At least once a semester, within my first three years, I hit a point where I lost it. I yelled. No, I screamed at my class. Sometimes, it was the build-up from failing to address conflict. Often, it wasn’t a single incident, but a build up of behaviors that shouldn’t occur in a “good classroom.”

Why were three girls talking during bell work? Why did I see side conversations when I was talking? What was with the comment saturated with an apathetic attitude? Why did two groups completely fail to do a project? Other times, it was the constant barrage of meetings, paperwork and the shame-fest about how awful our school was when our test scores don't increase by a high enough ratio. The truth is that I felt overwhelmed by teaching and I didn’t want to engage in the necessary conflict needed to handle the small discipline issues that were occurring. I was choosing denial, because I was tired.

I have a really long fuse, but the explosion is ugly, like the clicky pen moment in my third year of teaching.

Students kept whispering during the test. Not cheating noise, per se, but little whispers about what happened at lunch and who was attracted to whom. I sat at my desk attempting to grade the previous class period’s tests and then I’d yell out a warning.

One boy nervously clicked his pen. I looked up.

“What?” he asked.

“The pen,” I responded.

“This one,” he said and clicked it two more times.

“Yeah, please stop it,” I told him.

“Okay,” he responded. Then, looking at his pen, he realized that he had to click it one more time. So, he did and I lost it.

“Really?” I snarled.

“What? Do you want me to write on this test or not?” he snarled back.

I jumped out of my seat. “Just take your test,” I told him.

“I was taking my test just fine . . .” he said with a smirk.

“Enough!” I yelled. I paced and screamed. My face turned red. A kid laughed nervously and it set me off even worse. It's not an issue of raising my voice. I'll increase my volume deliberately. Instead, this was the issue of an explosive temper that I've had since I was a child.

I could easily rationalize it by saying, "It's really changed over the years. I’ve never gotten violent. I don't yell at my family. It's become incredibly rare in the classroom." Instead, I have to admit that my temper, no matter how rare, is still ugly and that it hurts people. Like any other exploding bomb, the victims are often innocent. I can't blow up at laziness and bureaucracy.

So, I came back and apologized. I spent the following month pulling shrapnel out of the students. It made me a little timid and hopefully a little humble. It became a healthy process of mending wounds. I won't pretend that it went “back to normal.” I had changed. They had changed. I can’t even say whether it was for the better or for the worse. However, my students forgave me. It's not that kids are made of Kevlar. It's just that so many of them live within the walls of constant anger that they have grown used to the war zone. If anything, it's been hard for me to realize that my yelling at the class was not shocking to students already wounded with shrapnel.

The incident also became a reminder that I had gotten lazy with discipline. I had made some critical mistakes before, during and after the incident and now I had to deal with the shrapnel.

The Goal
The true cause of the Shrapnel Moment of 2006 had less to do with specific actions and more to do with my goal of discipline. I had slipped into the mindset that discipline exists to make kids behave in class. I had set the definition of behave as “shut up and be good.”

The truth is that discipline should exist to keep students safe and to protect the right to learn. I should have created preventative structures so that a nervous test-taker wouldn’t have to be a disruption to the other students. I should have reacted differently in the moment, too. Due to my desire to multi-task, I had slipped into a “what’s best for me” mentality instead of considering the needs of my students. Finally, I reacted poorly afterward. Instead of calmly reminding a student why pen clicking might be a distraction,
I lost it in front of the entire class.

However, in my better classroom leadership moments, I am able to see discipline as a learning process. It’s a chance for students to be more considerate, more ethical and more self-aware. It’s not an issue of fixing a problem so much as it is guiding a student toward better relational understanding.

Before
Looking back at the shrapnel situation, I realized that the entire lesson had been doomed to failure. I had bought into a lie that the only way to assess whether students knew a social studies concept was through a silent, multiple choice, end-of-the-unit test. It’s not that I truly believed it, but out of a pressure to present “real” data, I sacrificed what I knew about motivation so that I wouldn’t look flaky. In the process, students had little sense of autonomy, creativity, purpose or a chance to act their age.
The following are a few preventative things that I can do to help minimize discipline issues in my classroom:

• Meaningful lessons: Lessons need to have a sense of purpose to them. They need to motivate students through relevance, critical thinking and creativity.
• Student autonomy: Students are less likely to misbehave when they feel that they are in control of their own learning
• Developmentally appropriate lessons: Kindergartners will act crazy if asked to sit silently for four hours. However, the same is true of eighth graders. Unrealistic expectations about age and development will lead to discipline issues
• Rituals: Having quality rituals helps prevent some of the accidental misbehavior that exists in the class
• Community: A quality classroom community helps prevent discipline issues, because students know that they belong to a group and that they are safe within it.
• Authority: The teacher needs to be the leader in the classroom or students will misbehave out of a resentment for the teacher.

During
Looking back at the shrapnel situation, I failed in the moment. I chose to multi-task and take my attention away from the students so that I could have more time with my six-month-old son at home. I chose to sit at my desk, because I didn’t want to face the boredom of actively proctoring a test. I thought I could allow the assignment to be a babysitter so that I could have a free-of-charge extra prep period to take care of administrative tasks. The following are a few strategies that can help in the moment:

• Body language: conveying both humility and authority through posture, hand gestures and eye contact. It goes beyond the teacher Darth Vader death stare (though that has its place) and into the way we intuitively share the fact that we care
• Space proximity: I have rarely experienced a discipline issue happening within three to four feet of me. In the aforementioned shrapnel incident, I had barricaded myself behind a desk and thought that I could monitor long-distance. Yet, the remote control wasn’t even remotely controlled and I failed.
• Tone of voice: I snapped at the student when I said, “Please stop . . .” which led to the student getting on the defensive. Instead, I should have had a calm, direct tone of voice.
• Awareness: This is the sense of being present, of not allowing my mind to wander during a lesson. It’s the often intuitive sense of what is happening in a multifaceted classroom.
• Remaining calm: My sense of anxiety spoke volumes to the class. However, when I can convey a sense of calm confidence, students pick up on this. Don’t get me wrong. This sense of calm often looks like high-energy passion. Yet, even then, there is a sense of calm to it, because it lacks fear and anxiety.
• Avoid shame: I failed with Clicky Pen Boy because I shamed him. I disciplined him in front of the group. He responded with snarls and snark.

After
Looking back at the situation, I recognize that I didn’t handle the after-incident problem well. First, I let it escalate. I turned it into a power struggle. When I yelled, I initially tried to justify it with the students. It wasn’t until the next day that I apologized and the reconciliation took awhile. The following are a few things I should have done:

• Waited: When the student responded with a disrespectful remark, I should have waited for awhile and approached him after class to talk about how he had reacted to me.
• Distance: I should have distanced myself from the situation by walking around the class, taking a deep breath and calming down.
• Reframing: When in-the-moment discipline happens and students respond poorly, I need to reframe it from a situation that’s about my status to a moment when students can learn to rethink their own actions. 
• Reflection: After the day, it’s valuable to rethink the moment and analyze a better approach. Bust out the mental highlight films and approach it honestly with the question of “What could I have done differently?” It doesn’t have to be a time to beat myself up. Instead, it’s a chance to analyze actions in order to grow.

Losing the Group
I used to hate when teachers would punish an entire class for things one student did. I remember telling myself that I would never do that, only to fall into this trap my first year of teaching. Each year, though, I reduce the number of times I discipline the class as a whole.

Typically, there are three main reasons that teachers discipline an entire group. Often, these tactics aren't the most effective.

Sometimes teachers believe that one person did this and no one will rat them out. However, this creates an unnecessary power struggle between students and teachers. It forces students to decide if they want your approval or peer approval. Often, peer approval is still worth the risk. A better option for me has been to say, "Whoever it was needs to admit it. I've already forgiven you, so you might want to apologize. " I know it sounds strange and you can take it or leave it, but this method has worked well.

Other times a teacher tries to pit the group against a student in a method of peer pressure. Typically, this creates a martyr situation and martyrs are admired, not scorned. The best it can possibly produce is a potential bullying situation where they will still hate the teacher. A better situation would be to figure out how to deal relationally with that one particular student.

Finally, the whole class as an entire group was too loud, too crazy, too bad for a sub. When this is the case, it's usually an issue of bad procedures, poor expectations and other issues (including a bad sub). While it makes sense to address individuals, usually all it takes is a quick review of expectations with the entire class rather than a large-scale punishment.


Presumptuous, Pretentious and Perhaps Even Practical Advice

• Reflect upon your discipline after a large-scale screw-up:
• What could I have done differently to prevent this?
• How did I handle it in the moment? Did I do anything that caused it to escalate?
• How did I handle things after they escalated? What was my mindset?
• Video-tape yourself and watch how you are handling discipline. Take the time to see where you are aware and where you are unaware. Don’t use this for surveillance. It’s not a time to catch students screwing up so much as it is a chance to grow in awareness.

 

I'll be explaining this concept here soon.  However, I thought I'd post the slideshow right now.

 

I started the hashtag #ThingsMyStudentsTaughtMe yesterday.  I enjoyed watching what other people added to it - a few close friends who are local, a few educator people I've grown to care deeply about despite the distance and a few teachers I've never met.  I'll keep using it for awhile and maybe archive some of the answers here on this blog.  I look forward to seeing what my teacher friends will write.

It's not an accident that I used the jam session metaphor a few days ago when I described my classroom community.  I want to hear our voice and it can only happen for me when it's not too amplified and not too filtered.  On my best days, it's a shared song.  I lead, but I listen.  We improvise.  It's distinctly ours.

Our voice.

Michael Doyle wrote a beautiful post about keeping his voice. My response was "One of my favorite lessons in the first week of school is to ask 'Who owns your voice?' Inevitably, there will always be one student who says, 'Nobody owns a voice, but it can still be stolen and shared.' Every time."

*     *     *

I remember the stigma attached to the term "student teacher," when I first began my internship.  I was the  guy who still needed a "master teacher" to make sure I didn't screw up too badly.  I was the one who hadn't mastered whatever it took to be a real teacher.  I spent my time asking questions and I was often surprised that the students were able to teach me as much as my fellow teachers - though not to the same degree or about the same topics.

I was still learning.

So, eight years later, I'm still a not-so-master teacher.  I'm still learning.  I'm still leaning on other teachers  to help me avoid screwing up too badly.  I haven't mastered my content.  I haven't figured out all the strategies.  I'm still looking toward the students to help me figure out how to be a better teacher.

I'm still learning.

*     *     *

When I began as a first-year teacher, it felt like people didn't listen to me.  If I offered a new idea, I was an idealistic newbie.  If I suggested some strategy I'd learned in college, teachers told me, "Forget everything you learned in college.  Things are different here."

I began to ditch the student teaching mindset in an effort to prove my professionalism.  A hundred and eighteen degrees in August?  I'll be the only man on campus wearing a tie.  Want some feedback at a staff meeting?  I'll speak up boldly and use proper language to boot.  Not only that, but I'll do a documentary and I'll have students blog.

By the close of the first semester, I had received nine positive notes from my administrators.  One had suggested that I move into the team leadership position within the next year.  I had staff members compliment me on my mini-speeches during professional development.  Still, it felt hollow.  I wasn't growing.  I wasn't learning.  I was spending an exorbitant amount of time trying to hold together and re-decorate my Highly Qualified mask.

My mentor Brad was the only one who knew just how insecure I felt.  He knew that my desire to run had less to do with being inadequate and more to do with keeping up the act.

"Have your students take a survey on your job as a teacher," he told me.

"What do I do with it?" I asked.

"You pay close attention to it.  If you're secure in who you are, you'll grow from it."

While the adults in my world had told me what I wanted to hear, my students described me as angry, distant, a know-it-all and impatient.  They also described me as funny, kind, patient, knowledgeable and compassionate.  In other they described me as human; both flawed and gifted.

It was humbling, but not humbling enough to keep me from trying on the mask again, often leading to a painful moment of being found out.  However, the survey confirmed what Brad had said: that if I was secure in my identity, I would be willing to grow.

Presumptuous, Pretentious and Perhaps Even Practical Advice
Remember the best parts of student teaching and continue them throughout your teaching career:

• Learning from students
• Inviting people to watch and critique you
• Observing other teachers
• Reflecting on your practice
• Remembering that there is always room to grow

Photo Credit: Stephen Davis - The Sunflower reminds me that it's about growth, not achievement

 

The following is a preview video for the Reform Symposium presentation I'll be doing tomorrow morning. It's a free conference with a lot of cool presentations. Hope you check it out.

 

When all the kids in our neighborhood memorized the words to "Beat It" and "Thriller" and "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun," I sat in front of the record player to hear "Sweet Baby James" or "It's a Wild World" (before Cat Stevens had become an alleged terrorist and he was still imploring us to join peace trains). The eighties music felt too synthesized and smooth, like filtering out all the particles in a Hefeweizen. Aside from a few Police songs, I could never identify with such an artificial sound.

I once heard the backside of a Shakira album. When her voice isn't digitally modified, it's shaky and unpredictable. It's bad, really bad, but it's also beautiful. It’s real. It’s unique.

I have an affinity for imperfect music, which is why I prefer the acoustic sound. I think Sufjan Stevens is best when he's alone, singing a "Mistress Witch" with his banjo. It's why I've always enjoyed Iron and Wine and why one of my greatest memories involved listening to Counting Crows play "Omaha" in an acoustic set. It's why I still own Eric Clapton's Unplugged album, despite the fact that his music has been largely relegated to the grocery store circuit.

Standardized education demands perfection. No glitches. No mistakes. No personality. In terms of classroom management, the idea is to ignore bad behavior and create an invisible system of control so that the room has the feel of a pop chart Top 40. It should feel smooth, organized, slightly boring but inoffensive.

Nice. A touch of Mr. Rogers. A room of many cardigans and happy face stickers and apple trinkets. It should sound like the post-mixing Shakira, where the executive makes the ultimate decision, not on the merit of the art, but upon the science of the data.

When I think of leading a classroom, I want it all acoustic. I want to hear the glitches and mistakes and be authentic enough to apologize when I led us off on the wrong key. I want an honest dialogue, where I am not censoring the instruments, but rather learning to play a tune together in a relationship. Some kid might bring in the mandolin or the french horn and in the beginning I'm thinking, "How's this going to work?" Yet, in the end, we are changed because of it. From the initial songwriting to the final product, I need collaboration. It's why I have a Student Leadership Team that helps plan lessons and I do surveys at the end of units. It’s why I allow students to do administrative jobs and why I decorate with framed student artwork.

When things are working best in my room, it feels real and open and harmonious without feeling mixed and dubbed and synthesized. I’m still leading the jam session, but the space itself is shared.

Shared Values
I don’t start out the school year brainstorming shared values. It’s still a cacophony of noise as we attempt to play together. The students are still baffled by my embrace of the casual alongside my high expectations. We’re still trying to get to know one another and we struggle through our first few tunes.

Within the first three weeks, though, it clicks. It’s unspoken. We never list the values, but they permeate the atmosphere: deep thinking, personal connections, a slight non-conformity and warmth. We value questions as much as answers, mystery as much as clarity and creativity as much as analysis.

I can never quite tell whether it’s the jam session that creates the values or the values that drive the jam session. Nor can I figure out if it’s an issue leadership, where my students adopt my values; or when it’s the collective student body influencing what I’ve internalized as a teacher.  It’s a give and take. It’s constant read from one another. It’s acoustic and we share it.

Shared Norms
“How is a jam session different from leading a band?” I ask a band director on afternoon.

“It’s not as different as you’d think,” he tells me.

“It seems to me that you’re leading the band. You’re controlling them. It’s top-down, but in a jam session
it’s more democratic.”

“Not really. In both cases, there’s a leader. There are norms guiding the performance,” he says.

“So, when you jam with your friends, there are norms?” I ask.

“Yeah. Just watch. Someone leads and someone follows. Someone waits to request a song. People take turns. There’s a protocol for decision-making. There’s a rule for choosing the key. The space is different in a choir, right. The director is upfront. However, I’m listening. I’m paying attention to them. We have norms.”

“So, if you break the norms in the jam session do people call norms?”

“Like the guy on Cheers?”

“Yeah.”

“Nah, it’s not like that. But they’ll be pissed if someone violates the norms. Trust me, tempers will flare. Jam sessions might be casual, but people take them seriously.”
Even in an acoustic classroom, a teacher helps set up norms for the students. These are different than rituals in that they aren’t about how to do things so much as they what we consider to be the right thing to do. There’s a moral element to it.

I usually spend about thirty minutes developing norms with each class on the second day of school. I start with an individual brainstorm and then I have groups develop a set of norms for specific categories: collaboration, participation, decision-making, confidentiality / sharing, listening, work and time. From there, each group creates a list an then we vote on them as a class. In most cases, I treat it as a republic, where the committees take the vote to congress where students debate it. Then, as the head of the executive branch, I hold the veto power.

Within the category of norms, I typically do a Classroom Bill of Rights on the third day (which might be superfluous if it were a math class) using the constitutional amendment process with the students.

Shared Vision
At the close of the first quarter, I ask the students to articulate a class purpose statement guiding who we are and where we want to go. I then ask them to condense this into a class motto. A few examples from when I taught social studies:

• Learn to think better
• Learn to serve
• Think globally and act locally.
• Analyze the past. Live in the present. Impact the future.

Everyone Has a Place
A student pulls me aside one morning before school and explains, “Two of the students were writing things about me on Facebook yesterday.”

“How did you find out about it?” I ask.

“A friend of mine e-mailed me the messages they were writing. They weren’t posting it on a wall. It’s just like passing a note, you know.”

“I know how Facebook works,” I respond.

“Well, it hurts.”

“I know what you mean,” I say.

She’s crying. I’m angry. We’re supposed to be a cohesive group. I don’t want to play counselor and try to get the girls to get along. I don’t want to manage the conflict and try to keep things pleasant. If the class is a jam session, this is one of the Behind the Music moments when egos and insecurity are censoring the songs. However, I know that ignoring the situation won’t fix it, either.

I meet with the other girls and write a referral for bullying. The situation is far more complicated than it appears and it takes weeks before our voices are anything but strained. However, I want my students to know that they have a voice and that I want to listen. I want them to know that they have a place in the jam session.

Pretentious, Presumptuous and Perhaps Even Practical Advice

• Choose a non-education metaphor for your classroom environment. Think of the implications of what that metaphor has on the norms, the rituals and the relationships. Consider how it changes your approach and your language. For me, acoustic means casual but serious, collaborative but individual, united but differentiated. It’s authentic. For others, my metaphor would be useless.
• Allow students to share in developing your community. Let them help define the norms and values.
• When you take things out on the entire group (and you will), be honest about why it didn’t work. Students respect a humble leader.
• Consider having democratic classroom meetings where students can share their concerns, propose new ideas and help plan projects. Move past the rules side of class meetings and into the deeper concept of vision. If you aren’t given this opportunity (due to time), consider a Democratic Leadership Meeting, where students can come by once a week and plan with you at lunch. For older students, this democratic space might best exist online in a blog or a social network.

 

I asked Stephen Davis (author of the Rush the Iceberg blog) about his first year of teaching. You can find him on Twitter at @rushtheiceberg. I enjoy his writing as well as his photography.


1. What is one thing you wish you had known going into your first year of teaching?

One thing I wish I had known going into my first year of teaching is to, well, watch some of the television shows and movies your students will be watching. Same goes for music. Obviously, you will not be able to catch everything, but a passing knowledge of culture memes petty and useless to you personally, may hold much relevance to your students. I have found good overviews of what is going on in the teenage world to be Access Hollywood and Entertainment Tonight - just have them on in the background while you are blogging or reading student work!

2. How has your philosophy of education changed throughout your career?

I am not sure my philosophy of education has changed much throughout my career.

What has changed, however, is my response to different education philosophies. I used to be much more tolerant of differing views, understanding that what works for inner city kids in tourism based communities (Anaheim, Disneyland and near by Buena Park, Knott's Berry Farm) may not work for kids in cookie-cutter suburbs.

I have become much more negative towards divergent philosophies the past two years while being on Twitter and blogging. Though I deeply value the help and friendships I have developed in the last two years of blogging and tweeting, I have listened more to other educators and less to my own students' and community's needs. I hope to get back to my more tolerant ways.

3. What advice would you offer in terms of classroom leadership / management?

My biggest piece of advice in terms of classroom leadership and/or management is to never do anything students can do for themselves. For instance, I never pass out/back papers; rather, I ask for volunteers and even at the end of the year for my eighth graders, I still get numerous students wanting to help. Often these are the students who need to move around anyways. I can then get ready for the next aspect of class or simply chat with a few students. It also implicitly adds trust within the classroom community.

Another piece of advice is to have a collection of basic school supplies students can use at anytime. Do not give a detention for forgetting to have a pencil or pen. Spend your time cultivating relationships with students, not writing detentions.

4. Why did you become a teacher? In what ways did the system either confirm these reasons or fight against these reasons?

I became a teacher because I have always been drawn first to people and then to literature. I enjoy working with and helping people. In contrast, I have always enjoyed the inherent isolation in both reading and writing literature. I love the dialogue and community in the classroom AND the isolation often found in lesson planning, grading, and reading other teacher’s writings.


5. What were some of your fears going into your first year of teaching? Were these fears valid?

I must admit that I can not remember having any fears going into my first year of teaching. I began working during the summers at day care camps for school age children when I was sixteen. Upon high school graduation and up until my senior year college, I worked in those same daycare centers year round. During my senior year of college I was an English tutor at my alma mater. My former teachers new I wanted to teach so they encouraged me and gave me opportunities to teach their classes. Upon college graduation, (mid school year for my students) I became a long term substitute at the same school, teaching ninth and twelfth grade English (three of my classes were one's I had been tutoring in all year, so I knew the students).

In essence, I felt I had been teaching sense I was sixteen, so when I got my first official teaching job the next school year, I felt pretty comfortable with my place in the classroom. There was, to be honest, a healthy dose of bravado flowing through me, though!

 

Will they like me? Really? That's my question?  I made it a popularity contest.  I'm infinitely cooler than these kids.  I have a driver's license and a house and a beautiful wife.  If cool is the standard then . . . Okay, cool isn't the standard.  So rethink this. Will I get their respect?  How in the world will I earn their trust?  And what business do they have trusting someone they don't know, anyway? 

I take a deep breath and this time turn from an internal to an external monolog.

"This is supposed to get easier.  It's my sixth year of teaching.  Why can't I get sleep the night before?  Why am I stil feeling so edgy?" Students will arrive in minutes and I'm having a verbal conversation about my place in the classroom.

I take another deep breath.

Be bold. Be humble.

It's become my mantra as I approach the start of the school year.  It's the paradox that keeps me in a place where I can serve my students with confidence and lead my students with humility. It's not a middle zone, either.  I don't "take down" the boldness by being humble or "take down" the humility by being bold.  Instead, it's a sense that I should be completely bold and completely humble simultaneously.

If I attempt to be bold without being humble, I communicate agression rather than assertiveness.  I fail to listen to the whole story and therefore I break off relationships and lose the students' trust. I get involved in useless power struggles.  I micromanage. I boss.  I nag.  I bully.  I switch to threats and shame and fear-based tactics. Or, more likely, I use sarcasm to turn the group against a student and loyal to me.  In the process, I cease to be bold.

It's not theoretical, either.  I've had times when I was bold without being humble and it quickly degenerated into sarcasm, power struggles, bossiness, nagging and bullying.  I've had times when I used my language to tear kids down.  

If I attempt to be humble without being bold, I become a doormat. I ask permission to correct a student or  worse still, I ignore misbehavior altogether.  Sometimes I tell myself that it's not as bad as it looks. I allow students to manipulate me and I give in through appeasement.  I step away from the class mentally and emotionally and allow a single student to control the atmosphere. In the process, I cease to be humble.

Again, I'm not being theoretical.  I've had times when I was scared to be the adult.  I was afraid to enter into the conflict and in the process I let severe misbehavior slip. In the process, what initially felt like humility degenerated into passivity, self-loathing and fear.    

Eight years into it, I find myself slipping up in both boldness and humility.  Sometimes I still hope that there's a magical process out there that doesn't require so much self-reflection and honesty.  On my best days, though, I can be boldly humble and humbly bold.

What This Looks Like

When I first began as a teacher, I read Lee Canter and Fred Jones.  I learned a few good techniques, but I still screwed up.  I wanted to believe that I could pick up the strategies, learn the right process and have it down on a laminated card.  I had a vague sense that leadership meant paradox, but I wanted to believe it could be distilled down into an organized set of behaviors.  I'd checklist my way into a smooth-running classroom. 

I mention this, because in listing "what it looks like," it can easily come across as yet another checklist of teacher behaviors, when the boldness-humility approach is not a process so much as a mindset.  However, I see a value in considering what this approach looks like in terms of actions.  

• Space:  The teacher moves around the class and uses space proximity to communicate that he or she is in charge while still being approachable to answer questions and offer guidance.  The guide on the side doesn't have to be marginalized. 
• Voice: The teacher speaks with confidence and passion with a firm tone of voice.  However, the language itself includes "please" and there's enough conversational space for the teacher to listen. For example, the teacher might whisper, "John, please sit down" with a tone that's firm, but not condescending. 
• Discipline: The teacher doesn't have to ask permission to correct a student, but is able to correct the student without shaming him or her.  
• Body Language: The teacher uses eye contact to correct a student who is misbehaving, but also to convey excitement, encouragement and empathy.  The teacher stands boldly, but isn't necessarily confrontational. 
• Mistakes: The teacher is able to admit to mistakes and apologize without dropping expectations or feeling that he or she has to "make it up" to the students. 

I could easily look at the list above and create a mental checklist, asking, "Am I walking around? Am I standing up straight?" It might serve as a decent diagnostic tool. However, the minute it becomes a codified list of behaviors is the minute it becomes irrelevant.  The context matters.  For example, a good teacher might need to raise his or her voice based upon the situation and the students.  

A Scenario: Loud Class

The students arrive and they're loud.  There was a fight at lunchtime and the students are trying to figure out what happened.  Although I have student silent blogging (their daily warm-up / bell work) as an established procedure for entering the room, the students ignore the class ritual altogether.  My response is to hold my hand up and wait in silence.  I give eye contact to a few students are talking.  Slowly the talking subsides.

"I understand why students are . . . "

Instantly, I'm interrupted with "Did you see that?" and "Who won?" and "You know, if I were there I would have . . ."

Kids want to talk again.  It's at this point when I'm tempted to give up and let go or to turn toward a loud tirade about respect. Instead, I stand silently, wait for silence and then say, "I need you to transcend the situation and focus on learning.  You have five options for your blog posts.  I'm looking forward to reading what you write."

I get it.  There are times when a class will continue to be disrespectful.  There are times when I might have to address students one-on-one and engage in a dialogue about their actions.  Sometimes a class dynamic is really rough.  However, I'm convinced that if there's any approach that will work in the long run, it's being both bold and humble.

Pretentious, Presumptuous and Perhaps Even Practical Advice

• It's okay to have a flexible, project-based, authentic, open environment and still be firm and have structure.  People who read my blog or hear about my lesson plans are sometimes surprised that my class isn't that chaotic.  Learning should be messy, but total chaos feels unsafe.  It's okay to be the leader and to correct disrespectful or dangerous behavior. 
• Pay attention to your actions, but understand that motives are still more important. 
• Pay attention to the role of insecurity (I have to prove myself and be powerful) and fear (I'm afraid of intervening) can play in ruining classroom leadership
• Anticipate times when you'll have to be both bold and humble.  Think of the scenarios ahead of time. Here are a few that come to mind:
• A group of students shout things back and forth across the room during group work, silent work and when the teacher is talking
• When you correct a student, the child says, "You're picking on me" or "That's messed up" or "It wasn't my fault."
• A student mutters something under his or her breath, sighs heavily or rolls his or her eyes.
• A student consistently wanders around avoiding learning altogether
• Two students are arguing with one another. 
• When you walk toward a group, the students seem to hide something.  They slam a binder shut and act like nothing happened afterward.
• A student wanders in two minutes late every day to class.
• Students engage in side conversations when the teacher gives directions (a side note: I use either verbal or written directions, but rarely both.  I want students to learn to read and listen to directions without having to use both simultaneously) 
• Spend some time observing a teacher who is both humble and bold in his or her approach to classroom leadership.  Observe, not just what the teacher does, but how the students act.  The reaction from students can be a great in-the-moment gauge for how you are doing in the classroom. 
• Recognize that teachers grow into leadership.  You will screw up.  When this happens, it's best to be transparent and treat it as a chance to grow. 

Photo Credit: Stephen Davis (Rush the Iceberg)

 

Students in 3rd-8th grade take a 30 hour test (AIMS) to measure what they have learned over the course of 3 quarters of the school year.  By contrast, the teacher's content test (AEPA) is a four hour test measuring all the content a teacher has learned over a four-year period. 

 

When I consider my school district's week-long Galileo pre-assessment and quarterly assessments alongside the state-mandated AIMS test, it becomes apparent that students spend almost 17% of the school year taking standardized tests.  When added to the standardized-style multiple choice tests at the site level (which has become fairly common), I find that students will easily spend 28% of the school year taking multiple choice tests.  Now, assuming teachers try and avoid test prep (2 days before each test) and wasted days (a few before breaks and on the last few days of school), students will easily experience quality instruction for less than 60% of the school year.  In other words, they might as well ditch the second quarter. 

Contrast this to my experience in college. We usually had one wasted day (intros and syllabus), one final exam and the AEPA test at the end.  Therefore, the system itself was designed to allow for instruction to take place 96% of the time.  (Not that every professor offered quality instruction.) 

Want to improve test scores? Want to improve student learning? Want to boost achievement? 

Give teachers more time to teach.  Give students more time to learn. 

 

Tonight I will share a beverage with my best friend Javi (I'm not sure if I'm too old to use "best friend" but at least it's not BFF). The meeting will be entirely synchronous and low-tech. No Twitter or Blogger or Google Docs. It's not that those things are bad. They just make the beer taste funny (for the record, I always drink responsibly).

We won't share data as we sit around a crammed table beneath the flickering fluorescent glow of a school library whose books are too new to smell like reading. We won’t view Power Point presentations tells us how bad our school is doing in reaching AYP. We won’t fill out worksheets or write with Mr. Sketch markers (which are essentially the gateway drugs to huffing) on chart paper.

We'll collaborate horizontally. I'll ask him about specific strategies and he'll ask me about professional development. We'll discuss teaching strategies and project ideas and at some point one of us will be vulnerable enough to share how tired we are and how teaching is bringing up unexpected insecurity or anger. Interspersed in these conversations will be talks about relationships or faith or baseball and I will forgive him once again for being a Dodgers fan. Perhaps we’ll even find the intersection between all of these topics (Why God hates the Giants and what that means for my world view). Then we'll talk about learning centers and what free movement would look like in my classroom given my own emotional need for a calm environment.

I'll allow him into my classroom and into my mental space of lesson planning. He's one of a handful of people who have that permission. He didn't earn it through a title or a skill set, either. He earned it through friendship. He earned it with pints. Perhaps I'm being cruel here, but I don't genuinely listen to people's ideas unless I know them. Oh, I'll listen to ideas as a skeptic and perhaps try out a few strategies that people pass along. But I don't really listen to a person until there is a relationship of trust.

I realize this is an inefficient and perhaps even ineffective method of collaboration, but I have to trust people before I really try out their ideas. I trust Javi with my teaching because I trust him with my students and I trust him with my story. I know his heart and his values. We've done service projects together and I've watched how he interacts with students. I listen to him because he has the freedom to criticize my ideas without me feeling attacked. I listen to him because he's not wielding authority. I listen to him because he's humble. For all the talk of a "flat world," nothing makes things multilateral like a pint together.

I'm not necessarily opposed to sharing ideas with a team of grade-level teachers. I've never bought into the Lone Ranger myth. Yet, one of my favorite parts of teaching is the times I get for true collaboration - the kind that isn't tied down to an agenda or a data sheet or meeting notes or techie tools.

Personal Learning Network
New teachers want to grow professionally. However, it’s easy to find the site-based professional development as irrelevant. Often, it’s not the fault of the school or the district. It’s the issue of a one-size-fits-all mentality that prevents teachers from customizing their professional learning to their professional needs.

Enter the Personal Learning Network, or PLN. It’s a fairly new name that took off about a decade ago, but it’s a concept that teachers have embraced for years. It’s the idea of deliberately cultivating a network of both people and resources that help a teacher grow professionally.

My meetings with Javi are part of my PLN. However, so is my blog. I learn from writing, reflecting and advocating as well as having conversations with the people who comment on my blog. Yet, I also learn from reading other blogs. I subscribe to about a hundred blogs on Google Reader. I learn from Twitter chats, Google Plus, videos on YouTube, professional books and informal conversations. It’s an eclectic web of online and offline, synchronous and asynchronous, passive and interactive, practical and personal.

To a large extent, a PLN is simply an intentional shift from “this is my professional development” to “who do I know and how can I learn from them?” It’s a mindset that recognizes the natural way that we learn and the clear recognition that we don’t necessarily have to experience formalized training sessions to grow professionally. For me, it's more than growth, though.  It's sustainability. I need people, both online and offline, so that I don't burn out.  Whether it's interactions on blogs or coffee with a friend, these are the moments that keep me from spiraling out of control when I start to get insecure as a teacher.

The following are a few examples of what a teacher might embrace in developing a PLN. Please take note that this is a brainstorm. No teacher (especially a new teacher) could possibly embrace all of these and still have a functional life.

• Social Media
• Twitter: The chats (using #hashtags) are especially helpful to new teachers. (Cybraryman has a frequently updated list of the chats and hashtags)
• Facebook: There are specific Facebook groups devoted to various aspects of teaching
• Google Plus: I am already noticing informal networks of teacher
• Communities
• Off-line: professional organizations based upon grade level, content or teacher’s rights
• Online: joining specific Nings, like The Educator’s PLN or Classroom 2.0
• Blogging
• Subscribe to various blogs that you find helpful
• Create your own blog
• Join a group blog
• Multimedia
• Create or subscribe to a podcast
• Create or subscribe to a video series
• In-Person Relationships
• Talk to your non-teacher family and friends. Sometimes the education world can become an echo chamber
• Find a few close teacher friends and meet on a regular basis to debrief how teaching is going
• Get to know your neighbors.  There is more philosophical diversity in a neighborhood than in most Twitter chats
• Traditional Print
• Trade magazines
• Newspapers - If you want to get yourself real worked-up over teacher-bashing, read The New York Times and ask how they can still be considered respected journalists
• Journals – the downside is that they are often expensive. So, you might want to see if your district has a place where teachers can access journals.
• Books – they still exist and yes, they can be very helpful
• Professional Development
• Conferences
• Online Conferences and Webinars
• Un-conferences
• Workshops
• As you grow in your knowledge, start teaching professional development

It’s About the Conversation
A leader of a non-profit asked me how they could use social media to get their message across. I told her that Twitter and Facebook were not tools to use so much as places to connect. It has to be horizontal. It’s about the conversation.

As you develop a PLN, you will find that it is oftentimes a complex conversation. Sometimes the conversation feels loud and chaotic (#edchat, for example) and other times it can be intimate (a pint with a friend). There’s a place for both. The bottom line is that you connect and through those connections, you have the chance to ask questions, process your insights and grow professionally.

A Process for Developing a PLN
A PLN is a messy concept and so I am reticent about sharing a process for developing one. These were the steps that I found helpful, but they might not fit your individual needs:

• Step 1 - Data: Acquire data for your strengths and weaknesses. These can include student surveys, personal reflections and conversations with colleagues.
• Step 2 – Needs: Make a list of needs that aren’t being met in your current professional development situation. These could be personal (loneliness, insecurity) or practical (classroom management, assessment)
• Step 3: Resources: Based upon your list of needs, choose a few areas where you would like to grow (and learn more about) and then list potential resources that can help you grow in these areas
• Step 4: Relationships: Choose a few areas where you would like to connect more with others (it might be for conversation, for resources, for the chance to be transparent) and find both online and in-person methods of interacting socially

Pretentious, Presumptuous and Perhaps Even Practical Advice

• Not every teacher has to use every medium. Some teachers don’t enjoy writing, but would do well posting videos and pictures to Posterous or Tumblr.
• Figure out which medium suits your needs and your personality. You might do well creating videos or podcasts and immersing yourself in multimedia. You might simply need to share links on bookmarking sites and on Twitter. You may want to join Google Plus and interact with educators there.
• Try and avoid the need to be influential. Klout can be a trap for Twitter users and Feedburner can be depressing for new bloggers. It’s not about the numbers. Really.
• Give yourself permission to stay low-key. You don’t have to join every chat and engage in Twitter everyday. You don’t have to write constantly. It’s your first year. The PLN is about your professional needs.
• Choose people and resources in your PLN who will challenge your thinking as well as affirm it. However, limit your PLN to people who share your values. For example, a teacher blog that trashes students is not ideal for a teacher who values student-teacher relationships.
• Each year, I create a Professional Growth Plan with your strengths, weaknesses and specific goals for growth. I then look for people and resources in my PLN that can help me grow in those areas. For example, I wanted to move toward deeper understanding of standards-based grading. I found a few books, a few blogs and a few friends on Twitter (Russ Goerend and Matt Townsley).
• Recognize that there is a cost involved in every aspect of a PLN. No medium is neutral. Social media can be great, but it can push us toward shallow interaction and incessant echo chambers. No relationship should be one-sided, meaning there will be an emotional, social and time commitment.

It's not a sprint.

Before entering my first year of teaching, I read Day One and Beyond (which I would recommend to people beginning middle school careers) and The First Days of School.  I agonized over my first week's lesson plans.  I rehearsed my Big Speech that I would deliver to each class.

More recently, I read an article (thanks Sheila for sending this to me and pointing out the absurdity of its main point) describing how failing to follow through on one procedure and you'll fail as a teacher for the entire year.  In this article, Michael Linsin writes, "The mistake of course is ever going back on your word. If you say it, if you ask your students of it, then you must back it up with action. Otherwise, your students aren’t going to trust you, believe in you, have reason to listen to you, or be inspired by you. What they will do, though, is run right over you."

Not true.

If you state a procedure and forget to follow through, it's not quite the same as lying. It's forgetting. The next day, a simple reminder will help fix the situation. "Hey guys, we didn't leave correctly and follow the procedures. Part of that is my fault for failing to pay attention. However, I need you to be self-directed and learn the procedures yourselves." Then follow through the second day and again on the third, fourth and fifth day.

Beyond the First Day

In many cases, the first day is both doomed for success and doomed for failure. In terms of success, the students are typically well-rested and generally like the teacher. I've never had a student tell me to f-off on the first day of school. The lessons are typically slam dunk in nature and there's an energy and optimism that eventually fades.

In terms of failure, students are rusty academically. It's generally not the time when they'll answer, "In a globalized society, who holds the power: nations or corporations." Even with solid follow-through, many will forget many of the rules and procedures you toss at them. You'll be interrupted with new students being added at the last minute. You won't know any names.

But here's the thing: the first day is only one in a hundred and eighty. Obsessing over getting the first day right while failing to pay attention to the rest of the year is tantamount to running a windsprint for the first hundred meters (see, I used metric as a shout out to my Canadian readers) of a marathon.

In my experience, the real difficulty happens a few weeks after the first day.  That's when I'm more likely to forget a procedure or let a little defiance go by unnoticed.

The Rest of the Year

Teaching is a geographic endeavor.  We are tied to the land and to the seasons, and as a result we experience specific challenges throughout the year. For me, the seasons look like this:

• August  
• The challenge: the difficulty of getting to know one another, following the procedures and building a classroom climate.
• The fun part: it's a honeymoon period where most kids are trying their hardest 
• September-Early October  
• The challenge: the tendency to test boundaries, forget procedures and go slack on follow-through
• The fun part: the weather cools down, we know one another and students are finally excelling at critical thinking
• Late October-Early November - 
• The challenge: the crack-fest called Halloween and the emotional sugar crash that ultimately comes with the dying of the light. 
• The fun part: this is the period where things have truly settled in and we're coasting.  
• December-February 
• The challenge: It's chaos in December, due to the holidays and the chaos that kids experience at home as a result 
• The fun part: we've truly gotten to know one another and the class community is typically a little more thoughtful
• March-April  
• The challenge: A dark cloud comes over the school during Testing Season. I will be tempted to sell out and focus on test prep. 
• The fun part: Students are truly excelling academically 
• May-June 
• The challenge: Eighth graders tend to check out and they'll test me again.  I've gotten a little lax on procedures and have to tighten up. 
• The fun part: I get to do some of my favorite projects that I wasn't able to do (truly project-based approach) due to testing. 

What Matters on the First Day

First impressions are still important and the way a teacher handles the first week sets the tone for the rest of the year.  The following are a few things that make a difference in the first week:

• Establishing Leadership: It's important that students understand that the teacher is in charge and also that the teacher is there to serve them.  Be bold, but be humble.  Often this is communicated in voice, space proximity, body language and a clear follow-through on expectations.  Passion and humor can be critical, too. 
• Engaging Curriculum: Students will make up their minds about whether or not the class is worth it.  So, instead of spending days upon days on procedures, I try and engage them in meaningful learning from the first day forward. 
• Rituals and Norms: It's crucial that we have a few simple, intuitive rituals regarding how the class works together.  It's also critical that we've established group norms that we can agree upon collectively. 
• Personal Relationships: I have a hard time with names, but I make it a goal of learning every student's name by the end of the first week.  

How I Approach the First Day

• Bell Work: critical thinking question based upon their opinion / their life 
• Class Discussion - sometimes it's based upon the bell work.  Other times, it's a discussion on the role of rituals in our lives.
• Define Rituals - we use a grid 
• Get to Know You activity

In other words, the first day is fairly simple.  It doesn't require a ton of thought.  It doesn't require a grand opening speech.  

Pretentious, Presumptuous and Perhaps Even Practical Advice

• Ask a veteran teacher about the seasons.  Typically, they can give you a heads-up regarding how to handle various seasons. 
• Re-visit your approach to norms and rituals every three weeks or so and ask yourself honestly if you are still following through with expectations.  
• While I'm not crazy about ice breakers, there is a need for some "getting to know you" and team-building exercises.  (For the record, I don't think I can handle another game of People Bingo before I explode). 
• Take some time to think through your body language on the first day.  How will you communicate that you are in charge while still allowing the students to see that they don't need to be afraid?
• Remember that the first day depends on the level of your students.  Seniors in high school pretty much get rules and procedures while kindergarteners are learning how to do school.  Don't expect too much from your class, but don't be condescending, either.    

Photo Credit: Stephen Davis (Rush the Iceberg)

sometimes it just builds and then drops and you have no idea where it came from

When I was a new teacher, well-intentioned veterans told me, "It's not personal."  They explained the need to develop a thicker skin.  Others told me to focus on the behavior and not the student.  I tried this approach for awhile and it didn't work.  When a kid told me to fuck off, I responded with, "That behavior will not be tolerated."  When students talked out of turn, I said, "Your talking out of turn will not be tolerated."

Sometimes this approach worked.  However, I began to feel hollow.  I detached myself so much that I wasn't present.  I wasn't smiling.  I had become a drill sergeant.  Students responded by losing their trust in me, distancing themselves from the classroom community and finding subtle ways to break the rules.

The truth is that misbehavior is personal.  Deeply personal. When a child tells you to fuck off, there's something deeply personal going on with the child and the fact that this child told you to fuck off could mean you're either a very safe person or someone who is causing that child an intense amount of anger.  Either way, the "fuck you" is personal.

If a four students repeatedly throw paper balls at one another, the issue is personal.  There's something wrong with the student-teacher relationship.  Perhaps a breakdown in trust or a lack of respect.  Perhaps you've communicated that you're not really in charge.  Regardless of the cause, it is personal.

The Solution

For me, the solution cannot be developing a thicker skin.  I'm too sensitive to pretend that disrespect doesn't hurt.  Nor is it resorting to a behaviorist view of student actions.  Kids are not specimens to observe and manipulate.  They are not automatons to program.  Teaching is a human endeavor and therefore a deeply relational profession.

After a few years, I realized what veteran teachers were trying to say when they said, "It's not personal." In most cases, they were trying to say, "It's not about you." What they were trying to tell me is that I needed to think about students first.  I needed to approach discipline with a humble mindset while still being bold enough to be the adult in the situation. With that in mind, I typically ask myself the following questions when a child misbehaves:

• How can I respectfully but boldly explain to the child that this behavior is inappropriate? 
• How can I get the child to see how this behavior is affecting others? 
• In what ways can this become a learning experience for the child? 

Typically my approach is to silently convey my disapproval of the action and then meet with the child at a later time to debrief the situation.  This allows me to calm down and approach the situation rationally. I can keep the mindset that "it's not about me" while still communicating the effects that a child's actions had on me and on his or her peers.

The Process

If my goal for a student goes beyond "fix the behavior" and into "become a more ethical person," then I have to switch from "how can I fix this child's behavior?" to "how can this child take ownership of his or her behavior?" My process generally works like this:

1. Transparency: I've realized that I never know the whole story (in terms of a child's motives and in terms of the actions).  By saying, "you're not in trouble," I can diffuse the tension and get a child taking about what actually happened. 
2. Ownership: I try and get the student to see how it felt when people were hurt by his or her actions.  Oftentimes, this is when a child will apologize.  
3. Trust: I try, at this point, to affirm the child's identity and let him or her know that we are okay with one another.  Sometimes at this point, there are consequences (write an apology letter, clean up the mess, etc.) but the goal is for the child to figure out actions to help restore a broken relationship.
4. Solutions: I encourage the student to develop a solution for the next time this behavior might occur.  

Example #1 

Raul is throwing a paper wad in class and laughing about it to his friends.  Initially I'm pissed, but I'm able to take a deep breath.  I give him "the look" and then continue.  After class, I pull him aside and say, "Tell me what happened in class." 

"Nothing," he says with a smirk.  

"Look, you're not in trouble.  This isn't about a punishment.  But I'd like you to own up to your actions," I respond.  

"I threw paper. But I wasn't the only one." 

"Why is that a big deal to throw paper?" 

"Other kids can't pay attention," he says. 

"True. And when you did, I felt frustrated.  I was hurt.  It always hurts when people disrespect me when I'm talking." 

"Oh." 

"Have you ever spoken in front of a group?" He nods his head.  "What do you expect from people in those situations?" 

"I want people to listen . . . Hey, I'm sorry Mr. Spencer." 

"Apology accepted."

"Hey, I want you to know that I still think you're a great kid.  You're smart and funny and I enjoy having you in my class.  This action doesn't change things."

"Thanks."

"But I want you to think about what you will do differently next time," I share.

"I'll pay closer attention to the need to learn.  I already got what you were saying and that happens a lot."

"So, do you want to work on an enrichment assignment when you feel bored?"

"Yeah, that would help me concentrate and not get into trouble." 

That's it.  No referral.  No time-out.  I communicated my frustration and helped him see the personal side of his actions.  For other students, it might have been a conversation about being considerate or the need to pay attention.

Example #2

"Hey Brandon, you need to read right now."

He turns away.

"Brandon, we're reading.  You need to read."

"You know what, fuck you!"

I could send him to the office for defiance.  I could time him out.  I could call his mom.  However, I know that "fuck you" doesn't come out of nowhere.  So, I leave him alone for awhile and approach him after class.

"Hey Brandon . . . "

"I'm sorry," he says.

"I forgive you, but I also need you to know that I can't let you talk to me that way.  It's disrespectful."

"I know," he says.

"What happened?"  I ask.

"I don't know.  I just lost it.  The reading was hard and your class is hard and I was pissed."

"I get it.  People say that anger should be managed, but I've always found that easier said than done."

"The class looked scared," he says.

"I think they were," I tell him.

"Yeah," he says.

"Usually that kind of angry outburst comes from somewhere other than reading.  Do you want to talk?"

"I do, but not now."

"That's fine."

"Hey, I want you to know that what happened doesn't change who you are.  You're still valuable and you still have an important role in our class."

"Thanks."

"Were you feeling angry from the start or did that come out of nowhere?"

"I think a little bit of both."

Again, it's not that I focus on the behavior.  It's not that I just develop a thick skin.  However, I recognize that such a crazy outburst is deeply personal and that the response to it needs to be something more than a referral.  I get it.  Disrespect can't be tolerated. However, we met later, talked about anger and went over some strategies to be more self-aware and communicate frustration earlier on.

Why This Is Difficult

Initially, this sounds like a laborious process that would waste time. However, I've found that this approach actually saves time. True, I have to talk for five or ten minutes, but that's much quicker than a referral.  By establishing a quality relationship, I spend less time fixing behavioral issues later on in the year.

The real difficulty comes from being humble.  I still have moments when I lash out at a student.  I have times when I pull a child down with a sarcastic remark.  It's counter-intuitive to avoid powering up and playing Mr. T (I pity the fool who mess around in my class!)

I don't have this all figured out.  However, I know that ultimately the solution is a relational approach where students rebuild trust with the teacher and take ownership of their actions.


Pretentious, Presumptuous and Perhaps Practical Advice

• Try and keep the mindset that misbehavior is personal, but that your job as a teacher is to treat poor behavior as a learning experience for the student
• When you find yourself responding in anger to misbehavior, step back and regain your composure. Let the class sit quietly if necessary. Some teachers have an easier time with this than others. For me, this was a skill I had to learn.
• It's okay to communicate the fact that you were hurt or angry due to a child's behavior. One thing they need to learn is that their actions affect others.
• Remember that you won't always catch misbehavior. When a kid says, "she started it," the reality is that she probably did start it. By taking the punishment away from behavior, though, it becomes a chance to address it without the question of "who did what?" being the driving focus.
• Because teaching is so deeply personal, get to know your students on a personal level. Here are some ideas:
• Go to sporting events, dances, clubs and other extracurricular activities and see how children interact outside of the classroom. Often, you see a great side to a student that might be missing in the classroom.
• Create questions that allow students to develop their own personal philosophies or share their own stories. One of my favorite activities (yes I teach older kids) is a show-and-tell deal once a month.
• Quietly observe the way that students interact with one another.
• Take the time to learn about youth pop culture. You don't have to be a kid. You don't have to like annoying robotic hip hop music (Cursed autotune!). But a passing knowledge of pop culture let's kids know that you have tried to understand their culture.

Photo Credit: Stephen Davis

I thought I had to know the keys to success.  

What I Wanted to Know

When I began teaching, I thought I needed help in the mechanics of the job.  I sought out tricks (a word typically relegated to trained animals) to help things run smoothly.  So, I learned from Harry Wong to pass papers sidewise instead of forward.  I learned to make rules specific, because children can be manipulative and will try and find loopholes.

I spent hours trying to figure out the intricate procedures of my classroom, asking not what students would need but what what I wanted in order for the process to feel smooth.  I made lists and lists of lists, trying to figure out how I would handle the paper trail.  I focussed my attention on "the first days of school," failing to anticipate the difficulty of a hot, early May afternoon, when the eighth grades don't care quite so much about rules and procedures.

What I wanted was to be informed, prepared with the best strategies in instruction, rules and procedures. What I wanted was to start well, without any sense of what it would mean to end well. I needed to know some of this (especially understanding procedures and organization). However, there were some things I needed to know that I had no clue about ahead of time.

What I Needed to Know

I knew the right instructional strategies.  I knew the importance of setting up high expectations.  I knew about voice and space proximity and seating charts (which I've now abandoned).

What I needed to know was how to cultivate a positive class climate.  For example, I didn't know what to do when a kid told me to "fuck off" or how to handle an entire class who was talking, because they could see how scared I looked.  I needed to know that my rules and procedures were complicated and cumbersome and that kids resented the fact that they had to label every part of the journal with my labels.  I needed to understand that teaching is not a social contract.  It's my job to care, even when a child is apathetic or disrespectful.

What I needed to know was how to see the class differently in the moment - how to pay attention to each child, how to know their stories, how to understand why they misbehaved and how to pull them back without using bribes.  I needed to know how to assess learning in the moment.  But more importantly, I needed to learn to use my five senses and to be truly present.

I already had some great instructional strategies, but I needed to see learning from the perspective of students.  I needed to recognize that some students would not enjoy debates or mock trials or blog posts based upon the questions I created.  I needed to understand how to create lessons in a way where students could customize their learning rather than fitting into a rigid framework.

What I needed to know was how both soul-crushing it would be when a child asks if she could see the counselor, because she's pretty sure it was rape, but she still thinks it's her fault; and all of a sudden, the procedure grid and the bathroom pass don't seem quite so important.  

What I needed to know was the power of shame to pull me into perfectionism and self-loathing. I failed to see what would happen when I yelled at a kid and then I sat at my desk and cried for an entire prep period.  I needed to know that it's better and it doesn't get better from reading about the best way to pass out papers.

Photo Credit: Stephen Davis (Rush the Iceberg)

I don't particularly enjoy NASCAR. It's not an elitist thing either. I just don’t like watching cars. If I sat on a ledge and watched the interstate, I would at least see a variety of cars at a variety of speeds. NASCAR relegates this whole experience to an oval and a bunch of advertisements on wheels.

The only redemption is in watching the pit crew. It's a well-choreographed ballet (yeah, I just compared NASCAR to ballet), albeit a greasy and blue-collar version. The system is efficient enough to allow the driver to spend more time driving and less time waiting. Each crew member has a clearly defined role and each role is interconnected with no unnecessary overlap. True, it's a definite science, but the crew chief works as an artist, creating a ritual with balance. Too many tasks and it's a bureaucracy. Not enough tasks and there's confusion.

During my first two years of teaching, I was the anti-pit crew. I spent hours at school but accomplished less. I’m faster now, not so much out of efficiency, but from a paradigm shift in how I spend my time.
As a new teacher, I was a man driving around a new town with no map, no directions and no sense of the best places to go. I was meandering through the roads only to hit a constant barrage of traffic cones.

Avoiding Roadblocks

My friend Javi calls these construction zones “perpetual transition.”  He says that it's just like fifty-first avenue, where they tear up the road without any real purpose beyond pulling up asphalt. (I have my own theory.  I think the city doesn't have a storage space for orange cones and barricades)

“What do you mean by perpetual transition?” I ask him.

“People will say, ‘I’ll get to that soon.’ Then they never get to it.”

“Is it that the urgent crowds out the important?” I ask.

“Sometimes. Or they just don’t think about how they spend their time. So, they spend it doing things that won’t change student learning. They get scared, because of standardized tests or things get crowded full of school events.”

“So, what’s the solution to this perpetual transition?”

“It starts with recognizing what matters and then paying close attention to how you spend your time.”

I won't pretend I've got a magical map now. However, I’ve learned to pay attention about where I’m going. I’ve learned to avoid the incessant construction and I’m more likely to work with others and use the carpool lane.

The following is a list of time-wasters that I've learned to avoid:

• Committees: It's like deliberately choosing to drive in the "pack" - same group think, same waste of time.  Unless you trust the committee members and believe deeply in the change it will bring, I would avoid joining committees. 
• E-mail: Checking it constantly is like deliberately trying to find the red lights. I'm better off reading it twice a day
• Gossip: It's basically like gawking at a car accident and leading to more rubber necking
• Copy Machine: I've learned to avoid rush hour by making copies on Thursdays at five o'clock. It's nearly empty and I'm left with the company of a humming machine and an incessant flickering fluorescent light
• Check-mark Grading: It's the equivalent of weaving. I'm better off grading fewer papers and inputting less grades.
• Discipline Meetings: It's pretty much asking for road-rage. Grab a kid, shame him in front of his parents, tell him his a failure and then expect it to work? I can drive backwards with a kid by setting up paperwork to fail him, meetings to shame him and detentions that he won't attend. Or, I could spend that time getting to know him, hearing his story and giving him opportunities to use his skills for the benefit of the community. The route might be slow and it might be rocky terrain, but at least it's moving forward. It just seems to be pointless to deliberately drive into a dead-end with a kid.

Plan Your Route

I don't spend my time the same way I did my first year of teaching. In fact, "spend" is a bit of a misnomer. All I have is the "now." I can't invest it or save it. Time will pass regardless.

Still, I don't use my time the same way I once did and it had everything to do with what I value. I spent my first year trying to impress people. I attended meetings, volunteered for committees and graded papers all in an effort to look as though I had it together. I also spent that time doing things that I thought would solve problems. I had a lunchtime detention group. I spent longer on lesson plans, because I had learned in college that longer lesson plans were necessary.

I hit a mid-way point that year when I realized that I had no map. I had spent a full semester in perpetual construction, taking side streets and engaging in meaningless road rage. So, I thought about my route in terms of both the way I would drive and the final location.

I created an audit of my weekly schedule and then asked, "Is this really helping students live better?"
If the answer was no, the next question was, "How can I do this faster or get rid of it entirely?"

Sometimes the answer was surprising. Chatting with a colleague led to great lesson plans. Printing out weekly progress reports made little difference. Yet, the longer I learned the terrain, the better I became at finding the best routes.

Pretentious, Presumptuous and Perhaps Practical Advice

• Allow students to do the nonessentials. In my classroom, students do the bulletin boards and the vocabulary wall. It looks cool and saves time. Students also post the articles to the Social Voice blog.
• If tests are absolutely necessary, create an online version (I use Google Forms) and see if you can use the computer lab - or rotate students with class computers. Then again, you could also let students use mobile devices.  
• Make all photocopies at the beginning of a unit or at the beginning of the week.
• Check your e-mail before and after school, but avoid it during the rest of the day. If it's really "urgent" they have loudspeakers for a reason
• Spend less time on documenting discipline and more time on developing solid lessons. Referrals, parent meetings and long phone calls rarely solve the problem. Increasing motivation and talking with the student are not only more effective, but also save time.
• Keep one master calendar with all information on it. My favorite has been Google Calendar. The first day of school, add all the meetings and holidays and everything else that you could possibly need. I mention this, because I used to have a wall calendar and a desk calendar and a computer calendar and I wasted time moving back and forth between them. (See appendix for “What Should Go on a Calendar”)
• When you go to your mailbox, throw out the crap (not literally -- you're not a monkey) you don't need then and there.
• When you check your e-mail, address each one that's important and delete the rest. If the title is not important, delete it. You have no obligation to read about the school-wide candle sale.

Note: If you're enjoying this series, you might want to pick up A Sustainable Start, a book aimed for first year teachers. The tentative release date is August 1, 2011. 

Inspired by The Nerdy Teacher's creation of a hashtag.  If you haven't read his blog, you should check it out.

My reform:

I yell less and listen more.  

I focus less on teaching and more on learning.  

I no longer believe immigration is a "neutral" issue. 

I recognize the reality that I come from a culture of power that often marginalizes my students. 

It's a humle reform, but it's my reform.  I know it's not a march.  I know it's not a new school.  I know it doesn't involve a banner or a slogan or anything else.  But it's my reform.  Maybe it sounds narcissistic.  I don't care.  I'll call it "my reform," because as much as it is a collective voice, it's still my voice.  It's still my actions.  It's still my chance to own education reform within my own context among the people I know.

As long as I call it "ed reform" or "the reform movement," I fail to make it my own.   

Over the next few days, I'll be tweeting about #myreform - my dreams for students, my hopes for our schools and the actions I want to take.  I invite you to join me with that hashtag.