Dear Friends,
This week’s evidence comes from the Eberly Center at Carnegie Mellon University. It addresses a pervasive concern of teachers – classroom discipline. This is important because even with fully certified teachers, their undergraduate teacher preparation programs provided little help in classroom management. Moreover, many districts have a large number of long-term substitute teachers and non-certified teachers who have had no training at all in dealing with student discipline.
A significant part of the problem is the way that we deal with cultural variances in students. This past week, we heard from a client who faced this specific issue. A student bumped into a teacher during passing period, and the enraged teacher hauled the student to the principal’s office, insisting on an apology and punishment. The student, an African American male, said, “My bad.” “That’s not an apology!” shouted the teacher. This misunderstanding explains why the same behavior by a Black or Brown male leads to a much harsher punishment than when that behavior happens from an Anglo female student.
The Carnegie Mellon research offers some practical remedies:
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Address the cultural differences directly in a way that compliments students and encourages them to engage in questioning while also explaining your own reaction, e.g., “Students here ask such good questions in class. In my country, students tend not to participate, so I appreciate that you do, even if it sometimes catches me off guard. Keep up the questioning; it will help me see what you do and don’t understand and help you learn the material more deeply.”
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When planning for class, ask yourself: “What might students struggle with? What might be unclear to them?” This will help you focus extra attention on potentially difficult material and to better anticipate student questions.
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Ask students to write their questions on index cards and pass them to the front of the class. Review student questions briefly (during a short break or when students are engaged in an activity) and identify shared areas of confusion, then spend some time clarifying, giving examples, etc. This way, you will have time to consider student questions and will feel more in control of the situation.
We need to acknowledge teacher frustration with student discipline issues. But the answer is not endless office referrals, suspensions, and expulsions. Every school has a teacher who is a master of classroom management. We used to call them “ranger eyes” – that is, eyes in the back of their head that would stop classroom disruption before it started. We should encourage school administrators to take a classroom for 45 minutes while a teacher struggling with classroom management watches a master teacher establish and enforce norms, defuse confrontations, and affirm excellent behavior.
In a Fearless Classroom, students know that they can challenge the teacher and one another without fear because they know that divergent thinking is the rocket fuel of learning.