Talking to other teachers, I often come to the conclusion that we all share the same basic problem: how to manage our students' behavior and how to ensure that they are motivated and interested in the activities we are putting together for them.
One of the things that stunned me the most was to see how simple all of this appeared to be at Chickering.
All the theory I had learned - that we should always keep it positive, that we should give our kids positive reinforcements instead of negative ones or punishments, that we should instill respect and empathy other than fear and competitiveness... - was mirrored in these teachers' actions. I never once heard a teacher scream, like I already stated in one of my previous posts, I never saw one of the students being sent to detention, nor have I seen any type of violent speech between teachers and/or students.
One of the biggest problems I think Portuguese and Cape Verdians schools face is violence. Violence between students, from students to teachers (yes, there have been several cases of students or students' family members abusing teachers and overall being very disrespectful to them) and also from teachers to students (I have witnessed and heard several testimonials of teachers who are physically violent to their students!).
And I think all these problems stem from one very serious problem: the teachers are not using respect and empathy as their tools. They are using violence, authority, fear, threats and punishments as ways to control their students. I was too, I admit it. I lost my voice because of it, I threatened calling the parents or sending students to detention, I took points (given as a reward for good behaviors) as a way to punish them for a bad one.
It always felt wrong, but I couldn't find a better way to do it without fearing to lose control. And that's exactly where I was wrong. We shouldn't need to control students. They are not wild uncontroled animals. They are children and they learn from what they see.
So now I finally saw everything I was doing wrong. I saw what so many teachers are doing wrong. And I saw how to do it right. When you do it from the beginning, when you always use empathy, dialogue and positive reinforcements to “control” your class, you will see that there's little to no need to control. They will be calmer because you are calmer, they will speak nicely and respectfully because you speak nicely and respectfully, they will be motivated because you reinforce that motivation.
Here's a few examples of what I saw:
One of the things that stunned me the most was to see how simple all of this appeared to be at Chickering.
All the theory I had learned - that we should always keep it positive, that we should give our kids positive reinforcements instead of negative ones or punishments, that we should instill respect and empathy other than fear and competitiveness... - was mirrored in these teachers' actions. I never once heard a teacher scream, like I already stated in one of my previous posts, I never saw one of the students being sent to detention, nor have I seen any type of violent speech between teachers and/or students.
One of the biggest problems I think Portuguese and Cape Verdians schools face is violence. Violence between students, from students to teachers (yes, there have been several cases of students or students' family members abusing teachers and overall being very disrespectful to them) and also from teachers to students (I have witnessed and heard several testimonials of teachers who are physically violent to their students!).
And I think all these problems stem from one very serious problem: the teachers are not using respect and empathy as their tools. They are using violence, authority, fear, threats and punishments as ways to control their students. I was too, I admit it. I lost my voice because of it, I threatened calling the parents or sending students to detention, I took points (given as a reward for good behaviors) as a way to punish them for a bad one.
It always felt wrong, but I couldn't find a better way to do it without fearing to lose control. And that's exactly where I was wrong. We shouldn't need to control students. They are not wild uncontroled animals. They are children and they learn from what they see.
So now I finally saw everything I was doing wrong. I saw what so many teachers are doing wrong. And I saw how to do it right. When you do it from the beginning, when you always use empathy, dialogue and positive reinforcements to “control” your class, you will see that there's little to no need to control. They will be calmer because you are calmer, they will speak nicely and respectfully because you speak nicely and respectfully, they will be motivated because you reinforce that motivation.
Here's a few examples of what I saw:
And there are so many other tools nowadays that teachers can use. Last year, for example, I used ClassDojo a lot! I loved it, my students loved it and it helped tremendously with their behavior generally, not to mention engaging the parents in the process of behavior management.
But I still had a long list of red marks, aka negative points.
Next time I'm teaching my class, I will be using ClassDojo again (which I highly recommend!) but I will definitely focus a lot more on the positive points, on rewarding the good things, than on punishing the bad ones. Because when we focus on the positive, the general mood and energy is a lot brighter and positive than when we choose to focus on the negative. And that is what we should all be aiming at.
What about you? What tools do you use in your class to manage your students' behavior? Share some ideas with us in the comments section and let us know your favorite methods!
But I still had a long list of red marks, aka negative points.
Next time I'm teaching my class, I will be using ClassDojo again (which I highly recommend!) but I will definitely focus a lot more on the positive points, on rewarding the good things, than on punishing the bad ones. Because when we focus on the positive, the general mood and energy is a lot brighter and positive than when we choose to focus on the negative. And that is what we should all be aiming at.
What about you? What tools do you use in your class to manage your students' behavior? Share some ideas with us in the comments section and let us know your favorite methods!