On discipline

As I wrote earlier, I’m finally hitting my stride with my third quarter classes. None too soon as conferences are Monday and Thursday with mid-quarter falling on Tuesday.

My College Comp II class is, maybe, the best class I’ve ever had. There are some of the best writers in our school in that class. If I get permission, I’ll be posting one student’s essay, and you’ll see what I mean.

My College Comp class, though quiet and tentative when it comes to sharing their work and discussing, is anything but that in their writing. This class is quite good too.

I didn’t know what to think of my final class, Lit & Language 11. They are divided right down the middle. One group of kids sits on the right side of the classroom while another sits on the left, with a few kids mingling in the middle. It’s quite the dichotomy in there.

Initially, I was worried about this.

Why not devise a seating chart then? You ask.

I’m too damn lazy for that.

No, actually I hate seating charts. I don’t think I’ve put one together since my second year of teaching. It’s always been my belief, and now more than ever, that I simply have far more important things to worry about in a class than where kids sit.

What the hell? Let them sit where they want.

I still didn’t know what to think until this week. On Wednesday I had to get a crown put on during fourth block. Luckily, I was able to find a fellow English teacher to fill in. Now I admit I was a bit uneasy about leaving her with this crew. It’s not that they’re bad kids. You just always get nervous leaving your class with someone else. What if it all goes bad? What will your colleague think of you? That’s always a fear of mine.

But after having my temporary crown pop off – I knew I should not have had that blasted Rice Kristie bar at the parent appreciation lunch after KoKo’s game on Saturday – and having the tooth very (and I can’t stress that adverb enough) to hot and cold, I was willing to take any appointment I could get.

When I returned to school, with just a few minutes left in the day, I snuck up on my room hoping for the best . . . and that is exactly what I got.

My colleague said that they read quietly and working very well.

I knew things were going well when one of my students looked up and said, “This play makes me mad,” referring to Arthur Miller’s “The Crucible.”

“Why?” I asked, figuring it might be the language or the fact that they had to read a play, one of most horrifying things I can imagine. Plays are to be seen and performed. I have always disliked reading them. But “The Crucible” is just so cool and ties in to so many other things, that I bite the bullet and teach it.

“Well, I can’t believe how they all turned on Proctor,” he said.

I was impressed.

“I mean, you think he’s going to get everything straightened out, and they all just turn on him!” he said, and closed his book.

That’s my class! I was proud of them. I even promised them treats the next day – Butterfingers and Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups.

The next day, since they had worked so well, I laid off them a bit. I thought of an old ‘rainy day’ assignment I had in my drawer (a series of ‘pundles’ or visual puzzles that students had to interpret in order to figure out their meanings. For example, there might be a picture of a large number one with a hole in it. The answer to this ‘pundle’ would “a hole in one.” The words “life form” may appear twice at the bottom of one picture. The answer to this is “lower life forms.”)

Did the student tear into these! They went nuts over them. I just got the heck out of the way and watched.

Actually, I got out of the way by wandering around and getting to know them. I joked with some about sports, their choice in shoes, their taste in music, older siblings of theirs I had known, movies or TV shows they were interested in, and so on.

Soon we were laughing and having quite a good time.

I think I didn’t really win this class over until then. Now I know each by name. I also know more about them. They, too, know more about me. I had to let my guard down, and they did the same.

It seems to me that this is why I don’t use seating charts. To me, seating charts are a form of discipline. I gave that concept up a long time ago.

I spent many hours my first year at LHS just wishing I had some way to control the kids in my class. I wished I were coaching for the high school instead of the local community college because they I could threaten their playing time to get them to behave.

Then one day after Christmas break, it hit me – I can’t really control them. I mean I could yell or assign detention or punish them by moving them away from their friends or kick them out of class, but I could not make them do anything they didn’t really want to do.

So I had to get them to want to learn and be in my class.

Now, how I did that is a topic for an entire other entry. But once I changed my focus from wanting to make them behave to wanting them to learn and enjoy doing it, well, things have never been the same.

Things haven’t always been easy. But, for the most part, I have enjoyed every class since.

I think now I am at the point where my fourth block Lit & Lang 11 kids want to come to class and get something out of it. Better yet, I want to be in there teaching them. That, unfortunately, isn’t always the case in high schools across America.

Yesterday, as we finished reading “The Crucible,” I thought of a great way to cap not only a great piece of literature but also a great week: I’d give a comprehensive quiz on acts 1-4.

The catch, though, was that I put at the end of the directions that if the students read the directions and read through the test, all they would have to do would be to sign their name at the top of the quiz and turn it in. They need not even take it!

I think I had six students catch on and actually read the directions. The rest attacked the quiz, which I made intentionally vague and difficult. So when those who didn’t read the directions began to argue and ask questions, those who knew what was going on, had to bite their tongues to keep from laughing out loud.

Finally, when the last quiz was in, several students demanded that we grade it right then and there.

So I grabbed one quiz and handed it to a student.

“Rachel,” I said, “read the directions out loud.”

Of course, she didn’t. She just read them silently.

“Read them out loud! Come on! Let’s correct it!” several students called.

At first, it didn’t dawn on Rachel what was going on.

Then it hit her.

“Oh, it says if we read the directions, we just need to sign our name and turn it in.”

“AWWWWW!”

“What?”

“That’s not fair!”

“Who reads the directions?”

“Boo.”

These were just a few of the reactions that I caught.

I was too busy laughing at them and attempting my version of the moonwalk in front of the class.