NPR shared a story about the latest crowd control technique in the classroom: Give orders. Never say “please.”
It is called “no-nonsense nurturing,” although it is hard to see the nurture part in this robotic scenario.
This technique is used largely (if not exclusively) in low-income minority schools. As a Vanderbilt professor says in the article, the approach sounds like “colonialism.”
Paul Thomas’s blog is subtitled “a pedagogy of kindness.” His posts decry this treatment of students and teachers. Wouldn’t adults want to model the behavior they want students to practice?
What would Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. say about “no nonsense nurturing”? What life lessons are the students learning?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
http://atradventures.blogspot.com/2015/12/happy-new-year-how-teaching-has-turned.html?m=1
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Paul Thomas sounds like he’s acquired quite a bit of wisdom teaching. I’m going to bookmark his post so I can refer back to it again.
The people behind “no-nonsense nurturing” , on the other hand, appear to be hypocrites. How would they like to be treated the way they control their students? Talk about teaching the wrong lesson.
And, the part where the “coach” stands in the back of the classroom and whispers directions into the teacher’s earbud is…..creepy. Talk about getting into someone’s head. What’s next…..electrodes that allow “coaches” to shock the teacher (and the kids) by remote control?
I have to imagine….would Bill Gates or Campbell Brown or Andrew Cuomo ever consent to wearing an earbud and having some “coach” murmur into their ears as they tried to work? Fat chance. Though I have a few things I’d love to say to them, that’s for sure.
And, NPR… once again, NPR disappoints me. Maybe NPR should stand for “Not Progressive Radio”…. Where are the tough questions, the real journalism? Grow a backbone, NPR…..please.
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I believe these devices you mention are known as “Collars of Obedience,” and were modeled for us in an episode of “Star Trek,” way back in the beforetimes.
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I say nonsense to practices like these. As useless as restorative justice in inner city schools with constant turnover of staff and students
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This is the worst classroom management technique I have heard of. Of course you want to say please and thank you. That is how children learn to be polite–by modeling that behavior. I was raised to always say please and thank you, so I can’t imagine not being polite to my students.
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Dottie: it makes perfect sense among the heavyweight charter/privatization folks.
If, that is, you proceed from a “command-and-compliance” model. And as they see it: they command, we comply.
On this day of all days: imagine if Dr. Martin Luther King had been raised in this fashion!
Just sayin’…
😎
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We call “please” and “thank you” manners. All teachers should model good manners and civil behavior. Teaching is social, and that includes pro-social behavior.
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If you don’t treat your students like human beings worthy of respect, you will get no respect. Just ordering kids around isn’t “nurturing,” and it will end up with a LOT of nonsense.
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what Dottie said.
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It is interesting to compare the “no-nonsense nurturing” example with the scenario in the first comment. If you want to focus on “pleases” and whether lack of, or too many somehow facilitate certain behavior from students, go ahead. I think the “pleases” have less to do with the behavior than other influences such as, teacher support from administration, teacher support from parents, culture and expectations of the school environment as a whole, socio-economic levels just to name a few.
If classroom management was a factor of simply the word please, saying it or not, we would have known it long ago.
I’m sad that our teaching force is being trained into some conditioned robotic profession.
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Occasionally if I want to get an oblivious teenager’s attention, I’ll deliver a command without a “Please…”. For example, as one way to keep gang energy from cropping up, we have a no-hat rule in our high school. If I see a hat in the hallway on a head whose face shows no sign of awareness that its owner is violating a sensible rule, I’ll speak out in a loud voice, “Hat!” Once the owner acknowledges the reminder and pulls off the hat, THEN I’ll say, “Thank you, my friend,” or something like that. AFTER I see that I’ve penetrated the fog and gotten their attention, I’m happy to be nurturing. Most of the time these days, I do include the “Please” up front, reserving the direct command option for wake up calls. Maybe I’m saying that classroom or school management should be about applying rules that make sense and show respect in ways that make sense and show respect.
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Your suggestion will go over the heads of the clueless developers of no-nonsense nurturing technique. Shouldn’t it be called the “how to create rebellion and hostility” technique. From experience I can tell you that is what happens.
Controlling a classroom of students is about the group you have and your ability to assert yourself from a place where you have the respect and command of the group. You can set things up to enable you to get respect and command, but you still have to do so. You have to relate to others. Frankly, some people’s personalities get in their own way.
The students will remind you to say please, especially those who are in tough neighborhoods and have learned to be more assertive than weak middle-class teachers who get assigned to them.
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On the rare occasion I forget to say “please” to students when making a request, I feel like I made a mistake.
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I will say though that there is one notable exception: when someone’s safety is threatened.
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Agree with Dottie — the very idea of being impolite to kids just because they haven’t been socialized the exact way middle class white people want them to be is ridiculous — “no nonsense nurturing” is a NO NO NO NO NO. At my highly successful urban school, no one would ever not use the word please (and thank you and all the other niceties that we would want EVERYONE to use). Education is about relationships, not about control and power.
Time for the revolution — parents, do NOT allow your children to be treated this way at school, please!
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Getting quite concerned about NPRs education reporting. The worst was the story about the high poverty school that was turned around by making it a Montessori school. Test scores went up… Because the population the school served drastically changed towards higher SES. That last part was not mentioned in the story!!!
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NPR gets Walton money
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“National Parrot Radio”
Parrotaganda epitomized
NPR has money ties.
Makes reparroters squawk and squeak
Every time they go to speak
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Reblogged this on Politicians Are Poody Heads and commented:
This is not “nurturing.” It may be “no nonsense” (whatever that means), but it has nothing to do with nurturing.
And I’m sure that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. would have absolutely nothing good to say about this.
Do any of the people who come up with these stupid ideas even have kids? And if they have kids, do their kids go to public or private schools? And if they go to public schools, where, and what educational model do they follow?
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I listened to the NPR story. The way it came across to me was not necessarily black & white/clear cut good or bad. It’s probably important to parse out what’s being done in the program that is good and what’s questionable.
The teacher interviewed said she appreciated getting coaching from an experienced teacher. I think any newer teacher would appreciate that. The issue is in what fashion the newer teacher is being coached.
The part that is questionable is the policy of not say, “please” to the students. The NPR report suggested that saying, “please” implies that the instruction is optional. I don’t personally derive that meaning from using that word. It is a sign of respect to the person being addressed.
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Agree. The best compliment I received was from a parent who said she admired the mutual respect that was apparent in my classroom. I honestly did not think about this until she pointed it out. I always treated my students respectfully, they way I wanted to be treated.
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OMG, how SIC!
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SIC = Surely Insane Crap
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I think saying “thank you” is much more important than please, but I did use “please” on occasion. For instance, “Would you please return to your desk and stop bothering Susy (not the girl’s real name), because she has clearly made it known she doesn’t want you rubbing her back and if you touch her again, she says she’s going to beat you up.”
When the boy returned to the seat—often with protests—and I didn’t have to write a referral, I often said, “Thank you. Now, please don’t leave your seat again or I will write the referral and send you to the office.”
That example is from real events that took place in my classroom. Then there was the boy who crawled around on the floor where I couldn’t see him and he started biting girls in the ankles making them jump and scream in shock.
Every time something like that happens it can take 15 to 30 minutes to calm the class down and get them back on task to learn.
Imagine what happened during a great lesson—this really happened—where everything was working like a dream when one boy said out loud, “I wonder what it would be like to have sex with an elephant. ” I mean loud.
And that boy said stuff like this almost everyday. End of lesson for that day.
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Ah yes, life in the urban jungle. I smile because I can relate to your depiction of the totally inappropriate words and actions that were a not unusual occurrence where I last taught. They worked so hard to shock. It was highly amusing the day we called one young man’s bluff and called his mother. She was sitting in class the next day. Never had any more trouble out of him. Later on he did openly admit (with a smile on his face) that he didn’t think we would call her.
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Thank you for the concrete particulars. They may help the non-teachers better grasp the magnitude of the challenge. Lay people often have strong opinions about how teachers should manage classrooms, but I wonder how they can really grasp the challenge unless they’ve stood at the front of a classroom. One thing that few seem to understand is that teachers are not just dealing with kids; they’re dealing with kids as a group. Thus mob psychology takes hold. A decent and likable child can quickly become must less lovable when swept up in mob action. Lay people often see the teacher as a powerful dictator who victimizes students. In fact, students, when they operate as a mob or pack, often hold the preponderance of power, and take advantage of the power differential to treat the teacher sadistically, or simply pursue their own, non-academic agenda.
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What you call the mob mentality of a group of students, I saw as a group personality led by children who were leaders or peer role model. The leaders could be positive or negative. Often, it took only one role model and/or alpha student to set the mood for the class and destroy the learning environment. Not every student would follow the pack. There were always lone wolfs and students who no matter how disruptive a class became learned no matter what.
It always amazed me that even in the most difficult classes to work with, there would always be a few who shut out all the distractions and focused on learning. While there might be 15 students earning F’s or D’s—not because they couldn’t do the work but because they didn’t do the work—there were always three to five students who earned solid A’s and B’s.
I still remember the one student who came to me after class one day and said he had trouble focusing on the work because of all the trouble makers in that class. He asked if he could have an independent study plan where he could do most of the work at home. I agreed. He also asked me not to let the other students in the class know what he was doing or they would make his life miserable for daring to cooperate and learn on his own. I put together an independent program for him based on reading books he would enjoy reading and turning in an in-depth analysis of each book’s plot, characters, themes, conflicts etc.
A few weeks later, his parents came in to see me. They were concerned. They said I was giving their son too much work. He’d get home and go straight to his room, close the door and go to work reading and writing. He’d come out to eat and then go right back to his room. He stopped watching several hours of TV with the family each night and this worried his parents.
I told the parents this is what he’d requested, and he earned an A+ that year. He never caused trouble in class but got very little classwork done becasue of all the bedlam going on caused by the alpha students who hated being a school.
The high school where I taught had a Behavior Improvement Center known as BIC. I think it is gone now thanks to the politically correct reformers who keep taking away every tool teachers and schools use in the constant struggle to manage the learning environment.
The teacher who ran BIC was known as Mr. D, and students sent to his room arrived with referrals.He kept track of all the schools referrals and reported each year that 5% of the students earned 90% of the referrals. He said he often saw the same 5% every day from almost every class they had. It wasn’t uncommon for one of the 5% to be sent to BIC by all their teachers every day no matter what the class was.
Meanwhile public school haters criticize everything public school teachers do in the war to teach no matter what while ignoring monsters like Eva Moskowitz who turns her corporate charters into Soviet Style gulag for even kindergartners.
Public school teachers have a target tattooed between their eyes and the fools who have been brainwashed by the corporate public education demolition derby, keep throwing darts at the bulls eye while ignoring all the fraud and horrors going on in too many corporate charter schools all in the name of improving test scores while destroying children’s spirits.
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I too am amazed by those kids with the blinders on. In the most chaotic class I ever had –roiled by a crew of severely unruly 13 year old boys –several quiet girls sat calmly and watched the daily battle without any visible reaction. But these girls’ essays proved they were learning a lot, and one of them, the daughter of a school board member, became one of my biggest cheerleaders. These quiet kids dislike the disruptors, but, as you say, social power is paramount, and no one wants to take on the “alpha” kids. These quiet kids are the teachers’ silent, powerless allies.
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Lloyd, You’ve made me feel better about my first year teaching gr 6-8 Lang Arts. One of those former students was elected to Board of Ed last year.
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What Dottie said!
Andre Comte-Sponville in his book “A Small Treatise on the Great Virtues” in which each chapter is about a human good-virtue. He starts with “politeness” and ends with “love” (the longest chapter). He describes politeness as a precursor to the other virtues. Politeness is what we teach it to children even before they know/have the capability to discern exactly why a “virtuous” behavior is desirable. He calls it a “semblance of a virtue” but without it can we really have a virtue?
So, politeness is quite necessary for human interactions to be cordial, civil, friendly, etc. . . . Without instilling it into young humans how can they move beyond it?
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When one thinks that saying please has no place in a classroom, the goal is clearly control. Dignity, kindness, and respect are much more effective in helping children recognize and reach their own potential.
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This is just conditioning and nothing more. The “scholars” are treated like criminals. They are to wear their prison garb (Success Academy wears prison orange, right?) and they are to have shoes tied, shirts tucked, the correct sock color and shoe, hair in place, buttons done up correctly. They are to sit silently. They use hand gestures when asking to use the toilets. Their eyes must follow the teacher at all times. They are to be S.I.L.E.N.T. at all times, unless addressed by a superior/guard/”teacher” or administrator. Why not just bark statements at them, and not use kind polite words like “please?”
Condition them for a future in prison. TEACH them nothing useful, but teach them how to pass a test. Don’t teach them how to think, or be individuals. Stifle them at every opportunity. Make sure they assume the position (hands behind backs or arms straight down at their sides) at all times. Get them ready for their scholarly futures in prison.
All for “those” kids, not for their own kids. “Those” kids don’t have the proper pedigree, do they? Those kids deserve…..to be grateful for what the charters give them: A joyless present and a future built on lies.
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Until recently, I taught conflict resolution skills in an afterschool program. With my 4th and 5th graders, I found that there were lots of fights and getting in trouble over minor offenses amongst themselves. We slowed down to talk about this. We talked about the value of saying ‘I’m sorry’ when you bump into someone and how much trouble you can head off. I asked them if adults say sorry, excuse me, etc. to them, and they said NEVER. I recall generally being spoken to politely as a child. Todays poor and minority are not being treated with dignity and respect at the most basic levels. What do we expect then?
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Over the years, “I’m sorry” or “excuse me,” have become my (almost) automatic responses. It doesn’t cost me anything to acknowledge that I might have caused harm whether it be the collision in the crowded hallway or the carelessly worded comment. It is amazing how you can avoid conflict altogether and/or get a discussion/conversation back on productive ground. Learning to treat people with courtesy or respect from an early age helps to keep it from becoming an indication of loss of face instead. Not that I ever thought about it that way when I was being admonished to say please and thank you by my mother. Saying, “I’m sorry,” does have a riskier flavor.
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This is part of the “hidden curriculum,” the all-important subtext being being pushed by the so-called reformers, which includes the test prep-drilling regime partially masked by the propaganda surrounding Common Core: as other people have commented, it’s got absolutely nothing to do with education, but is training for labor markets (or prison) where workers are powerless and disrespected as a matter of corporate policy.
This is training for the young Proles – the “Worthy Poor” students admitted to charters are expected to be their middle-management overseers – to prepare them for a future where they don’t matter, and only corporate speech and “freedom” does.
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Exactly. And those high test scores are meant to keep the cash flowing to the charters. Period.
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No-nonsense nurturing – I wonder . . . and worry.
The report visited a charter school in Charlotte, NC that is using the “program”. (Charter School in NC should ring two alarm bells.) As I read through the NPR story I kept hearing echoes of the abuses that have been attributed to the Success Academies in NY city as reported in this blog, and in fact, Success Academy is one of their client$.
The No-Nonsense Nurturer® Program (notice that the name is a registered trademark) blog is a “private” website, though if you email them, perhaps your request will be reviewed. Additionally, it seems to be a product of NewSchools Venture Fund.
They cite an investigation to determine the effectiveness of the No-Nonsense Nurturer® Program coupled with the Real Time Teacher Coaching Model in multiple classrooms (grades 3–12) in an urban school. If one wished to view the research, an email request is required. I had to go back to be certain that I read the description correctly. Unfortunately, I had. The research was done AT ONE SCHOOL.
Investigating this would seem to be a job for super sleuth Mercedes Schneider, but the evidence suggests that it is another for-profit initiative involving venture fund investors.
But maybe I’m just getting cynical.
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After reading all the comments posted here, I find myself wondering how many of the posters have ever taught in a dysfunctional, low-income urban school. I recently resigned after teaching middle school music (Band/choir/orchestra) for 16 years. I use the term ‘dysfunction’ from a medical perspective, meaning to impair the functioning of, in the case of school, learning. Dysfunction comes from a lot of different sources – home environment, mental illness, substance abuse, physical/emotional abuse, school and district administration, etc.
My last 6 years teaching in a urban large district were with large groups of beginning students who were rotated every semester. I wasn’t trained to manage the ensuing chaos, but I did need to survive and somehow teach, and in the end the students learned a great deal. One thing I learned to avoid almost completely, was sarcasm, and yes, saying, “please,” to a disruptive student when giving a direction falls into that category. The word please has a connotation of choice attached to it, as if the student can choose whether to follow the direction. If that’s not the teacher’s intention, then ‘please’ really should be omitted.
I know that from the outside some of the video’s segments look disrespectful to students, but believe me, no one is forcing those students to comply. They’re cooperating with the teacher because what the teacher is doing makes sense to them.
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Showing students courtesy or respect does not mean prefacing every request or action with “please.” “Take out your books and turn to page 4,” does not need to be prefaced with “please.” It is not out of line to give direction and expect to have it followed. It is not unreasonable to expect a certain level of behavior in a classroom. Most students are quite capable of meeting those expectations without extra attention. Of course those behavioral expectations and how poor behavior is handled will depend on the age of the students. As a special ed teacher, helping students manage their own behavior was frequently an important part of my class and the teacher as a model was extremely important.
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That is perhaps the nature of being an ensemble director, especially at the middle school level. Without you giving constant orders, and them following them consistently, you cannot have an ensemble.
Your situation is at one end of the extreme.
Also I agree with what 2old2teach said. Still, I try to say please whenever possible, or at least use a tone that implies “please” rather than “or else.” While order of some kind is important, I believe it is more important to acknowledge that they are humans and should be free to choose many if not most of their actions.
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NPR has become “All-nonsense reporting”
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Brought to you by… we all know who.
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Former turnaround teacher… district absolutely gave us Professional Development specifically on No-Nonsense Nurturing. It was the first one offered and a full-on class
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Personally, I think Sister Mary Elephant had the right approach
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Thank you for the trip down Memory Lane.
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This made me laugh out loud.
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