by: Mery Tellez
Considering the when and how to react to our students’
behaviors is a tricky business. The
language we utilize, our tone of voice and body gestures, have a big impact on
classroom situations. For any situation
that arises in a classroom, its meaning is tremendously impacted by our
reaction to it.
Regardless of the set of specific consequences we are
planning to implement in our classroom and if the behavior and consequence is a
positive or negative one; there is a general process that we do need to go
through every time a situation arises in our classroom. The flowchart provided here is an attempt to
organize this internal process. Being conscious
of what we should be doing to ensure an effective classroom management is certainly
the first step to building a positive learning environment for our students.
The flowchart starts at the beginning of the school year,
when rules, procedures and consequences should be discussed and agreed on
together with the students.
Socializing these three components, and allowing your
students to be part of the process, will facilitate the understanding of your
future efforts to promote positive classroom behavior. Imagine you are keeping the entire classroom
for 5 extra minutes during their recess as a consequence of your never
socialized rule of being on time, how many students will be upset, frustrated
and probably even offended by your decision?
Contrast this against the scenario of a class that starts the school
year by deciding what is important; being on time for example, and how can we
compensate the time lost if we are not on time; taking time from recess. Certainly the students' reaction will be a very different one.
After that we can see how the flowchart moves towards the
many specific situations both positive and negative that you will experience in
your students’ behavior. For each
situation a suggested course of action is presented in a general approach:


For example, if a student is raising her hand wanting to
participate, you can immediately detect that as a positive behavior and move
forward on your plan to praise it or recognize it. If you stop for a second on the suggested
questions, you might remember that this is the same student who has been
praised for the same behavior constantly, and might remember as well how
over-praising a behavior makes it lose its meaning, not really building up the
skills or motivation of said student, and you might change your reaction to a
more subtle and meaningful one, such as acknowledging her with a nod or a
smile.

To close this post, I would like to make a short reflection
on consequences. Marzano, (2007) in his
chapter on recognizing and adhering to classroom rules and procedures,
stablishes that “Rules and procedures for which there are no consequences do little
to enhance learning”. I couldn’t agree
more, but I do believe we need to re-evaluate what most of us do as a
consequence, its frequency, and its effects in building our students’
character.
How much do consequences help to educate and bring the best possible
out of a child, and how much are these systems of punishment and reward a
detrimental system that hurts better tan build students-teacher relationships?
There are many teachers who believe that our reward-penalize
system is not one that in fact reflects the real world our students live in,
and that by constantly making an effort to even visually point out a misbehaviour or a positive behavior that should be expected, we are in fact
placing the job of managing students’ behavior in the hand of the teacher and
not in the hands of the students where it belongs. In this scenario the students become the
object of a judgment instead of the self-regulators of their behavior that we
were originally aiming for.
The reality is that as adults we are not constantly being
praised or penalized for our good actions or small faults. We do face consequences in the long and short
term for our actions, but the ideal I would like to help build in the character
of my students is one in which their actions are not determined by the fear or
need for the immediate or long term praising, but instead for their inner
motivation to act according what they believe correct.
With that being said, I believe we should be motivating much
more self-reflection and much less candy and stickers for behaviors that should
be the norm. Should we really be so
surprised that our students remain in line? Or submit homework? Or get to class
on time? I believe that by praising
those behaviors that are an expectation better than an extraordinary action, we
are educating our students to act based in a reward and not on their
convictions.
Cited Sources:
Marzano, R. J. (2007). Chapter 7. What will I do to recognize and acknowledge adherence and lack of adherence to classroom rules and procedures? In The art and science of teaching: A comprehensive framework for effective instruction(pp. 131-148). Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.
No comments:
Post a Comment