FALL 2010 - SEYS 562
Queens
College/CUNY
Education Unit
Fall 2010
Classroom Management for Science Teachers
by Brian Murfin
by Brian Murfin
Drop
into any staff room and you will immediately hear them. Certain
teachers complain incessantly about student behavior and will say such
things as "So and so is totally hopeless!" Unfortunately these
are some of the first people a new teacher notices in a school.
The complainers tend to be loud and forceful and it is hard to
challenge them. The same teachers will then go on to say, "I
can't do group work or labs with these students. They are so
badly behaved those types of lessons won't work with them.
Inquiry doesn't work with those students either. An
old-fashioned curriculum with lots of vocabulary work, reading of
textbooks and well prepared lectures works best." These
sentiments are also much more common in schools that are "high needs"
or that have large numbers of "at-risk" students.
The
situation I have just described is a major factor that makes classroom
management difficult for all teachers, not just new teachers.
What the complainers don't seem to understand is that
- Times change. Students are products of their culture and teaching methods that worked generations ago may not be as effective as they used to be.
- Expectations are extremely powerful forces.
After
teaching for many years and observing many classroom situations, I have
come to a conclusion. When I see a classroom that is out of
control, where students are misbehaving continuously, I immediately
start to examine the attitude of the teacher and how the teacher is
teaching. In many of these cases, if the teacher would make some
fundamental changes in their methods of teaching, class behavior would
improve. This usually doesn't happen in these problem classrooms.
Instead, the teacher is determined to teach using the same
ineffective methods and concentrates on finding ways (punishments) to
force the students to conform to the situation that is causing the
problem.
I
like to relate a story of an experience I had when I was a new teacher
in a school. It was my third year and I had just started at a new
high school. I was being given an O-Level Biology class that had
previously been taught by the Head of the Department (HOD). The
HOD was a very strict, and always went by the book. As I started
my class, he looked into the lab and saw a student with a black cap on.
I hadn't noticed the cap and woe to me and the student. The
HOD rushed into the room and smacked the student in the head, snatching
the cap off of the student's head. He shouted to me in front of
the entire class "This student is a criminal and troublemaker. If
he does anything else wrong, let me know and I will get the
Administration to expel him." Whew! I was stunned at first
and then became angry and a bit determined. I spoke to the
student after class and told him, I didn't care what happened with him
and the HOD previously. If he worked hard and passed all of the
exams, he could get a good grade and pass the O-Level Biology exam.
After that talk, I never had a single problem with this student
and he did very well on the O-Level exam. I gave him the benefit
of the doubt and he turned out to be a respectful, well-behaved and
hard-working student in my class.
Here
is another story. There was a student named Nonoka.
Unfortunately this name meant "Slowly" in the local African
language. Almost all of the teachers and students believed that
this student was hopeless academically. However, there was one
teacher who really believed in Nonoka and encouraged and helped him.
He was the Geography teacher. This teacher told me and the
rest of the teachers that Nonoka was quite good in Geography. No
one really believed this. Nonoka did alright in Biology and
managed to pass, but lo and behold, he got the top examination score in
the school in Geography!
Another
important idea that all teachers should be familiar with is the
"self-fulfilling prophecy," also called the "Pygmalion Effect".
This has been well documented by psychologists in many research
studies. An example of how this might work is when classes are
"tracked," "streamed" or put into classes or groups according to
ability. For example, we could take a random sample of students
and randomly assign them to two groups. One group would be
labeled the Advanced Science class, and the other we could call the
Intermediate Science class. If we tested the students before
teaching them we should find that there is no statistically significant
difference in performance. An attempt would be made to control
all important variables. Both classes would be taught by the same
teacher, in the same way, for the same amount of time. After a
given amount of time, say two weeks, we would test the two classes
again. We would almost certainly find that the "Advanced Science"
class would perform significantly better than the "Intermediate
Science" class. What do you think would happen, if now, we told
the students "Oops, we made a mistake!" and switched the students from
the Intermediate Science class into the "Advanced Science" class and
vice-versa. After a similar period of time we would find that the
"Advanced Science" class would still have the highest score.
Labels are powerful things and they should be used very carefully
for individual students, classes or schools. The self-fulfilling
prophecy not only affects academic achievement, it can also change
behavior as well.
Let's get back to classroom management.
The important point is that students will perform academically up to your expectations.
They
will also behave according to your expectations. Of course,
behavior is influenced by other factors and we will discuss those soon.
Here is the big problem. When a teacher is cynical about
student behavior and believes that change is impossible, the students
will behave even more badly. I don't know exactly how this
occurs. It may be an unconscious reaction by the students in most
cases. I hark back to the story of the horse "Clever Hans".
This was a seemingly magical horse. It could perform
arithmetic with uncanny accuracy. Later scientists discovered
what seemed to be happening. The horse was able to pick up cues
from the human who was counting to the correct answer. These cues
were almost imperceptible but there were definitely the cause as
controlled experiments showed. In the case of the cynical
teacher, students are very capable of picking up all sorts of cues from
their teacher and these influence their attitudes and behavior.
After all this digression we now come to the first important principle of classroom management.
Never give up on students.
You
as a teacher need to believe that the students can and will behave
better, that things are not hopeless. This positive attitude by
the teacher will be detected by the students either consciously or
unconsciously and if the teacher is persistent and makes other
important improvements, classroom discipline can improve. I know
that this is hard as people are not all compatible with each other.
There will be some students who you may dislike for a variety of
reasons. You cannot let this show. You must try and be
positive towards all students.
Now
before we go on, I want to make perfectly clear that I am not
advocating coddling students or being a lax disciplinarian. No!
On the other hand, I believe that a teacher who does not have a
secure and safe classroom environment is not doing her or his duty.
When students are rowdy, noisy and disrespectful in a science
class, it is not only dangerous, but it inhibits learning by those
students who want to do well.
OK,
you are going to have a positive attitude and believe that every
student can improve their behavior. As a new teacher it is easier
for you. You have not been in the trenches and have not had to
put up with out of control classrooms and students. I am advising
you not to let those few old complainer veteran teachers influence your
attitudes towards the students, but that does not mean that they do not
have a reason for their complaints. On the contrary, those
veteran teachers probably have very good reasons for their complaints
and you should be sympathetic to them, their having toiled for so many
years. It is not always their fault. They were taught and
trained to teach in traditional ways and these probably don't work very
well with a changing population of students. You have a chance to
bring skills and attitudes that will complement their vast experience,
knowledge and toughness. If you work as a team with veteran teachers
and don't give up, you can make breakthroughs and improve student
behavior in ways that were not possible before.
So,
you are new in your school and you politely listen to everything that
veteran teachers have to say about your soon-to-be students. You
enter your first class with trepidation and observe the students
cursing, not listening to the teacher, and not following instructions.
You are appalled at the behavior and after watching the teacher
deal with this, you think, "Well, there is no other way. I could never
do labs or group work with them. I can see why the teacher is so
strict." What should you do first?
First of all, learn as much as you can about your students and the community.
Talk
with individual students, give them a survey to complete to find out as
much as you can about them. What TV shows and movies do they
watch, what music do they listen to, what sports and games do they
like? What languages do they speak? What are their hobbies?
What problems do they have with school? What do they like
about school?
Observe
the students in a variety of classes. Pay special attention to
the methods the teachers use. Which methods are successful and
unsuccessful? Ask other teachers for their advice and experiences
with the students. Ask what seems to work and what does not work.
The next important step is preparation.
Prepare detailed lesson plans well in advance.
During
the first few years of teaching, you will probably have to do most of
your preparation on the weekends and during vacations and breaks.
When you are preparing make sure you know your science.
This will have several benefits including making you more
confident and also capable of dealing with more questions from
students. Another key point to remember is to plan a motivation
for each lesson. In order to do this, think back to all you have
learned about your students. Try and link the day's topic to
things the students are familiar with. You should also vary your
approach while also establishing a comfortable routine for the students
so that they know exactly what is expected from them as soon as they
enter the room.
Preparation
is one of the most important techniques to establish a safe and
supportive classroom environment. Your lesson and unit plans
should enable you to keep the students actively engaged for as much
time as possible. This will prevent the majority of discipline
problems if you keep the students engaged in learning activities.
The
minute students have nothing to do, or when they run up against an
obstacle that frustrates them, the potential for trouble increases.
In
addition to preparation the teacher must spell out exactly what type of
behavior is expected and the consequences for misbehavior.
There
are many ways to do this but the most effective technique is to involve
the students in the development of class rules. This should be
done on the very first day. The reason for each rule and the
consequences for breaking it should be discussed. Once this is
complete, the rules should be posted in the room and also given to the
students in the form of a contract that parents can also be asked to
sign.
So
far, so good. Now comes the hard part. A teacher needs to
maintain a safe and supportive classroom environment day in and day
out. This does not happen automatically. A new teacher will
be tested and the students' respect is earned over time. Most
experienced teachers advise new teachers to be very strict from the
first day and this is sound advice. When a teacher loses control
it is very difficult to get it back.
When a student breaks a rule, the teacher should never ignore the misbehavior.
You
must be seen to enforce the rules. However, you also need to use
your judgment. Some students want attention and if you challenge
them in front of the class, they will misbehave even more in order to
perform in front of their audience. In a case like this, you
might tell the student that you will meet with them after class to deal
with them. Don't back students into a corner, especially if they
are angry, emotional, or frightened. It is better to defuse the
situation to maintain your safe classroom, and handle the problem
outside of class, when there is less pressure.
As you encounter violations of rules, be consistent and fair.
OK,
now you have your class rules posted, and the students have taken
safety and classroom contracts home to their parents and returned the
signed copies. Now you have to make it through the next three to
five years. After five years of teaching, if you have worked hard
at improving your classroom management techniques, you will have
established a reputation in the school and the community.
Hopefully this reputation will be that you are fair and strict
teacher who really cares about the students. The students who are
in your classes, who work hard, also succeed in life.
It's
not easy building up a reputation as a good teacher. Along the
way you will be challenged by an almost infinite variety of situations.
It really isn't possible to prepare a new teacher for this.
Instead, a good teacher will constantly consider what he or she
will do if something happens in the class. This is not hard to
do. All you need to do is think back to your own classes and to
classes you have observed. Here is a short list of some
situations that you might encounter:
Classroom management scenarios - What would you do?
- A student comes late to class on a regular basis. Prevention and follow up: Find out more about the individual student. Why are they coming late? Once you find out the cause, you can discuss possible solutions with the student. This can be coupled with a reward system. Each student might start out with a certain amount of attendance points that they lose with each tardiness or absence. Students could earn rewards through good attendance. The rewards could be individually designed using the Premack Principle. Briefly, this involves studying student behavior and finding out what activities they enjoy and engage in most frequently. The opportunity to engage in these activities is then used as a reward. In general, intrinsic rewards are usually much more powerful than extrinsic rewards such as paying students for good grades, or giving them cell phones or candy. In some cases, point systems can be carefully designed to help students move to a state where intrinsic rewards replace the extrinsic rewards. There are behavior modification techniques that have been used successfully such as classroom economies where students can accumulate "currency" as a reward for desired behavior. You might set up a system where students are rewarded with "Science dollars" for good behavior and achievement, and then the dollars could be used to obtain rewards.
- A student is cursing at another student in front of you. Prevention and follow up: Have class rules that prohibit cursing and that also specify potential consquences. Talk with the class as a whole and with individual students about why cursing is a problem, i.e. that it could lead to fights, it is disrespectful, it is not tolerated in the workplace and that it is bad habit. Work with the class to come up with strategies to deal with cursing such as substituting benign words that can be used when frustrated or angry.
- A student pushes another student during a science laboratory experiment. Prevention and follow up: Make sure rules and consequences are well known to the students and point out why it is very unsafe to engage in horseplay in a science lab. It could start a fire, break expensive equipment, cause serious injury due to broken glass, or chemical burns.
- A student continues talking and not listening while you are giving instructions for a lab. Prevention and follow up: Don't be boring! Make sure your directions are clear and that your voice is loud enough to be heard in all parts of the room. Move around the room. One of your class rules should concern talking in class. Explain clearly that everyone is going to have an opportunity to talk during class. For example students can talk while doing a group activity, or when called on by the teacher in a class discussion. When the teacher is giving instructions for a lab, everyone must listen carefully. The most important reason for this is safety. If students do not hear critical instructions they might use equipment incorrectly or mishandle potentially dangerous materials such as chemicals. A second reason is that students may have difficulty carrying out a lab and understanding what they are supposed to do and this will result in the lab being a waste of time and resources for both students and teachers. If a student continues talking during lab instructions they can be asked to sit during the lab and do an alternative activity at their seat. Another preventive technique could be to ask the student who is not paying attention to read or repeat the directions for the lab to the class.
- Two students start fighting in the science lab. Prevention and follow up: Make sure rules and consequences are well known to the students and point out why it is very unsafe to engage in horseplay in a science lab. It could start a fire, break expensive equipment, cause serious injury due to broken glass, chemical burns etc. If students are fighting during in a science lab, you should call for help from a teacher next door, school security and the administration. Sometimes just shouting Stop now! in a loud clear voice, can cause the combatants to pause, so that you can get their attention. If you can do it safely you should separate the students and immediately lead them out of the lab. Move chemicals, bunsen burners, glassware and hazardous equipment, and other students out of the way. The students should be immediately reported to the administration. It is important that you do report all incidents of fighting since the fight could continue in other classes or outside of school and someone could be seriously injured.
- A student steals lab equipment. Prevention and follow up: Make it difficult to steal items or to get away with stealing. I used to count items out in front of the whole class and then count them back in at the end. For valuable equipment, sign it out to individual students or collect student ID's. If lab equipment is missing, give the students a chance to return it with no penalty. If this does not work, you must have everyone sit down and call the administration. Do not let the students leave. You should not try to search the students yourself, that is a job for the school administration and security officers. If the equipment never turns up, it really isn't fair to punish the entire class. I would just tell the class that they will not be able to do that lab activity or ones with expensive lab equipment until the item is returned. Instead we will do an alternative lab with less expensive equipment. In many cases, most students will actually be on the teacher's side in this case. The peer pressure from fellow students sometimes succeeds in getting a thief to anonymously return a stolen item.
- A dangerous item such as a scalpel is missing at the end of a class. Prevention and follow up:
Methods of prevention are similar to those for any type of lab
equipment. Count out all equipment. Have students sign out
equipment or leave their school ID. The teacher can point out how
dangerous an item such as a scalpel is. In certain cases you
might want to have one station where the students will come to use
potentially dangerous items like a scalpel under the teacher's
supervision. Even better is if you can find safer ways of
conducting a lab. However, students who will take college biology
courses should have the experience of carrying out a dissection and
using a scalpel is an important skill that needs to be learned.
In any case, if a dangerous item is missing, you must resolve the
situation by calling for assistance from other teachers and eventually
the administration. You cannot search individual students so the
best thing to do would be to call for help and keep the students in the
room so they can't hide the missing item.
- A student is eating in the science lab. Prevention and follow up: Make sure the rules are posted in the room and that the students are familiar with them. Do not allow food or drink in the science lab. Have a place where students can safely leave their food or drink when it is confiscated. Make sure that the students understand why it is so unsafe to eat or drink in the science lab. You can use humor to get this across, Flinn has an excellent safety movie that illustrates why it isn't safe to eat or drink in a science lab.
- A student mimics or imitates the teacher's or another classmate's voice. Prevention and follow up: Establish a rapport with students and be respectful of the students while also expecting them to be respectful. If this still happens, you might want to deal with the individual outside of class when there isn't an audience. Talk with the student and ask them why they are doing this and how they would feel if someone imitated them. Discuss other ways that they might be able to express themselves with humor in the class, for example reading a funny science news story or science joke.
- A student is disrespectful to the teacher. Prevention and follow up: Get to know your students. When this happens, do not ignore the disrespect. Some teachers might defuse the situation with humor, others might keep the lesson moving by giving the class a task to work on while dealing with the disrespectful student. Your response depends a lot on the personality of the student. In any case you should never humiliate a student. This will only exacerbate the problem and lead to more frequent incidents. I would respond to the student, probably with a scolding and bit of humor and let them know that I want to speak with them after class or school. The most effective strategy to deal with this problem is to try and find out why the student is being disrespectful. There are many possible reasons and once you find them out, it is usually possible to devise a way to prevent these incidents in the future. The best outcome results with the student apologizing and the teacher understanding why the incident occurred. Again, I want to repeat, you should never ignore disrespect by a student. If you allow this to occur, other students will see this and feel free to imitate this when they get frustrated or bored. I find with most students an honest, one on one discussion, outside of class can enable resolution. If the student is still disrespectful and refuses to behave then you will need to escalate the situation. One tactic that can help is to consult with other teachers. It is possible that the student behaves well for other teachers and maybe they have some insights that would help. If this doesn't work, you can consult with the school psychologist. Another resource that you can use at any point is the parents. If you are having problems with a student you should feel free to contact the parents and let them know. When you do this, make sure to give a balanced picture of the situation. By this I mean that you should start by describing the positive things the child is doing and then point out the problem. I like to relate a story of one of my student teachers who was having great difficulty with a male student. This student was rude in class and talked back to the student teacher all the time. I advised the student teacher to speak with the student outside of class. While talking with the student the student teacher found out that they both collected baseball cards and somehow, that broke the ice. The student never misbehaved again in the student teacher's class.
- A student has a weapon in class. Prevention and follow up: The most important way to prevent this is to know your students. Get to know their moods, problems and personalities. You should know if students are involved in criminal activities such as gangs and drugs. This way you will be able to discern if there might be a serious problem with a student that might lead to them carrying a weapon. Make sure that you have thought out an emergency procedure for a situation like this. Have a way to unobtrusively call for help from other teachers, administrators, school security officers or to call 911. You could ask the student nearest the door to go to call for help from the nearest classroom. Keep calm and talk and reason with the student. Don't box the student into a corner and advise them if they hand in the weapon things will be much easier on them. Don't try to take the weapon from the student unless you absolutely have to protect yourself.
- A student starts a fire in the science lab. Prevention and follow up: Students need to understand that any kind of fire in a science lab is extremely serious, much more so than a fire in an ordinary classroom. The consequences of a fire need to be pointed out to the students such as stored flammable chemicals catching fire, poisonous vapors, explosions and other dangers. Fire safety should be a regular topic of conversation and all students should know how to prevent fires and what to do in case of fire in the lab. If a student deliberately starts a fire, obviously this needs to be reported to school security and the administration immediately.
- A student deliberately spills acid on another student's lab notebook. Prevention and follow up: Student understanding is the key to prevention here. All students are curious and it is not surprising that a student might want to pour a chemical on a notebook just to see what will happen. If you make sure that students understand the potentially serious consequences such as burning of the skin, blindness, or other serious injury. A good rule is to have students treat every chemical as potentially dangerous.
- A student does not study or do homework. Prevention and follow up: Most adolescents don't consider the long-term consequences of their actions, especially something seemingly ordinary like doing homework or studying. First of all, homework should only be assigned if it will truly benefit the students. It is not a good idea to give homework as punishment or just because it is what all the other teachers do. Try and use homework to help students improve skills, for research projects, for activities that relate the science to the real world. Homework is also a great opportunity to involve the parents in a child's education. You might use a point system to keep track of homework completed and then tie this to a system of individualized rewards based on the Premack Principle.
- A student is cheating on a test. Prevention and follow up: If students feel they are making progress, understanding and succeeding in your class, they will be less likely to cheat. If they can't even begin solve problems, if they don't understand the science as a result of your teaching, more students will be likely to cheat. The first way to prevent cheating is to teach as effectively as you can and to design fair assessments that enable every student to experience some measure of success. Arrange items on a test from easier items to more difficult ones in order to avoid discouraging students. The students also have to feel confident that they can improve if they follow your directions and work hard in class. Another way to prevent cheating, not only on tests but on other assignments such as plagiarism on papers, is to reduce the opportunity to cheat. Veteran teachers have developed many tricks and techniques that can be used. For example, the spacing between students needs to be sufficient. Students should not have any personal belongings with them during a test, especially electronic devices such as cell phones, hand-helds, ipods, etc. If a test is generated using a computer, different versions of the test can be used where questions and multiple choice choices are shuffled. Teachers also need to have a system to prevent students from changing answers after answer sheets or test booklets are returned. Probably the most important way to prevent cheating is to talk with the students about the morality of cheating on tests and how it really only seems to help, and how it can hurt students in the long run. For example, a student who cheats in a high school science class, will not learn basic science skills and knowledge, and then when he or she takes a science class in college they will be at a serious disadvantage. Instead of cheating it would be far more beneficial for the student to tell the teacher if they don't understand and to ask for extra help. The teacher needs to help students see that deep satisfaction and other intrinsic lifelong rewards can result from mastery of skills and knowledge. The teacher should also point out that it takes hard work, practice and discipline to master science. Once cheating has occurred you should make sure consistently apply your policy on cheating. You might want to penalize students by making them retake an alternative form of the test, or by doing an additional assignment. Find out what your school's policy is on cheating and ask veteran teachers what they use for cheaters. In any case, you do have to be seen to follow through when someone cheats in your class. Be fair and be consistent. If you do allow cheaters to go unpunished in your classroom you are being very unfair to the honest, hard-working students in your class.
- A student copies someone else's results during a laboratory experiment. Prevention and follow up: There are some excellent, widely reported cases of scientific misconduct that you could relate to the students. Scientists have lost their jobs because of copying or faking results. You can point out why it is so important for scientists to be honest and to have integrity. In many cases dishonesty can endanger people's lives, such as in medical research. In other cases, you might think your results are not correct, but if you did carry out the procedure correctly, in fact your results may be correct while your classmates are wrong. In many cases, we can learn a lot from results that are unexpected. A good punishment for this offense could be to have the student do a research paper on cases of cheating in science.
- A student is excessively absent. Prevention and follow up: Find out why. Don't just punish without determining the cause of the absences. This is a good opportunity for you to get to know the parents or guardians. Another good idea is to discuss the student with the school psychologist or guidance counselor. If there is a good reason for the absences such as illness then of course your response should not be punishment. In any event, you should definitely keep track of absences and tardiness. If there is no good reason, then think about strategies that might work best to improve attendance for this individual student. There are all sorts of reasons that students do not want to come to school. Here are just a few reasons that students may not want to come to school:
- Boredom
- Fear of bullies, certain teachers, certain classes, fear of failure
- Illness
- Social problems, lack of friends
- Desire to play hooky with friends
- Nice weather
- Many other reasons, some which can be very serious. Never ignore excessive absences by students.
- The class teases a student on a regular basis. Prevention and follow up: Have clear class rules. Be a role model and be careful about teasing students yourself. A certain amount of playfulness in a class is fine, but it can be very painful for some students. Get to know all of your students and if you notice teasing going on and you aren't sure if it is bothering a student, pull that student aside outside of class and ask if it is a problem. Do the same with the person who is doing the teasing. Talk and reason with them outside of class.
- The class as a whole will not quiet down and listen. Prevention and follow up: Be well prepared and move smoothly from one activity to the next. Make sure to prepare a motivation for your lesson to get the students' attention and focus it on the topic as soon as possible. I remember observing a student teacher trying to quiet down a class in order to show a video. The teacher kept asking them to get quiet and they weren't listening at all. Finally a veteran teacher nearby whispered to the teacher, "just start the video." When the teacher did this, the students quickly became quiet. There are many simple techniques that can be used to restore order in a classroom. I have seen teachers with bells, with a can of nails that made a loud noise when shaken. Some flip the light switch on and off. Some of the methods are counterintuitive. For example, sometimes just lowering your voice to almost a whisper, will make the students stop talking. Another tactic is to write your message on the board. One thing that rarely works is yelling. Unfortunately, some students actually like to get a teacher mad. It can be amusing to see a teacher turn red and scream or yell, or pound on the desk. It is usually better to keep your cool. The best way to get a class quiet is to get their attention in any way you can and then immediately give them a task or get them engaged in an intellectually stimulating learning activity.
- Someone has stolen something but no one in the class will tell you who did it. Prevention and follow up: Always count everything before giving it to the students. For more valuable equipment write down the names of the students or collect ID's when handing out equipment. Have class sets of materials, e.g. ten magnifying glasses, ten dropping bottles so that it is easy to notice missing items. Make sure students know what will happen if equipment is missing. You should never punish an entire class when something is missing. Give the students a chance to return the item. If the item is expensive or potentially dangerous you will have to get another teacher and involve the Principal. You should never search the students yourself. Call for help from the administration.
- Someone has written something inappropriate or obscene on the board. Prevention and follow up: Be alert and don't leave chalk or markers out in the open between classes. Make sure students know that they should not write on the board without permission. Make sure to work with the students to establish an atmosphere of mutual respect between the teacher and students and between all students. Knowing your students is a key to dealing with something like this. Most teachers, if they pay close attention when grading assignments, listening to student responses, etc. are very capable of identifying a student from their work. It is not too difficult to recognize drawing techniques, handwriting, and commonly used phrases, misspellings. Once you have a suspicion, you can let the class know that you have a very good idea of who the culprit is. You can follow this by saying that if the guilty party admits that they did it, they will receive a much milder punishment. One key point is that the teacher should not become visibly upset or embarrassed, or take a lot of class time over the problem. It is far better to deal with things like this outside of regular class time. Do not ignore it though as students will see that they can get away with disrespect in your classroom. If this happened to me, I would look at it and the entire class carefully, and try and get a hint as to who did it. I would maybe make a humorous remark about the artistic abilities of the unknown artist and then quickly erase it. I would remind the class about respect and the rules of our classroom and tell them that I want the person who did it to see me after class. I would then continue on with the lesson, and monitor the class to look for guilty looking parties.
- A student accessed an inappropriate web site in class. Prevention and follow up: Have rules for computer use and a cybersafety contract for students and parents to sign. Do not allow the students to use the computers without supervision. Arrange the computers so that you can see all of the computer screens at the same time. I would also caution the students that all activity on the computers can be monitored and that it is quite easy to determine who has accessed inappropriate web sites by using logs on the server, using ip addresses and analyzing web traffic patterns. Many schools have filters although most students can easily bypass these. It is far better to educate the students and point out the dangers and negative consquences of access to inappropriate web sites. These dangers include picking up computer viruses and spyware, identity theft and others. Point out that the people who run those web sites are criminals in many cases.
- A student breaks science equipment as a result of horseplay. Prevention and follow up: Make all students are familiar with the class rules, and especially safety rules for labs. Have students and parents sign a safety contract. Remind students that all breakage needs to be immediately reported to the teacher. Students who break equipment as a result of a genuine accident are normally not punished or asked to pay for replacement. All students should understand why horseplay is not allowed in the lab since it can lead to serious injury or breakage of equipment. Make sure that students know that they will have to pay for any equipment broken as a result of horseplay.
Special
case: If a student commits violence or threatens it, you must
call for assistance from school security and report the incident to the
administration immediately. You may think that a fight in
class is not serious and that you have smoothed things over, but it is
very possible that the fight could continue outside of school and
someone might become seriously injured. Always report serious
incidents and keep detailed and meticulous records.
Wow! It is a bit frightening reading the list of possible misbehaviors.
For any classroom management scenario, you should think about two main things before anything happens:
- How could you prevent it?
- How would you deal with it, if it did happen?
Let's
look at prevention first as many of the incidents above can be easily
prevented. Much misbehavior occurs when the students are not
actively engaged in a learning activity.
Here are some of the potential trouble spots during a typical science lesson:
- At the beginning of class when students are entering the room, sitting down, and waiting for the teacher to begin the lesson.
- When there is a transition from one activity to another and for a moment, students do not have anything to do.
- When the teacher is conducting a lecture, especially if the lecture is long, boring, rambling, or difficult to understand.
- When students are given a task to do but they either don't understand what to do, or the level of difficulty is not appropriate. If the task is too easy the students finish quickly and get bored. If the task is too difficult the students get frustrated give up, and get bored.
- Whenever the students are bored or not interested.
- At the end of class when students have finished an activity and have nothing to do before the bell rings. Also, when the students are getting out of their seats and leaving the room.
- If a student is sick, emotionally distraught, distracted, sleepy, tired, intoxicated, or otherwise not in a normal, alert, rested state.
A
teacher can reduce the likelihood of trouble occurring by preparation
and good classroom organization. If a teacher knows exactly what
he or she will do when the students enter the room, this minimizes the
chances of trouble. In New York City schools an attempt was made
to engage students immediately after they enter the room by having a
"Do now" written on the board. This has degenerated in many cases
into a trivia or low level knowledge question. Make an effort to
create a "Do now" that is a genuinely valuable learning experience.
This is not always easy to do as you really want the "Do Now" to
immediately engage the students but only last for a very short time,
usually not more than five or ten minutes at the most. Probably
the best "Do now" will be an intriguing, open-ended question related to
the science topic of the lesson. Other possibilities could be a
"Mystery image" projected on a screen, or a "Mystery object" or a short
news item, a poem or story, or a cartoon (the Far Side is a great
example) related to the science topic involved.
So
far we have concentrated on what you as a teacher can do to maintain a
safe, supportive classroom learning environment during science lessons.
However, teachers are only part of the problem. Obviously,
students bear responsibility for their misbehavior. If a teacher
keeps students actively engaged and they feel they are learning
something worthwhile, and at the same time is a consistent and fair
classroom manager, most students will behave well. However, there
will always be a small number of students who have problems and who do
not respond to the strategies available to you as a teacher.
These students could be learning disabled, they might have
emotional, personality or other psychological disorders, drug
addictions, or serious problems outside of school. In these
cases, you must get help. Assistance can be obtained by
consulting with other teachers, the administrator, school psychologists
and counselors and of course, parents and guardians.
Unfortunately,
the only time parents or guardians are usually contacted by teachers,
is when there is a problem with their child in school. It doesn't
have to be this way, especially with all of the technology tools
available. I would recommend that every science teacher set up a
class web site with areas devoted to students and parents. You
could collect email addresses of parents and produce a science
newsletter. Students could produce the content and help with the
web site and newsletter. The web site could also be a great place
to exhibit student work, make announcements, list assignments, and have
a calendar of events. Other ways to involve parents might be as
invited speakers, as chaperons for field trips to science
museums, judges in science fairs, participants in science clubs,
science competitions. You could work with your students to hold
science events on weekends or evenings. These could be Science
Expos, Science fairs, carnivals, science clubs, and so on. Just
as it is critical that you get to know your students, you also need to
get to know your students' parents.
In
addition to parents, the community surrounding the school can
contribute to your safe and supportive classroom environment.
Science offers great opportunities for informal science
education. By informal science education I am referring to
science learning activities that occur outside of the traditional
school environment. Students could do research projects on
environmental problems in the community, create community gardens,
demonstrations of composting, and so on. These could involve
local businesses and residents. Students will see that science
can help them in their own lives, in the real world.
Finally,
an important factor that cannot be overlooked is the school
administration. As a new teacher you definitely have to learn the
rules of the game. Every school is different but there are a few
important things you need to keep in mind.
Document everything and keep good records of attendance, tardiness, homework, grades, and misconduct.
Try and deal with most discipline problems yourself first. Do not send every minor case of misbehavior to the office. You will soon lose all respect with the students.
Identify teachers and administrators who have good classroom management skills and learn from them.
When
you enter a school as a student teacher or new teacher, the first thing
you should do is to get copies of the school rules for students and
faculty, find out disciplinary procedures, and introduce yourself to
the school administrators. The support you receive from the
administration will vary greatly from school to school. Find out
what your school's administration expects from the students and
teachers. In some schools, administrators want all classrooms to
be silent. Unfortunately, a school environment like this is not
conducive to many productive learning activities such as cooperative
learning, science labs, group projects, etc. You may need to
demonstrate the educational value of some science activities that
generate a certain amount of noise. Contrary to popular belief,
there is good noise in a classroom. For example, when students
applaud a job well done by a group of students who has just presented a
science project, the noise is beneficial. The noise that occurs
when students are doing a step test and measuring their pulse rate
before and after exercise is normal and not a problem. As a
science teacher it is your duty to help the administration see how the
types of hands-on, inquiry science activities you do are superior to
traditional lectures by a science teacher with the students sitting
silently copying notes. On the other hand, you do need to keep
the noise down to a reasonable level or else students in your class
will not be able to learn. Some students do need quiet to
concentrate when solving a problem, reading instructions or during
other tasks. You need to be able to silence the class at moments
like these. You also have to make sure that noise in your
classroom does not disturb neighboring classes or administrators.
One way to do this is to make sure to communicate and interact
frequently with the teachers in classes near your own. You may be
able to coordinate the timing of activities so that any disturbance is
lessened. You should try to anticipate whether any activities you
might do with your class could negatively affect other classes or the
school environment. This can happen because there are so many fun
hands-on activities that can be done in science and sometimes these
spill out of the classroom. Examples might be soap bubbles
escaping into the hall, launching a rocket outside the school, or
activities that involve noise, music, sound, animals, etc. The
bottom line is that you need to establish a good relationship with the
administration and with other teachers in the school. This will
enable you to communicate and explain your teaching methods and to warn
administrators and other teachers about certain activities that have
the potential to affect the atmosphere of the school.
Probably
the most important thing you can do as a new teacher is to ask for
advice from experienced teachers. Remember though, everyone is
different, and you might want to take very different approaches to
classroom management in your own classroom. You may hear that
certain students are potential problems, so listen with an open mind,
and be prepared, but try by all means not to let this influence your
attitudes towards the students. Give students the benefit of the
doubt and a clean slate with you and let them know they have a chance
to succeed in your classroom.
A final word on classroom management - Teachers
have one of the toughest jobs around. You will be challenged,
students will misbehave, and some days you will go home discouraged and
demoralized.
But do not despair!
The Sun will shine again, you and your students will smile and laugh together again some day.
Anything
is possible if you and your students do not give up. It is your
job to help young people learn the wonders of science and you should
realize how lucky you are. Science offers so many great
opportunities for fascinating and enjoyable learning activities that
connect to the real world. If you work hard, prepare well, and
learn from your mistakes, you are halfway there. Get to know the
students and hook them with engaging and exciting science activities.
Work together with your students to come up with rules and
consequences and be fair, firm, and consistent. You will find
that most of your students will behave well and you will have no major
problems. Once you have earned the respect of the students and
established a good classroom learning environment, you will be able to
concentrate on continuing to improve the effectiveness of your science
teaching. You will still have to devote time to discipline those
few students who have serious problems or who misbehave, but now the
problem is much more manageable since most of the students are actively
engaged in learning and behaving well.
At this point in your science teaching career you will have almost reached classroom management nirvana...
However,
you do need to realize you will never have a placid pool of perfectly
behaved students. It just won't happen and that is actually a
good thing. Without that spice of rebellion and spark of energy
that periodically erupts from young people, a classroom would be a very
boring place.