks again.
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2old2teach-
There may have been 1 or 2 who really just weren’t cut out to be teaching children, but I have to say that most of them were probably really good teachers who sincerely cared about helping kids reach their potential, & succeeded at it when I wasn’t making my best efforts to thwart them (& sometimes even when I was). Even though they may never have known it (but I hope some did), I later realized I was fortunate to have had their guidance. Probably none of them deserved me! 🙂
The one standout on the bottom end was my kindergarten teacher, who had a well-deserved reputation as a terror, & a severe-sounding German surname that fit her perfectly; she frequently brought kids to tears. In later years, thinking about her, I used to have this fantasy about her getting results of a college aptitude test, where the counselor told her, “Well, you’re clearly an intelligent, capable, young woman who could probably find success in any of a number of diverse fields. Really, the only thing I’d caution you about is that you should never, *ever* consider any job that involves being around children!” 🙂
On the plus side, I had a really good connection with my Spanish teacher my junior year in HS. He had a great love of his subject, & it showed. We had a mutual respect & affection that I value to this day. I even came back to visit him when I was a senior & after I graduated.
Thank you for your thoughtful question.
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If you had been asked to fill out a survey designed for rating a teacher, assuming the format would be “age appropriate,” do you think you could have given fair assessments of your teachers (that actually might be used to evaluate your teachers)?
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2old2teach-
My gut reaction to your question is yes, I think I would have given fair assessments on age-appropriate surveys about my teachers’ performances. In my case, at least, my disruptive behavior wasn’t motivated by any hostility toward, or even dislike for, any of the teachers, or a reflection of my evaluation of their competence or effectiveness. I generally got very good grades through my entire grade- & high-school experience (incidentally, all in one medium-sized suburban North Jersey town); clearly I was learning quite well. For some reason, I seemed to consider it my *duty* to give them a hard time wherever I thought I could get away with it. I think I realized they were doing their best to deal with me & sometimes even felt sort of sorry privately (though obviously, not quite sorry enough :-)). At least, that’s how I recall my childhood point of view from my current vantage point, 45-55 years later.
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Ah yes, I recognize your type, :), and you are probably right that you could have given a fairly good assessment especially if the survey was well designed. I like the idea of student surveys for a teacher’s use, not as an evaluation tool that is part of a high stakes process.
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“Ah yes, I recognize your type, :)…”
Pleased to meet you! 🙂
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In Peter Greene’s post, he mentions the op-ed piece that appeared in the 1/17/16 NY Times – “How Measurement Fails Doctors and Teachers” – Robert M. Wachter.
In particular, he cites the significance of the observation from Avedis Donabedian which links the article back to his call for gentleness – a quality (note, NOT quantity) that has been overlooked and devalued in the current wave or “Rheeform” and accountability.
“Avedis Donabedian, a professor at the University of Michigan’s School of Public Health, was a towering figure in the field of quality measurement. He developed what is known as Donabedian’s triad, which states that quality can be measured by looking at outcomes (how the subjects fared), processes (what was done) and structures (how the work was organized).
“In 2000, shortly before he died, he was asked about his view of quality. What this hard-nosed scientist answered is shocking at first, then somehow seems obvious.
“The secret of quality is love,” he said.
“Our businesslike efforts to measure and improve quality are now blocking the altruism, indeed the love, that motivates people to enter the helping professions. While we’re figuring out how to get better, we need to tread more lightly in assessing the work of the professionals who practice in our most human and sacred fields.
(Robert M. Wachter is a professor and the interim chairman of the department of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, and the author of “The Digital Doctor: Hope, Hype, and Harm at the Dawn of Medicine’s Computer Age.”)
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Thanks for your response which is a great reply to the one size fits all model of “reform.” Teaching is a dynamic endeavor with lots of variables. It is absurd to try to distill all aspects of teaching down to a number. The purpose of the number is to make evaluation computer compatible. It has nothing to do with reality. How many times do we have to prove that test scores tell us more about the socio-economic levels of students than how effective the teacher is? It seems the inability for the powers that be to understand this is in direct proportion the size of Bill Gates’ wallet.
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I disagree with this statement.
“But if your theory of classroom management is that you must get control of your students, forcing them to comply with the rules, and only once you have beaten them down, overpowered them, and gotten them to respect your authority– only then can you start teaching…. well, you are doomed to failure no matter where you teach.”
Where I taught for thirty years, we were encouraged to post ten rules designed to support a proper learnign environment and some of those rules were district policy—for instance chewing gum, eating in class, dress code violations, etc.
I implemented those rules—most of the time. When I had a class full of students who were into learning—rare but it did happen—there was little need to enforce any of the rules but in some classes that wasn’t the case.
And the evidence I have supports the fact that I was not a failure in the classroom as a teacher. In fact, the evidence says I was a raging success because I enforced rules that were there to help maintain an environment where students could learn.
I enforced the rules evenly and fairly and made it a point not to shout at or insult students who refused to cooperate. Talk in a calm voice. Smile while you are writing the referral. If a student calls you a “F—ing Ass Hole” for writing a referral when the refused to return to their seat because they felt like ahving a conversation with a friend across the room, a conversation that interpreted the class discussion or lesson in process, then say, “I would never call you that” and write what the student said on the referral before the student is escorted to the office to see the counselor.
I taught in a urban school in a barrio ruled by violent street gangs and witnessed drive buy shootings from my classroom doorway. More than 80% of the students at the high school where I taught lived in poverty.
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All teachers need rules and a management framework. Beyond this, we also need to listen, inspire, encourage, empathize, and try to be fair. As someone that taught refugees from war torn countries, I had to be careful about how I approached traumatized students. Often times gentle is helpful; other times firm is necessary. An experienced teacher takes a cue from students while still enforcing rules.
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I totally agree with your comment, and yes there were times when some rules were not enforced depending on what was going on in the class. For instance, one student is not on task and is sleeping, but everyone else is on task and into the learning. To wake that one student who is sleeping up and make an issue out of it risking the collapse of the lesson is not worth it. Let that student sleep and teach everyone else.
In fact, a few times over the years, i had to wake up a student so he could stumble off to the next class where he might sleep some more. Maybe that student works a night job to help support the family, or he might have been out with his gang all night spraying graffiti on walls all over town.
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I may be on a really different thought trajectory, so I don’t want to imply that you feel the same way I do when I say thank you. I think one of the reasons that the reform movement has gained such traction is that lower-income people who want their kids to get a good education are fed up with having them stuck in schools and classrooms where behaviors hold them back. If I lose five minutes per class dealing with behavior issues that recur because there is really nothing I can do if a kid is hell-bent on acting out (and a number of them, in over their heads in the curriculum, are so), then my students have lost 10% of their instructional time. Teachers who are dedicated to getting through the curriculum need to stop being blamed for “poor management” in a system that will not back them up and simply keeps sending the most difficult kids back to the classroom. And I know teachers whose “good management” includes teaching less, again holding back the good students. I am very frustrated.
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I taught for thirty years from 1975-76 to 2004-05. For 27 of those years I taught out of schools with poverty rates reaching as high as 100% and never falling below 70%. But for three years (1986 – 1989), I worked on the other side of the freeway in a solid middle class community without the street gangs and very little poverty.
The behavior problems were worse in the more affluent school. Too many of the parents blamed everything on the teachers and refused to support the teachers so too many of the children knowing this competed for attention by disrupting the learning envinroment as much as possible. The principal didn’t want anything to do with these parents so he refused to support the teachers who were under constant attack by those parents who were too busy earning money so they could buy more expensive homes, cars and junk to raise their children properly who were often latch key kids being raised by their peers and TV.
In 1989, I transferred back to the barrio, street gangs and high levels of childhood poverty. For all of the challenges that came with many of these children, there was more support from poor parents than there was the blame teachers for everything game and most of the parents of the most disruptive students were almost always absent parents, meaning teachers never saw or talked to them. It was extremely difficult tor each most of these parents.
On the other side of the freeway in the more affluent school it was easy to reach parents but many of those parents would call you a liar if you told them their child and disrupted the classroom learnign environment and you wanted their help to change this unacceptable behavior.
The biggest difference is that the more affluent children come from homes where there are books, magazines and newspaper, and they grew up around that reading material so most of these children are readers and once a child is a reader, then that child is also a life long learner. At the other schools where poverty ruled, there were far too many children who actually hated to read because they grew up in homes where there were no books, magazines and newspapers.
I think that the more academic pressure there is linked to high stakes tests, the more poor children will become more resistant tor reading and earning and we will see repeats of what is happening in New Orleans where the most difficult to teach children end up on the streets with no corporate charter willing to take them and no public school option. Those children will learn from the streets and lead to a generation of very dangerous children who survive through crime resulting in the cradle, poverty to prison pipeline.
Until the corporate public education demolition derby declared war on community based, democratic, transparent, non profit public educaiton there was no school to misprision pipeline. Instead, public schools in areas with high rations of poverty were often an oasis where children felt safer and were offered an escape from the poverty to prison pipeline through education.
If poor parents move their children to schools they consider safer and more affluent, nothing will change for their children if they still grew up in a home without books, magazines and newspapers. What has to change is the environment the child was born into and that means the parents must be readers too so the child grows up around books, etc.
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After 17 years in education, and after observing many teachers at various levels, in different kinds of classrooms, I can say with confidence that one of the most powerful “tools” teachers use to effect the climate of a classroom is…a smile. What a difference it makes to show students that you’re happy to be there with them, teaching and learning.
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The good teachers have figured out how to “smile with their eyes”.
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Duane, the good teachers don’t have to figure out how to smile with their eyes. It comes naturally although there is some truth in the old adage, “Fake it until you make it.”
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After a similar number of years, I can say with confidence that that is an ineffective and overly-simplistic strategy in my neck of the woods.
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Many years ago, I read in a child rearing book that parent’s eyes should light up and their faces break out into a smile every time their child enters the room. It makes the child feel welcome in the presence of their parents.
I remembered that when I began teaching. I make a point to be smiling when my students enter my door. Look, kids take the “temperature” of the classroom immediately upon entering. They want to know if the teacher is in a good mood or bad mood.
My sincere smile (because I truly am happy to see them) lets them know it isn’t too hot or too cold, it’s as Goldilocks said “just right!”
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Isn’t everyone’s first year teaching harrowing? How about we all just agree that that’s true, unless you’re comatose.
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You have to teach in one of the toughest places to live of one of the most populous cities to understand. It’s indescribable. It is unlike anything known to the middle class. Worse, Hollywood and other media portrayals create delusional expectations of first year teaching grandeur.
The first year is the worst year.
The first few years are painfully cathartic — daily. It takes years, decades maybe, to find the right balance between tolerance of existing hardships and tough love. Only adaptability, flexibility, massive amounts of quality training and experience help. That’s why TFA, no excuses charters, and online learning platforms will always fail to adequately supplant real teachers.
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>>You have to teach in one of the toughest places to live of one of the most populous cities to understand. It’s indescribable. It is unlike anything known to the middle class. <<
So rural ed doesn't count? By "middle class," you probably still are picturing places with public transportation, fire hydrants, public libraries open every day, civic centers, sidewalks, schools able to offer a variety of HS courses, just to name a few elements absent in rural America. And yes, I also taught in NH's most populous city as well (and graduated from HS in Manchester, but did not live there– long story). Urban areas have many more resources and opportunities than rural ones if you don;t have loads of $$$.
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Pculliton – you are right, rural America has its own set of problems which are rarely considered or addressed. Currently, they aren’t even on the radar.
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LCT,
“The first few years are painfully cathartic”
For some, perhaps even most (and that is why something like 50% of teachers leave before the 5th yr) but not all. The first few years in any profession are probably “painfully cathartic” for most practitioners as it is generally the nature of professions to take quite a while for skills and knowledge to build up.
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I taught in an alternative junior high for my first three years. During two of those years I was pregnant. My first two years were harrowing, although I got more of the hang of it my third year.
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Third year is also when I started to feel like I wasn’t constantly walking a tightrope. Unfortunately, US culture is one of immediate gratification. About as far away from what you get as a teacher as anything I can imagine!
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Correct. Teaching is an art form. It takes years of experience to become good at it. The learning curve is as steep as it gets. There’s a good reason why there are no teacher prodigies.
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Precisely.
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“Liberal savior anger” Yep.
Armed with TED Talks and the term “Social Justice,” these savior types can’t figure out why the kids won’t listen.
It’s got to be the kids.
They used to blame the teachers. Until they tried (and failed) to be one.
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That line caught my eye also Cupcake! I’m glad Greene used it.
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Oddly, although I absolutely agree with that term as used, I do think it has a wider place. In fact, I’m about to make a long post with a similar-but-different sentiment.
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Good line Diane: “Of course, he’s got a book deal and I’m writing this blog for free, so who knows?”
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That line was Greene commenting on Bolland.
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Gates funded “teacher preparation transformation centers “are boasting of new screening and induction policies that will eliminate the learning curve for teachers entering the classroom for the first time, prepare them to be ready to be “effective” on day one.
The secret sauce?
Rigorous screening of applicants, regular testing and triage, monitoring progress through an “approved” training program, competency based, minimal coursework from higher ed, lots of shortcuts, (on line teaching of digital avatars programed to act up and respond to correct and incorrect interventions), and sharp focus on “high leverage” practices. Think Relay Graduate School of Education ( one of the grant recipients) with Doug Lemov no-nonsense strategies (he is an advisor for one of the centers, also lots of TFAers involved).
Each transformation center is part of large network for “sharing great ideas to elevate and celebrate” the profession–That is the hype, and the tragedy is that these initiatives can benefit from some double-dipping through ESSA’s teacher “academies” and other USDE initiatives.
One recipient of a share of the $34.7 million Gates initiative boasted that their teachers would deliver better outcomes from day one that a teacher with three years experience. Several centers promise to produce 2500 teachers before the end of the three-year grant period. “Outcomes” means higher test scores plus other indicators, including employer satisfaction surveys.
One part of this Gates incursion into teacher preparation is a new “Inspectorate” system for teacher prep programs, initially co-funded by the Helmsley Charitable Trust. About twelve states have been engaged in piloting this system, based on a similar program in Great Britain.
“SEATTLE (November 18, 2015) – The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation today announced it will commit $34.7 million over three years to five newly-formed Teacher Preparation Transformation Centers that will bring together higher education institutions, teacher-preparation providers and K-12 school systems to share data, knowledge and best practices. These ‘cooperatives’ will develop, pilot and scale effective teacher-preparation practices to help ensure that more teacher-candidates graduate ready to improve student outcomes in K-12 public schools.”
I am still tracing the interlocking relationships among these centers well beyond the press releases and boasts.
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Ooo, I would LOVE to be in a classroom when one of these robotic teachers, who think that they will have no learning curve, begins teaching. They are in for a rude awakening.
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Very interesting. Thanks for posting.
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Gates had the same idea about programming, and this is why windows was and still is the least secure operating system, boasting frozen computers, blue screens, viruses, etc.
According to his metric, though, windows is wonderful and a great success: billions are using it and it’s making billions for him.
In general, if something spreads widely and quickly, making billions to the inventors or owners, then it’s declared a “great thing”. Like Uber. As long as I can get to the airport quickly and cheap, why should I care about anything else?
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Laura writes “The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation today announced it will commit $34.7 million over three years to five newly-formed Teacher Preparation Transformation Centers that will bring together higher education institutions, teacher-preparation providers and K-12 school systems to share data, knowledge and best practices. ”
Now there you have this crap hitting my university’s fan
http://www.dailyhelmsman.com/news/u-of-m-to-transform-its-teacher-preparation-program/article_e9107686-bf1c-11e5-a3db-cfe8bac2aba6.html
There’s no opposition. The prof interviewed there was the only open opposition to Relay on campus, but she now apparently thinks, this Gates program is a great idea.
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Laura: “Think Relay Graduate School of Education ( one of the grant recipients) ”
So relay is one of the recipients of this $34.7 million grant?
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Am remembering what a colleague said as he greeted me one day my first year teaching “Some day you’ll be a good teacher.” It took me about seven years to get the hang of it.
Eva would not have wanted me at any time in my career.
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Two words – Harry Wong
New teachers come in with idealistic goals and wind up in survival mode.
Some can’t hack it.
I call it self weeding. It happens in the Buffalo Public Schools all the time – sometimes the new-bees don’t even last a day. Students have been known to go through two, three, or more teachers until they find one who sticks.
It’s a perfect example of Charles Darwn’s theories.
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I came onto this page because this is a major issue with me. I am very frustrated, and feel for the bright, hard-working students in my school who really want to learn. If my kid was in certain classes in my school – overcrowded, with several behavior problems and nowhere to keep them all separated and nothing effective to do about them – I might want a charter choice, too.
(The general answer to this problem in the school from admin is to put kids in accelerated classes – but that leaves out low-skills kids with good behaviors, and makes the accelerated classes pseudo-accelerated.)
I am anti-reform in the sense that this pro-profit movement is chillingly destructive. Yet so is a system that does not support discipline in any sort of meaningful way. The left needs to stop blaming teachers for not being able to work behavioral miracles day in and day out, and start acknowledging that failure to support teachers on this issue is one of the reasons that the charter movement has grown and continues to grow. The right is “laughing all the way to the bank,” as the saying goes.
This is one reason I refuse to be a Democrat (although I would never be a Republican) and do not call myself “liberal,” even though I lean way more left than right. I find that the calls for excessive tolerance for self-defeating behaviors that also have a negative effect on others – mostly by people who do not live and/or work in these milieus – is part of what has driven the reform movement. It is the classic “white liberal savior” mentality of looking from the outside and thinking you know it all. Excessive tolerance of poor behaviors in children is not doing them any favors. If you are lower income, you are not going to get away with things as an adult. The world outside of school is not going to treat you with the same kid gloves that schools do.
So when I say stop blaming teachers for discipline problems, that goes quadruple for those who do not work in classrooms with a large proportion of low-skills, low-income students day in and day out. It’s no better for the left to blame systemic problems on individual teachers than it is for the right to do so.
There’s much more to this, of course. Kids need more physical activity, for example, but how to incorporate that is another discussion.
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There are no easy answers, but you are right that ignoring the problem isn’t doing these kids any favors. I was left with a very disruptive student who was used to being the center of attention with loud, abusive language. Finding things that would engage her was a challenge. All the special ed teachers led by her case manager went to work on her. She was really kind of shocked to see that she was placed in classes with students who were years behind the general ed population. Her behavior had so controlled the level of work she would tackle that she had no idea what kids in the mainstream were studying. What really led to a complete turnaround was making the basketball team. Her teammates would not put up with her behavior, and she could see that it would affect her ability to play. The refs would not stand for it either. When she was placed in my new reading class, several students who had been taking it as a general ed class had also joined. She so wanted to be accepted by them, and they were totally put off by her off the wall behavior. Over the course of high school, her whole demeanor changed as she began to fit in with a group of kids who were athletically inclined. I was so proud of her.
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Incidentally, the robotic-behavior, excessive-discipline charters are an over-reaction to the excessive-non-discipline schools many kids have been, yes, trapped in. If you want to stop the charter movement, then something meaningful has to be done about discipline, and ideas need to come from people who are actually in the most difficult schools.
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I am not a teacher in one of those “most difficult” schools, but here is the solution I have long wished those schools would try:
From the first day there is a set of classroom behaviors that are reasonable. No pointless rules like “eyes on teacher” or “socks must match”, but instead, the Golden Rule is: “do nothing that disturbs the learning of the other students in the classroom”.
If a student doesn’t want to participate or listen, he or she can sit in the back of the class and daydream. (Or maybe sit in the back of the class and pretend to daydream while actually listening.)
But if a student is acting out and disrupting the learning of other students, out he goes to a special Time Out room manned by as many adults as it necessary to keep reasonable order. But here is the kicker: the students in the Time Out room are welcome to come back to the classroom at any time! As long as they are willing to sit quietly (or even sleep quietly) they are welcome. They don’t need to participate in order to remain.
Separately, the students who don’t act out are evaluated and Teaching Assistants work with groups on their level. In an Algebra I class, there is no mandate to teach those kids the curriculum. The ones who can handle it are taught in one group. The students who come in with 4th grade math levels begin there in a separate group and move on as quickly or slowly as they are able. The students who come in with 7th grade math form another group. The goal is not to get all the students through Algebra, but to get them to a higher point in math, even if that higher point is only 5th or 6th grade math.
And the students who DO act out constantly and are in the time out room all the time are also evaluated to see what is going on. Do they need a different environment? Is there family dysfunction involved? Are they just embarrassed because they aren’t understanding the material and want to save face? For math, especially, I would also embrace computer-based learning – with help from teachers – where students can progress as slowly or quickly as they learn the material without other students knowing their levels.
I don’t believe you can punish a student into being a scholar. But you can provide easy to take advantage opportunities for the students who appear not to want to learn but perhaps do. And you can address the problems of the students with serious psychological issues or educational deficits without lumping all “behavioral issues” into one large group.
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I taught a small group math class at the middle school (7-8) level for several years. The kids came in with a range of abilities. In one school, I was allowed to meet them where they were, as you suggest, and their progress was very satisfying to the students and their parents. The school never really questioned what I did. Designing the program was my responsibility. At the other 7-8 school where I taught, I was given a book that was basically beyond the students but they had passed a test from the year before. No way they could have passed it again. They were quite good at memorizing algorithms that allowed them to pass low level computation tests of problems whose type they had used for extensive practice. They had no conceptual understanding of that math and no interest in learning it or belief that they could. I really had to go back and establish a base of understanding. Fortunately, the principal did not know enough to question what I was doing, but he used to tear me apart over time-on-task issues. When I tried to explain what I was trying to do he looked at me and huffily told me I always had an answer. I was totally unfamiliar with evaluation as something that was done to you rather than with you, so I was speechless after his attack. It was my introduction to a “gotcha” culture. So while I am with you, the atmosphere in most (?) schools for the past couple of decades has really turned quite toxic to the kind of teaching that needs to happen especially for struggling students.
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While I have the benefit of being a large male, as well immigrant students who by-and-large want to learn, I nevertheless try to use as inspiration for classroom management an anecdote I once read about Marvin Miller (who helped lead baseball players out of industrial serfdom and successfully led the union for years).
This anecdote was from a player (if anyone remembers this story and recalls the source, please let me know) who was among the first members of the Major League Baseball Players Association, before it had received legal recognition as bargaining agent, and years before Miller was able to overturn the Reserve Clause that bound players to their “owners.”
“We were children, but he treated us Iike adults, and eventually we became adults.”
I always ask my high school students how they would prefer to be treated, and they always say they would prefer to be treated like adults. I tell them that’s what I prefer, too, and will do so, unless by their behavior they insist on being treated like children, in which case I will oblige.
Needless to say, adolescents are still children, and often behave that way. Nevertheless, more often that not, the students behave maturely in ways that belie their age.
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