Jones Fred. Tools for
Teaching. Hong Kong: Fredric H. Jones & Associates Inc, 2000.
I
purchased this book to compliment The First Days of School (Wong and
Wong, 2009) as advised by Amazon reviewers.
After reading it I feel well prepared and I'm eager to design my own plans
for my class in a few months using this and the Wongs' book.
While the Wongs' work concerned the classroom culture of
consistency, teacher readiness and the theme of the effective teacher, Fred
Jones' book focuses on classroom management and the invisible mechanics
constantly at play.
The book is even shaped and printed in the same way as the
Wongs' which I like. The design seems to
make sense for this content and taking notes in the margins is easy.
The book has 8 sections, breaking down classroom management
into its component parts so that the greenest of readers can start from scratch
and understand how and why management techniques work they way they do. I'll be going through each section and for
some I'll break it down chapter by
chapter when it makes sense. These sections are:
- Building a Classroom Management System
- Exploiting Proximity
- Creating Independent Learners
- Raising Expectations
- Building Classroom Structure
- Setting Limits
- Producing Responsible Behavior
- Using the Backup System
Some sections are better fleshed
out than others while others have more organization or style to them. This was an issue of cabin fever.
As an aside, I found my background knowledge and
understanding of positive and negative reinforcement and punishment
helpful. Being able to dissociate from affecting
circumstances, like an automaton might, for the sake of rational thinking was
also relevant. Yay.
Also appealing to my
own tastes, the author simplifying information and not beating
around the bush sent tingles down my spine.
If there's one thing I hate, it's when someone, unintentionally or has
the need to, blather on and on when they've either beaten a dead horse or
haven't realized they've been talking for a long time and the other person
still has no idea what they're talking about.
So you don't think I'm an idiot, having trouble explaining something is
one thing and sometimes many words are needed to really drive a point home. I can be kind of crummy with small talk, but
I try. Where was I...
Building a
Classroom Management System
This is really just an
introduction to all the topics that will be covered in the book. Jones, whose Ph.D. in clinical psychology
specializes in work with schools and families, is an educational
consultant. His research is based upon
years and years of observing 'natural' teachers nonchalantly do what most other
teachers cannot -look like they aren't doing anything while the students do
everything.
Classroom management is
necessary for the good of teacher and student.
A well managed room reduces stress and workload for everyone making for
a pleasant and efficient learning environment.
Classroom management is a system concerning approaches to instruction,
motivation, and discipline. Within each
of these headings the book covers considerations of efficiency (how much does a
method 'cost' a teacher), how to prevent future relevant problems, and how to
handle specific situations. Topics
touched upon include teacher mobility, learned helplessness, meaning business
(my favorite), and teaching responsibility to name just a few.
The hierarchy of
management from foundation to chimney is as follows: classroom structure (big
topic), interpersonal skill of the teacher, incentive systems, and the backup
system (standard discipline)
However, bear in mind the
role of the teacher's own interpersonal skills is highly important as it is always
a variable in a classroom. It's just
that you can really squeeze the skill at times.
Exploiting
Proximity
Showtime
In a room full of
students eager to socialize and do anything but what you want them to do,
physical and psychological distance is where classroom management begins.
The lesson here is to
work the crowd or the crowd will work you. But before we do that, let's tilt the odds in
our favor.
First, set up the desks
bearing in mind the question, what is the shortest distance you can walk that
will allow you to read the work of every student in the class? In other words, what is the shortest path
around the room one can take to visually confirm what everyone is up to? Next, make walkways wide, very wide. Why? To prevent students from being concerned
whether or not you have room to squeeze by what with all their stuff on the
floor and their feet all over the place.
Now put your own desk somewhere that isn't the front of the room and
move everyone's desks closer to the board.
Assign seats to prevent socially isolated children from not knowing
where to sit among many other reasons and put the squirrely ones up front.
Ahh isn't that
better. Now that we've covered physical
proximity and mobility issues, let's handle psychological distance.
Don't stand still.
Move.
When? While instructing
and while students work.
Why? You create a
moving target, changing the visual field during instruction so you don't bore
the audience to death. You move around
while they work to monitor their work of course. But the real reason is twofold. One, you want to constantly change the zones
of proximity and camouflage your ulterior motive of sending subtle messages to
trouble makers without embarrassing them. More on both later.
Zones of proximity. Basically the farther away a student is, the
likelier they are to goof off. To
diminish the likelihood of this you move yourself around to keep everyone on
their toes. On top of this you project yourself
where you aren't by looking to the those furthest from you during instruction. If you can't stand back by them, you can
still make your presence felt. Jones'
describes three zones around a teacher: red, yellow, and green. In the red zone students are all eyes and
ears. In the yellow zone it's like
they're having a shootout with you with their hands just itching to draw and
goof off. The green zone is goof off
paradise.
Work the crowd or the
crowd will work you.
Creating
Independent Learners
The helpless hand
raiser. This is the student that for one
reason or another always needs your attention, I mean help. Sure they might not understand something but
that might be because they see no need in trying to follow a lesson when they
know they can get some one on one help soon thereafter.
These students suck up
your attention, prevent other students from getting help, slow a class down,
and remain emotionally and/or intellectually dependent on others. They are a problem for everyone in the room even
if the genuinely don't understand. So we
need to genuinely help them. To do so, we must wean them off of the attention and
help they have become so hooked on.
Jones' therefore calls these students weanies.
To help weanies and the
class (and the teacher) simultaneously simplify the verbal modality and teach
with visual aids.
Verbal Modality. We all have weak memories. Everything beyond immediate recall is
long-term memory. So corrective feedback
(help) must be short, very simple, and focus on one step at a time.
The Praise, Prompt,
Leave (PPL) approach is introduced.
PPL helps non-weanies and weanies by giving them what they ask for and
need, it prevents them from getting what they want (undivided attention), and
frees up the teacher for other concerns (paperwork, prep, other students). PPL is simple, praise the student's work with one or two simple, relevant to the
work, declarative sentences, prompt
the student on what to do next (which is often their question) with a simple
and clear declarative sentence, and LEAVE. As soon as the question is answered, evacuate
the area, leave not time for "yea but..."
This prevents them from
getting excessive attention and over time will diminish their want for
help. After all, calling the teacher
over many times for help on a single problem becomes frustrating over time as
the student has many problems to get through.
Consequently the student seeks most help elsewhere (coming up).
Neutral and positive
language is very important. Students
with low self-esteem can interpret neutral language as negative. Also, never go over why an error is an error,
that's not the point of corrective feedback.
Shy away from
terminating requests (don't do this that) and gear towards initiating (to do
something).
Visual Modality. Helping students with your words has
limitations and can create problems.
Regarding problems, when you open up a dialogue, you open up a dialogue! The helpless love dialogue, it's a way to
cling to you. The verbal modality is
limited in that explanations can be verbose and not so clear at times. The solution is visual cues.
Pictures are worth a
thousand words. When teaching any
lesson, have paired with it a Visual Instructional Plan (VIP). VIPs can be a wordless series of pictures
each focusing on meaningful steps for the task at hand that answer the question
"What do I do next?" Each
image is salient during the actual lesson to ensure that it is paired with its
corresponding step. These images become
a substitute for you and your help. VIPs
may also be outlines among other modalities.
These visual cues
become a part of the prompt in Praise, Prompt, Leave. Instead of having to explain a step to a
student in need you can now point to the visual prompt. This closes the door on dialogue and can make
explanations easier. If you're still
helping students verbally, this could mean your visual cues/prompts need some
work.
Physical Modality. I hear,
and I forget. I see, and I
remember. I do, and I understand. Learning is a three step process. We're told
how something is done, we see how it's done, then we give it a go. Repetition is your friend so we "give it
a go" until it becomes learned.
This also applies to how teachers help students. They need the verbal modality, visual
modality, and physical practice. When we
combine all three we get a powerful learning vehicle. Jones' refers to this as the See, Say, Do
cycle; let me explain what to do
next, watch as I show you, now you do it.
Immediate performance
is the backbone of memory encoding and storage.
Typical classrooms are characterized by input, input, input, output. What is vastly
superior is input, output, input, output.
Finally, there are 3
steps in packaging a lesson; setting the stage, acquisition, and consolidation. To be brief, setting the stage covers why the
lesson is important, reviews past and relevant lessons, and forecasts this
lessons goals. Acquisition covers the
Say, See, Do cycle and repetition.
Consolidation is guided practice done together as a group followed by independent
as the teacher moves about the room, and finishes with teaching nuances to a
method and discriminating errors.
*A note about guided
practice, practice doesn't make perfect, perfect practice makes perfect. Anything less than perfect can't be accepted,
it sends the wrong message.
Ahhh. With the verbal,
visual, and physical modalities covered, the helpless learners can't make much
of a case for help! This frees up the
teacher to do other things and streamlines much in the class.
Raising Expectations
Motivation
While you can't control
attitudes about education at home, you can in the classroom. Teachers want students to be prolific and
skillful but without motivation anyone flat lines.
To understand
motivation, lets introduce some ideas...
Incentives are reasons
to do something, they are reinforces that increase a behavior. Disincentives are the opposite. We like incentives. Don't we, we? Yes we do.
There are two
motivators behind incentive systems.
One is doing A for B for Me out of love and/or respect for the
other person requesting something. The
other is doing A for B. (Classroom bribery is a twisted version of
the latter; it's getting someone to do something they do not want to do in
exchange for something that would normally be considered a reward. Bribes are no good.)
Now there are two
categories of incentives, proactive and reactive. Proactive
incentives are established prior, reactive
are generated in the heat of the moment to get compliance. Reactive incentives show a lack of
preparedness and overall weakness to students and that they're getting to you.
We aim to be proactive and build A for B systems since they're easier to
predict the outcome.
Traditional incentive
systems are A for B but can be
problematic. For example, let's say
students must complete a math worksheet before working on their art projects
(the incentive). Students with a good
work ethic will get it done and move to the project. This is a diligence
incentive, a reason to get your work
done. Students having a tough time or a lack of will can just say
"forget this" and sit around until the bell rings. This is a dawdling incentive, a reason to do nothing. Another group of students could whiz through
the work without checking to see what is right or wrong to get to work on their
projects. This is an incentive for speed. Two of these are problems. Guess which ones.
What teachers dream
about are students wisely using their time (not too slow, not too fast) and
producing quality work (diligence). To
get diligence B has to be something the student would prefer to do, the Sponge Activity, and a criterion of mastery must be met.
Sponge Activities are
'cheap' meaning they're always ready to go and takes little to get into
gear. They can be anything the students
look forward to doing but must be classroom relevant. The beauty of it all is that these are
activities the students would be doing anyway.
Sponge Activities are very useful and will be covered again to in the
section Producing Responsible Behavior, the are similar or can be the core of
Preferred Activity Time (PAT).
A criterion of mastery is
something like 5/5 or 10/10 right in a row of whatever students are working
on. To prevent them from whizzing
through the task, 5 or 10 in a row must be correct. This creates incentive to work as quickly as
they can without becoming sloppy. Students are motivated to not dawdle since
they want to get to their PATs. Word to
the wise, if the teacher cannot correct work quickly enough, students typically
finding themselves at the end of the line may never get to their PATs and have
incentive to dawdle.
Accountability
Excellence comes from
students meeting our standards, not lowering ours to theirs. But checking their quality of work can be
'expensive,' it takes a lot of time.
Here's how to cheapen things step by step.
Step 1
Quality Control. Imagine two factories making widgets. Factory A has a supervisor watching employees
work on the assembly line, making sure they are doing things as they're
supposed to and correcting them while they work. Their quality control is in-production. Factory B checks for quality after many
widgets has been made by taking a random sample of finished products. Their quality control is
post-production. If in both factories
the inspector noticed a misplaced wire at their quality control point, the cost
of remediating the situation is much, much, much higher for Factory B since
they must undo errors in all finished products.
The lesson to be learned is in-production is quick, cheap, and preventative. This carries over to class work of many
types.
Step 2
Zero-Deficits
Production. Students are taught
using See, Say, Do teaching, have structured practice (perfect practice), have
Visual Instructional Plans, go through guided practice, and Praise, Prompt,
Leave benefits everyone. Faulty work isn't accepted especially since students
have been provided everything they need to do very well. If students regularly aren't doing well,
there might be a glitch in the system somewhere on your part.
Steps 1 and 2 ensure
things are done right the first time around making accountability and grading
'cheap.'
Step 3
Oh lawd, now all the work
has to be checked, it's going to take forever. Hehehehehehehe, not so fast you've got a room
full of fully capable students. Jones
provides here a very clever way to get a lot of grading done at once, make it a
fun!
- Break the class into groups or teams. These can be carryover from work groups.
- Train them how to correct the work
- Have groups swap papers
- Have groups correct papers
- Team with the fewest errors wins. Keep record for a longer term game.
- Now let students recheck their own work when they get it back and award double points (or hafl the amount of error 'points') if they can find an error in their work check. A penalty for the corrector might be in order.
The final step ensures honesty is
in ever graders best interest.
Students embarrassed by
not doing well are motivated to improve through incentive systems soon to be
covered, peer help (we are a team!), and the classroom culture itself should be
geared towards easing the students stress.
Building
Classroom Structure
Succeeding from day one....
For the best structure,
start from day one and carve routines and procedures mercilessly into the psyche
of everyone in your classroom.
Consistency is the word
of god. It applies not only to routines
and procedures but to the teachers own behavior and the enforcement of
rules. There are no degrees of
consistency, you either are consistent or inconsistent. The moment you slip, you have become
inconsistent. Therefore every moment is
a moment of truth.
Piggybacking onto this,
children are extremely receptive to the real rules of a classroom. In truth, they develop hypothesis regarding
what is okay and what's not and then test their teacher. The teacher therefore must always say what they mean and mean what
they say and with them no always
means no.
Adult inconsistency is how a brat is created. A brat has to constantly test an inconsistent
adult to see what they can get away with since the adult doesn't always say
what they mean and no doesn't always mean no.
Teachers must always be
proactive from day one.
The classroom must be
respected. Once students step over the
door's threshold they have entered a holy place separate from the world
outside. Make this distinction clear
from day one.
First impressions. Always introduce yourself on day one and let
your students know a bit about you. Show
some humanity. Also always invest most
of day one with time for icebreakers, interaction, and procedures.
Always begin a day
and/or class and lesson with relevant Bellwork that get's the cognitive juices
flowing. Don't grade it, just make sure
they give it a honest try.
Teaching Routines
General Classroom
Rules: Stick to behavioral guidelines and values clarification. These must be posted, simple, always enforced
at limited to 5-8 rules.
Specific Procedures
and Routines: The goal here is
efficiency. Such must be taught with
perfect practice for the standards we have define what students can get away
with and inconsistency will generate issues.
Teachers must invest heavily in routines.
Handling new
procedures: Set the stage and
outline its purpose and importance.
While teaching it, develop visual, non-verbal cues and have one
universal signal that means stop, go back and start over for when not a
procedure is not performed perfectly.
The reasoning for this
is multifaceted. One, students will get
sick of having to do something over because of something they can control like
goofing off. Two, students will pressure
their goof off peers to cut it out since they'll have to do things all over
because of them. When a procedure has to
be redone, remain neutral and undisturbed and request the redo.
Establishing
Standards: Getting a handle on goof offs requires you to leverage peer
pressure as in the example above.
Nagging never works, but perfect practice does as it is
reinforcement. Bear in mind that you
assign meaning to your words and actions only through your subsequent
actions. When your words and actions
carry meaning, you mean business and students take you seriously.
Classroom chores:
Let students help you, be needed, and be a part of the social unit and they'll
have pride in their role. This can be
achieved by creating work groups to help run the classroom. The role of each group should be rotated
regularly so all students experience all work responsibilities. Such groups or committees might have to do
with classroom maintenance, peer tutor groups, test development, or material
preparation. For peer tutoring, teach
them Praise, Prompt, Leave and Say, See, Do methods. Students help carry their weight.
Setting Limits
This section is quite
large so I'll break it down chapter by chapter.
Understanding Brat Behavior
I mentioned how to
build a brat earlier. The trap is
inconsistency and rewarding brat behavior.
When you don't always say what you mean and don't always mean what you
say and no doesn't always mean no, from the child's perspective they have to always
persist with adults to find out what the adult really means and what 'no'
really means in each situation. Sometimes no means "just keep at it and
you'll get what you want." When the
child gets what they're after, being persistent is reinforced.
Brats have 'weanie
parents.' Not only can they not say no,
their child's persistence is never met with punishment.
Because brats spend a
lot of time at home, you have to make it very clear that your classroom is your house. You
don't negotiate, your words mean
exactly what the mean, and you
certainly don't put up with pleading.
Keeping It Positive, Keeping It Cheap
New teachers go through
the following stages:
- Green as grass - The "bonding phase" when a new teacher can only think of gumdrops and glitter.
- Do something - The moment they realize their students aren't cherubs the teacher becomes reactive, and gets pseudo-compliance from students.
- Pseudo-compliance is when students fake working in your presence to get you off their back.
- Sick & Tired(!) - Nagging and empty threats. If you're here, you've lost the game
- Laying down the law - Oh now you're in trouble, I'm going to make more empty threats and blow a lot of hot air. I'll see you all tomorrow so you can walk all over me again. Ha. Ha!
- If the procedure is working, the problem will go away. If it's not, the procedure isn't working.
- Always choose the cheapest remedy. Always.
Staying Calm, Staying Strong
Within in all of us is
our fight-or-flight reflex and a lot in classrooms triggers the response. This is problematic for a few reasons. For starters being ramped up on adrenaline
and nervous energy all day is exhausting and will cause burnout. The more immediate concern is what it does to
our thinking. Instead of thinking with
our cortex, we "go brainstem" and act like poo flinging monkeys.
Side effects of going
brainstem include nagging, being sick and tired, squawking around like a
chicken, and other ridiculous mannerisms and behaviors that make the individual
look ridiculous and weak.
When we ''go
brainstem'' we lose our leg up, our compsoure, and make stupid decisions. To make higher level decisions, you must
remain calm. Calm = Control = Power.
While you can't avoid
the fight or flight reflex all day, you can avoid it sometimes and abort it
when it kicks up. The solution is
simple, controlled breathing to force
your body to pace itself. A pair of
breaths is best. The trick is to know when to do so. Jones provides numerous instances of when to
apply the exercise but as a general rule just do it always at the onset of a
stress causing issue. If stress levels remain
high after two breaths, go for two more and space paced breathing between steps
of a stressful lesson or situation.
As the paced breathing
slows you down, you appear calm and calculated to students. Heck you might actually be. This helps them remain calm as well yet
creates a bit of tension between misbehaver and teacher.
Imagine a situation
where a student is acting out and the teacher handles the situation, relative
to the students energy levels, slowly and with such a calm demeanor and tact it
downshifts the student as you create a psychological void they fill with
ensuing awkwardness they can stop by getting back to work.
By keeping everyone
calm and slowing things down the teacher remains in control.
Meaning Business
Meaning business is the
art of stopping the unstoppable object and moving the immovable object. It's conveyed through body language and
requires consistent enforcement of rules and such to work.
Tenets of Meaning
Business:
·
Discipline always
comes before instruction. Never hesitate to stop a lesson to
address discipline issues. Never.
Students cannot think you'll get to the eventually. When they get caught, suddenly it's high noon
and all they have in their holster is the banana momma packed them for
lunch. What a terrible lunch.
·
You cannot fool children, if you don't believe
your convictions neither will they.
·
Dealing with problems is never convenient
or pleasant. Nevertheless, ALWAYS deal with them. You must be consistent or you build a bunch
of brats.
·
Slow down, stay calm, breathe, and know how to
communicate through body language.
Think of these discipline
situations as a high stakes poker game.
All you want is the student to work and all they want is to not work and
not get in trouble. Fortunately, not
getting in trouble is easy! You just do your work. It's like poker since you both up the ante
with the decision made in response to the other person.
Following Through
Expect students to up
the ante with penny bets you can shut down if you know what you're doing. Knowing what to do was covered in this
chapter and I'm too beat to type it all out.
Guess you'll have to buy the book.
Predicting student
non-compliance is a matter of reading student's own body language and dealing
with it is a matter of your own finesse and skill.
Eliminating Backtalk
To eliminate backtalk, one must not talk back. Do
not open up a dialogue. Mean
business to get students back to work.
I'm a fan of Mike
Woodson's stare. If he's making this
face, you know you've done something terribly wrong and must repent. Not a word is spoken, but you exactly what
he's saying.
Adjusting As You Go
Some students are
immune to meaning business, for them Responsibility Training (RT) is the next step. Fortunately all students can engage in and
benefit from RT.
Producing
Responsible Behavior
Responsibility Training
(RT) sounds magical. On top of
instilling responsible behavior, it cleans up behavior across the board, gets
students to work together, gives them a reason to hustle, and saves time.
Here's how it works: Students are first designated Preferred
Activity Time no matter what, it's a gift. PAT is any academically relevant activity that
the students would prefer to do over run of the mill activities. These activities are already part of the curriculum but because incentives to earn bonus
PAT time exist, it can be wielded as a tool.
Preferred activities
could be projects of any type, study groups, private reading time, group
reading, or the playing of learning games.
Responsibility Training
sets things up so that events like finishing a lesson transition one minute
early means students get one minute tacked
onto their PAT. But squandered time
is their time and is deducted from
their PAT. Bonuses for everyone working
when the bell rings, for example, would add an extra minute. The possibilities are endless.
RT can help troubled
students follow rules and be more respectful by providing incentives related to
their PAT. For instance, not interrupting
for 20 minutes earns one1 minute of bonus PAT. What's even better is any time they earn bonus
PAT, it's shared by all. This means such
students are encouraged by their peers for positive behaviors and discouraged
for negative.
And it works.
Using the
Backup System
The Backup System is the endgame -consequences.
Typical problems with classic punishment is it can be
publicly embarrassing. If you embarrass
a student, they'll be sure to return the favor.
I won't go into the details, but keep these situations small and private. Students shouldn't know when one of their
peers has entered the backup system.
Consequences can be time out, carefully crafted detention,
letters home...
That's it!
That's the whole book, I think I did a decent job of getting
to the point. May these notes help
someone someday, including my future self.
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