Teacher Interview
I was lucky enough to interview one of my former high school teachers. The best part of all of this was getting to talk and understand the logistics of a classroom I was once a part of but I really had no clue all of this was going on. The ignorance of students in regards to classroom management when it is occurring to only a few students I believe is key and the teacher I spoke with did as well.
The first topic we discussed and the one I am probably most interested in, is classroom rules. How can these become effective, rather than something you say at the beginning of the year and they get thrown in the wind after? I showed the examples that were provided in our book on page 516 to see where hers nowadays land on the scale of these. Although she though Emmer and Evertson had a great basis of the rules, they need to be more expansive in the sense of not allowing any grey area (516). She explained that you need to cover all of your tracks when working with students. It is not enough to think it makes sense because it does to you because the students will find the cracks all over that. As the years go on thought, she says, the more difficult disciplining becomes. An example she brought up was back in the day, if a student had a cell phone out, it was simple enough to take the phone and send him or her to the deans' office. Now though, every student has their phones on their desk. She has no control over that she believes because they are close to being adults with one year left before college. To try to deter this behavior she provides charging docks at the back of the classroom that she says worked at first, but now students bring portable charges or have charging cases. She says this is one of the most difficult parts of any of her day because she askes how can I be more exciting than an app that gives you doggy or bunny ears? I'm not. So her strategy with all of this is to either not draw attention to them or to ask the students to actually engage with their own phones whether that is through apps like Edmodo or FlipGrid. If the phones are going to be there, we might as well try to use them to our advantage, she believes, and I would have to say I'm right there with her.
As stated before, her philosophy on teaching is really centered around positivity and choice. These students are almost adults and she fully believes they should be treated as such. She provides the classroom rules and procedures at the beginning and provides her expectations of the year. From that, she is aware that her students are getting ready for college and this is their final year. As she was explaining this philosophy along with how she approaches the discipline aspect it really gave me a sense of the "withitness" from the Woolfolk text. She is truly aware of everything that is happening in the classroom, but also, what is going on with their lives outside of the classroom. The lives outside of the classroom are arguably more important than what is occurring within and she recognizes that whether it be sports or vacations, or whatever else. I think this type of withitness she shares really gains the respect she has from her students.
Last two things I find important to touch on from our conversation is bullying and how to get her students excited. When it comes to bullying, she recognizes the scariness and realness of it. She has her classroom be one of a safe zone where students can talk about anything without being judged or ridiculed and this is something she works on the students with from Day 1. When it comes to cyberbullying she brings this up with the class when they read Ready Player One. She explains how this book brings out a cool idea and characters that experience a type of cyberbullying that opens up the doors to talk about bullying in general. Lastly, getting her students excited is one that she struggles with especially when it may come to reading books that they have never heard of. What she does to try to combat this, is playing the movie version of the books before they begin reading. Over the years she finds this as an effective strategy to get the students excited to read the book because they are searching for where the movie makers "screwed up". This, in my opinion, reflects the Premack principle (273). The students are able to watch a movie for a few days in class, the more-preferred activity as a reinforcer, to read these novels they never heard of, which may be a less-preferred activity.
The first topic we discussed and the one I am probably most interested in, is classroom rules. How can these become effective, rather than something you say at the beginning of the year and they get thrown in the wind after? I showed the examples that were provided in our book on page 516 to see where hers nowadays land on the scale of these. Although she though Emmer and Evertson had a great basis of the rules, they need to be more expansive in the sense of not allowing any grey area (516). She explained that you need to cover all of your tracks when working with students. It is not enough to think it makes sense because it does to you because the students will find the cracks all over that. As the years go on thought, she says, the more difficult disciplining becomes. An example she brought up was back in the day, if a student had a cell phone out, it was simple enough to take the phone and send him or her to the deans' office. Now though, every student has their phones on their desk. She has no control over that she believes because they are close to being adults with one year left before college. To try to deter this behavior she provides charging docks at the back of the classroom that she says worked at first, but now students bring portable charges or have charging cases. She says this is one of the most difficult parts of any of her day because she askes how can I be more exciting than an app that gives you doggy or bunny ears? I'm not. So her strategy with all of this is to either not draw attention to them or to ask the students to actually engage with their own phones whether that is through apps like Edmodo or FlipGrid. If the phones are going to be there, we might as well try to use them to our advantage, she believes, and I would have to say I'm right there with her.
As stated before, her philosophy on teaching is really centered around positivity and choice. These students are almost adults and she fully believes they should be treated as such. She provides the classroom rules and procedures at the beginning and provides her expectations of the year. From that, she is aware that her students are getting ready for college and this is their final year. As she was explaining this philosophy along with how she approaches the discipline aspect it really gave me a sense of the "withitness" from the Woolfolk text. She is truly aware of everything that is happening in the classroom, but also, what is going on with their lives outside of the classroom. The lives outside of the classroom are arguably more important than what is occurring within and she recognizes that whether it be sports or vacations, or whatever else. I think this type of withitness she shares really gains the respect she has from her students.
Last two things I find important to touch on from our conversation is bullying and how to get her students excited. When it comes to bullying, she recognizes the scariness and realness of it. She has her classroom be one of a safe zone where students can talk about anything without being judged or ridiculed and this is something she works on the students with from Day 1. When it comes to cyberbullying she brings this up with the class when they read Ready Player One. She explains how this book brings out a cool idea and characters that experience a type of cyberbullying that opens up the doors to talk about bullying in general. Lastly, getting her students excited is one that she struggles with especially when it may come to reading books that they have never heard of. What she does to try to combat this, is playing the movie version of the books before they begin reading. Over the years she finds this as an effective strategy to get the students excited to read the book because they are searching for where the movie makers "screwed up". This, in my opinion, reflects the Premack principle (273). The students are able to watch a movie for a few days in class, the more-preferred activity as a reinforcer, to read these novels they never heard of, which may be a less-preferred activity.
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