Last Thursday I gave a workshop on classroom management to my staff.
Although I am very comfortable with the topic and I spent a great deal of
time preparing for the workshop, I am dissatisfied with the results. There
are some things I think I could do differently in the future, but I also
think there are some roadblocks with my staff that need to be worked on.
In fact, my goal was to tear down some of those roadblocks, but I think
I was overly ambitious.
I spent a lot of time trying to figure out what I wanted the staff to know
at the end of my presentation. When I first began planning, my goal was
to help the teachers understand that classroom management is a larger concept
than discipline. Discipline is implemented after a problem occurs whereas
classroom management seeks to prevent problems in the first place. I considered
sharing all the "tricks" that work for me and helping teachers
create their own procedures they could take to their classrooms and use
this coming September.
I thought long and hard about how I could help the staff construct their
own concepts of classroom management, but I could not find articles that
adequately addressed the areas I wanted to explore, and I could not think
of activities to jigsaw the staff with. As I struggled with how to present
the information, I came to the realization that perhaps my goals for the
session were too broad. After all, classroom management is a huge topic
that touches upon every aspect of our lives as teachers. It is the physical
organization of the room, our instructional style, our interactions with
and expectations for our students, and a host of other things. I realized
it was impossible to cover all areas of classroom management in any meaningful
way in two-and-a-half hours.
First some personal reflection
I spent some time reflecting on just how I came to have good classroom management
skills, traced my journey all the way back until I came to the end of my
first year of teaching. I'd had a very challenging year; not a day went
by that I did not yell or put someone out in the hall. I felt isolated and
frustrated, but I knew the problem was with me, not with the students. Unfortunately,
I did not know what I could do to change.
When summer began I decided to spend as much time as I could investigating
discipline until I had "the answers." At that point in my career,
I still believed that if I could just find the "right" rules for
kids to follow, all would be well. I searched the internet, purchased books
on discipline that ran the gamut from cooperative discipline to positive
discipline to assertive discipline, posted questions on the Teachers.Net
chatboard, and pestered the more experienced teachers on the Middle-L listserv,
gathering as much information as I could. I started my second year with
a much better concept of classroom management, and though I still had my
challenges, it was a much better year.
Over time I have continued to search for answers, more often now from looking
within myself and reflecting on my practice and interactions with students
in the classroom. My hard work has paid off.
At the core of what works for me is not some magic set of tricks or one
particular discipline system. If discipline systems worked on their own,
all teachers would adopt one and classroom management and discipline would
cease to be the most requested topic for professional development from our
district's teachers. No, what works for me is my belief system behind the
practices I employ. If I did not believe it was in my power to affect my
classroom environment, I would not be able to do what I do.
I began with beliefs
From these musings I decided to spend some time with the staff sharing my
belief systems and spurring the staff to discuss their own beliefs. As I
mentioned in an earlier entry, we talk as a staff far too little, and this
topic of all topics is an area we need to investigate together.
I started the inservice with a gallery walk where participants responded
to five separate quotes on different pieces of poster paper. The quotes
were ideas I have heard other teachers express as well as some things I
have said myself in times of frustration. Examples are, "It's not my
job to discipline. I'm here to teach. In my day," and "That kid
is just bad. He'll never change." I hung each poster up, and we took
a look at the results.
I was pleased to see that most of the comments protested the veracity of
the quotes. However, there was a clear disconnect between the ideas expressed
in this public forum and the actions and comments of staff members on a
daily basis. I set out to influence some of my colleagues' mindsets.
I prepared a list of fourteen "truths" related to classroom management
and explained that these were things I had learned along the way. My truths
were:
Lasting change takes time.
You cannot make anyone do anything.
Behavior is a symptom of a larger issue.
Reacting to a problem generally escalates the problem, while being proactive
usually helps to de-escalate or avoid the problem in the first place.
Consistency is the key!
If students are engaged, they are not causing trouble.
You can win the battle but lose the war. Choose your battles wisely.
Parents can be allies or enemies.
Assigning blame is ineffective.
Children need structure.
Students rise or fall according to our expectations.
If you fail to plan, you plan to fail.
Do unto others, as you would have them do unto you.
We all make mistakes.
I gave each staff member a packet with copies
of my transparencies. For each "truth," I explained a little
further, asked probing questions, and listed implications for the classroom.
Staff members freely asked questions, talked about their beliefs, and interacted
with each other as we looked at each truth. On the one hand, it was a highly
engaging discussion. Staff members contributed strategies that worked for
them and challenged each other's thinking on the "truths." However,
at the end of the session, some staff members left with the same, stale,
ineffective mindsets that they had come with.
Well, duh . . .
Okay, okay, I know. Mindsets take a long time to develop, who am I to think
I could facilitate any sort of meaningful change in a couple of hours? I
guess the statements I shared with my coworkers seem like such "Well,
duh!" statements that I thought pointing out the obvious would spur
some sort of rapid metamorphosis.
I worry that those few staff members left thinking they learned nothing,
that it was all a bunch of research mumbo-jumbo that was not practical at
all. To my way of thinking, however, nothing more can be done to help them
until they have a change of heart and mind. In their hearts they do believe
our students do not know how to act and that the students bear full responsibility
for behavior and learning in the classroom.
I think we need to have more discussions like the one we had on Thursday.
Perhaps talking through their beliefs and learning about others' beliefs
will eventually crack through the protective shell they have built around
themselves. I only know we have had workshop after workshop on classroom
management and discipline where strategies and tricks to address the symptoms
of larger problems have been shared, and people are still looking for answers.
If only they knew the answers lie within themselves.
Lasting change takes time, Ellen. Remember that.