This is my fifteenth year teaching. Not every year has been without problems. I have had challenging to the point of tears classes, engaged but uncontrollable classes, compliant and quiet classes, and interactive and well-behaved classes. My first year of teaching I was basically thrown to the wolves at a struggling Title 1 school with a high teacher turnover and little support from administration or other teachers. I had two special education teachers who were frustrated with their jobs and had basically given up. I almost gave up myself. It was a rough year.
It got better as I got my groove and rather than counting on others I stepped outside my comfort zone and started taking risks and revamped my behavior management style. I learned very quickly yelling or even showing an ounce of frustration was a losing battle. It took me several years to learn this however. I lined desks up in rows, did very little group or collaborative work for fear of off-task behavior and loud conversations. For some reason in my education classes, we were not taught behavior management, we were taught content and how to teach but not behavior management other than keep them quiet and under control.
I attended Catholic school almost my whole life. Rows, compliance, quiet learning. When I got to high school it was still basically that mindset, but on occasion we could collaborate and have debates and such. But still very much rows and compliance. I had never learned any other way. It felt comfortable to me. But my first few years of teaching seeing the glazed and bored expressions of my students pushed me to change. It was the impetus for me to really challenge myself in order to make learning more enjoyable and successful for my students.
Needless to say it has taken me many many years to get a system in place that works best for me and for my students. It is by no means perfect and I constantly have to tweak it for different classes. Each class is unique with various personalities and learning attitudes so as a teacher I have to get to know my students quickly in order to find the best fit, the first week of school. By that first Friday, we are pretty much on track. Students have written the "community goals" and we have edited and posted them on the wall-this year we used sketch notes and made a poster.
Community goals are so important to write and implement together with students because not only should they have a say in how their classroom operates, but they need to take ownership of their own learning and behavior. They need to understand why making the right choice in the classroom is best for them but also for the community as a whole. This year the basic goals fell into these categories: respect, communication, choice, organization.
Students decided that respect covers almost every aspect of classroom life-listening to the teacher and each other, treating each other well, not touching other peoples belongings, and participating in class. Students decided communication is important to be able to collaborate in groups, share and listen to new ideas, being engaged and interactive in class, and completing assignments. Choice was something every student was passionate about, their words "having the ability to choose how to demonstrate mastery of knowledge, draw, create, write, or verbally share our knowledge." I simply said in return "Yes." Finally, students wanted an organization plan for how to turn in assignments, posting assignments and blogs, pod-casting format, and even a way to keep their binders in order. I set them up with these specifics the first week.
The "community goal" discussions were amazing. They really enjoyed being the sculptors and authors of their classroom vision. They really debated what makes a good vs. bad classroom and how they wanted to create a good classroom experience. Flexible seating is also a large part of our classroom design and function. They chose where they wanted to sit, by friends of course, and I gave them one rule. Which I adamantly adhere to every year. If I have to move them for any reason, they will not be able to move back the rest of the quarter. They will sit where I chose for the quarter or at least six weeks. This they fear more than anything and after I say it several times, I have little need to repeat it in fact, they do to each other all the time. They monitor each other and redirect themselves.
Flexible seating works well in a student-centered classroom. When they feel like they have power in the classroom, they tend to follow the rules to keep the power. The first week of school, this year students worked in stations, had a Socratic seminar, two labs, a makerspace activity, and performed skits about lab safety (for these we got a little loud but well worth it). After each of these tasks I gave positive reinforcement and thanked them for doing such a great job. In one class, I had to say "we did great but it took a little too long to get back in order, lets work on this next time." But, students smiled and were pleased that I was proud of them.
I use the give me five technique. I say "Give me five, let's regroup...5...4...3...2...1" By the time I get to 1, 99% of the time they have settled and are quiet. If not, they say to each other "She said give her five." I always say thank you before moving on or "Something was off that time, we need to get back quicker so we can make sure we have time to get all our work done in class." I almost never give homework but if they do not finish class assignments they become homework and they work very hard to avoid that from happening. In fact that is a "community goal" they wrote this year, stay on task and avoid homework if possible.
I think the best thing I have done for myself to minimalize behavior issues is to allow flexible seating and having students write the vision and classroom goals. Not just simply write them on the board, but have students edit and tweak and truly take ownership of them.
Finally, minimalizing behavior issues will occur if you give students choice and various ways of presenting their mastery. For me the makerspace is key. We use it for a myriad of purposes all that help decrease boredom and misbehavior. Brain breaks allow them to take the current content and design and create a new way to present it. I usually give them 5 minutes or so to do this including clean up time. If they leave it messy they lose use of it for a day. They love using it so they clean it up nicely.
Students also design their own lab or activity after new content had been presented. They write-up a lab with a hypothesis, procedures, materials list, and use the makerspace to implement it. Last week it went awesome. Making them have a lab write up focuses them and keeps them on task. Students also have the flexibility to create their own lab design and write-up I do not make them have to be uniform. The makerspace rules: choose materials wisely, waste not want not, be creative, clean up after yourself. These rules are posted and help eliminate any issues. So far it has worked out great.
The most important aspect of my classroom for me is that it be student-centered. It is a blended-class where a lot of pre-loading of material takes place and this opens the classroom up for student creativity and collaboration to take place. Flexible seating gives them the opportunity to sit with their friends but also take accountability for their actions. Having students write and take ownership of the class vision and goals puts them in the drivers seat. They are the actors and participants and I the facilitator. Students usually make the right choices when they themselves have written the expectations. However, being children they do misbehave on occasion but I rarely if ever have any big issues and the little issues are contained and maintained by the students themselves. If not, redirection and positive reinforcement always puts things straight.
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