literature review
Teachers “must win the cooperation of youth…[i]t simply cannot be forced," (Walton & Powers (2009), 21). The power dynamics in a classroom are very interesting, especially when a student teacher is thrown into the mix. Children hold a lot of power; consider a particularly challenging student who can derail an entire lesson almost immediately. It is important not to try to strip power from students and equally important that students know that the teacher does not seek to do so. As in all aspects of life, I believe it is better to earn respect and cooperation rather than demand it. Students act in an uncooperative manner when they perceive doing so as the best means to achieve their goal. Walton and Powers have identified four main reasons why students act out: a) seeking attention, b) seeking power, c) seeking revenge, or d) feeling inadequate. Children often are unable or perhaps unwilling to express their true desire and mask what they really want behind misbehavior (Walton & Powers (2009), 6-7). The oft-stated mantra of GSE thus comes to the forefront: a teacher must know her students. What are they trying to express when they act out in a certain way?
Of the four goals of students’ misbehavior, two in particular- attention and inadequacy- have stood out in both of my classrooms this year. Many students appear to crave a bond with the teacher that separates them from their classmates. In January, I wrote a journal entry regarding my plan to have lunch with the students individually. Over the past two months, I have invited students, one at a time, to sit at a separate table with me in the lunchroom. Every student not only accepted the invitation, but also seemed to do so eagerly and with enthusiasm. This only made a dent in the attention seeking goal, but I believe the unanimously positive reactions I received to the lunch program speaks to Walton and Power’s point.
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A2- JOURNAL ENTRY, JAN. 25, 2013
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As for students feeling inadequate, it seems sadly to be the norm for several students in my third grade class. Consider Adam, a third grader who I noticed at the beginning of my placement spending most of the morning with his head on his desk, participating very little and usually not at all for the three hours before the prep period. In the afternoons he was more active, but in a disruptive way, calling out and arguing with classmates. In February, I spoke with him about a personal behavior plan and developed on with three categories (this is discussed in depth later), one of which is “Did I try?”. It took several conversations and about a week, but eventually it seemed to click for Adam that trying does not necessarily mean getting the correct answer. If he worked on the task at hand instead of drawing all over his assignments and if he raised his hand a few times a period, I was thrilled and made that clear to him. Thus, I believe that part of the success of Adam’s chart was that he was able to separate effort from a final right or wrong answer. After assuring him that I saw him try and placing more emphasis on that than the evaluation of his final product, it seemed as though Adam was able to overcome some of his feelings of inadequacy. Trying or not trying was within his control and he knew he had the ability to succeed in at least trying.
All in all, I hope to be what Gay describes as a “warm-demanding academic taskmaster,” (Gay (2010), 75). Students are humans and respond better to teachers who respect this. Shaming or scaring my students into “good” behavior is not my intent; I want to treat my students with respect and hold them to high standards that they in turn will try to fulfill due to a mutual respect in the classroom (Gay (2010), 48). No matter how well I know my students, I will never know everything about their extracurricular lives and I certainly cannot control what happens outside of the school building. While in the classroom, however, I want to emit a caring presence so that my students have no doubts about my motives. The best way I can see to do this is to have consistent standards that are clear to the students. School is challenging enough for young people and if I can remove all veils of mystery, such as what will my reaction be to certain behaviors, I will do so. A way to start doing so involves embracing Gay’s culturally responsive teaching methods (See Appendix I for complete list). This lengthy list may seem like a tall order for teachers, but upon closer examination all items seem crucial to creating a respectful classroom. Consider the final one: “[P]rovide intellectually challenging and personally relevant learning experiences for socially, ethnically, racially, and culturally diverse students," (Gay (2010), 52). This jives with the one size does not fit all model and emphasizes the need to hold high expectations across the board. Especially if the teacher has created a culture of mutual respect, students will be more likely to want to meet her standards, giving them a reason to behave during class.
Despite all this setup, students still act out. While I believe most of this is due to imperfect implementation of the ideas above on my part, I need to have a plan to deal with less than ideal behaviors when they occur. It is worthwhile to consider Joseph Kounin’s analysis of “teacher desist techniques,” (Kounin, 5). It is important to be cognizant of the impact any strategy has on the individual student, the class as a whole, and the teacher. Ultimately, Kounin found that proactive actions were the most effective behavior management techniques. If a teacher designs interesting lessons that require high levels of student involvement, she will be more likely to keep the group as a whole focused on the task at hand. One reactive tactic is reprimanding, which I consider a form of punishment. As Walton and Powers explain, punishment implies that the student is defective in some way and the teacher issuing the rebuke is discouraging the student (Walton & Powers (2009), 18). At the heart of reprimanding is the belief that one can shame the student into behaving, a goal that ultimately breeds resentment. Kounin found that when teachers reprimand the misbehaving student, the other children in the room often felt uncomfortable. From personal experience as a teacher, I can say that the more punitive actions I have taken cause me stress. I feel that once I reprimand one student for a certain behavior, I need to keep up that standard if I see others behaving in a similar way. This distracts me from teaching and I am likely to lose the momentum of the lesson and the attention of other students. For example, I have asked misbehaving students to leave the rug during a read aloud or a review of a math worksheet. I tell them to return to their seats and follow the lesson from there because they are distracting the entire class. Usually this causes at least a thirty-second disruption, as they often grumble about this decision and some attempt to stay. Once I have issued the sentence, however, I feel that I have to follow through with it and I become preoccupied with “not backing down,” essentially engaging in a power struggle with a nine year old.
The obvious alternative to reprimanding bad behavior is to praise good behavior. An idea that has been advocated throughout the GSE program is to catch the students doing the right thing and then praise them for doing so. There are risks with this method, however, primarily that it will reduce students’ intrinsic motivation to learn. Louise Porter argues that many behavior management systems threaten students’ self-esteem, encourage a “dysfunctional perfectionism”, and taint their opinion of learning and facing challenges. Eventually students grow accustomed to praise, or lack thereof, and link it to their worth as students (Porter (2009), 1). One boy in my third grade frequently asks if he received five checks [1]. Whenever my answer is no, which is more often than not, he slumps away saying “I’m a bad boy.” I have tried to explain that that is not the case, he just made decisions that resulted in not meeting that goal; I remain dubious whether these comments have had much effect on him, however.
All in all, I hope to be what Gay describes as a “warm-demanding academic taskmaster,” (Gay (2010), 75). Students are humans and respond better to teachers who respect this. Shaming or scaring my students into “good” behavior is not my intent; I want to treat my students with respect and hold them to high standards that they in turn will try to fulfill due to a mutual respect in the classroom (Gay (2010), 48). No matter how well I know my students, I will never know everything about their extracurricular lives and I certainly cannot control what happens outside of the school building. While in the classroom, however, I want to emit a caring presence so that my students have no doubts about my motives. The best way I can see to do this is to have consistent standards that are clear to the students. School is challenging enough for young people and if I can remove all veils of mystery, such as what will my reaction be to certain behaviors, I will do so. A way to start doing so involves embracing Gay’s culturally responsive teaching methods (See Appendix I for complete list). This lengthy list may seem like a tall order for teachers, but upon closer examination all items seem crucial to creating a respectful classroom. Consider the final one: “[P]rovide intellectually challenging and personally relevant learning experiences for socially, ethnically, racially, and culturally diverse students," (Gay (2010), 52). This jives with the one size does not fit all model and emphasizes the need to hold high expectations across the board. Especially if the teacher has created a culture of mutual respect, students will be more likely to want to meet her standards, giving them a reason to behave during class.
Despite all this setup, students still act out. While I believe most of this is due to imperfect implementation of the ideas above on my part, I need to have a plan to deal with less than ideal behaviors when they occur. It is worthwhile to consider Joseph Kounin’s analysis of “teacher desist techniques,” (Kounin, 5). It is important to be cognizant of the impact any strategy has on the individual student, the class as a whole, and the teacher. Ultimately, Kounin found that proactive actions were the most effective behavior management techniques. If a teacher designs interesting lessons that require high levels of student involvement, she will be more likely to keep the group as a whole focused on the task at hand. One reactive tactic is reprimanding, which I consider a form of punishment. As Walton and Powers explain, punishment implies that the student is defective in some way and the teacher issuing the rebuke is discouraging the student (Walton & Powers (2009), 18). At the heart of reprimanding is the belief that one can shame the student into behaving, a goal that ultimately breeds resentment. Kounin found that when teachers reprimand the misbehaving student, the other children in the room often felt uncomfortable. From personal experience as a teacher, I can say that the more punitive actions I have taken cause me stress. I feel that once I reprimand one student for a certain behavior, I need to keep up that standard if I see others behaving in a similar way. This distracts me from teaching and I am likely to lose the momentum of the lesson and the attention of other students. For example, I have asked misbehaving students to leave the rug during a read aloud or a review of a math worksheet. I tell them to return to their seats and follow the lesson from there because they are distracting the entire class. Usually this causes at least a thirty-second disruption, as they often grumble about this decision and some attempt to stay. Once I have issued the sentence, however, I feel that I have to follow through with it and I become preoccupied with “not backing down,” essentially engaging in a power struggle with a nine year old.
The obvious alternative to reprimanding bad behavior is to praise good behavior. An idea that has been advocated throughout the GSE program is to catch the students doing the right thing and then praise them for doing so. There are risks with this method, however, primarily that it will reduce students’ intrinsic motivation to learn. Louise Porter argues that many behavior management systems threaten students’ self-esteem, encourage a “dysfunctional perfectionism”, and taint their opinion of learning and facing challenges. Eventually students grow accustomed to praise, or lack thereof, and link it to their worth as students (Porter (2009), 1). One boy in my third grade frequently asks if he received five checks [1]. Whenever my answer is no, which is more often than not, he slumps away saying “I’m a bad boy.” I have tried to explain that that is not the case, he just made decisions that resulted in not meeting that goal; I remain dubious whether these comments have had much effect on him, however.
A3- FIELD NOTES, APRIL 18, 2013
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The risk of creating “socially prescribed perfectionism” is when students so fear failure that they would rather not try at all. In mid-April, a student who normally excels at math became confused over a multistep addition word problem. He raised his hand and when I approached him, he stated he did not know what to do. I asked him to reread the problem and draw a picture of what information he knew. He just kept repeating “But I don’t know how to do it!” and his eyes filled with tears. He eventually pulled himself together, after leaving the room briefly and some encouraging and sympathetic words from me. This example seems like a prime one of dysfunctional perfectionism; wanting to keep his reputation as a star math student, he shut down when faced with an unfamiliar problem. |
A final coping mechanism Porter discussed was the reduced motivation phenomenon in which students “attempt to preserve their dignity by giving up, avoiding challenge, and becoming off-task," (Porter (2009), 3). There was a kindergartener who, by mid-fall, had told me emphatically that he did not believe it was important to try his best at school. This conversation emerged as a result of him scribbling a “sentence” in his journal. He had been struggling with handwriting issues, but had previously written at least semi-legibly. This work was a huge regression, and I suspect it was due to the emphasis in the kindergarten class on performance-approach motivation. Perhaps worried about achieving the same results of a skill he had only so recently begun to practice caused him stress and he chose to not try rather than try and come up short.
Porter’s worry that resonates with me most is the threat to students’ autonomy. Children by nature of being minors lack certain freedoms, many of which they are acutely aware. As a teacher, I want to empower them, but what message does it send if I employ a rewards-based system that bribes them to subscribe to my behavior expectations? As an alternative to “traditional” behavior management programs, Porter suggests providing students with informative feedback, acknowledging what they have achieved and pointing them in the direction of future improvement (Porter (2009), 4). [1] The amount required to receive a reward certificate. |
A4- BLUE BOOK ENTRY DESCRIBING SCRIBBLING INCIDENT, Nov 7, 2012
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