Managing Your Classroom with Heart

A Guide for Nurturing Adolescent Learners

Katy Ridnouer

• Publisher: ASCD
• Year: 2006
• ISBN:
  9781416615118
• Topic: Éducation
• Subtopic: Développement professionnel

Teaching is as much about students as it is about curriculum, and no one understands this better than middle and high school teachers. But even the most dedicated teacher can sometimes feel defeated by the challenge of reaching distracted, disconnected, and defiant adolescents.

Drawing on her own experience as a high school teacher, Katy Ridnouer shares an approach to classroom management that will help you spend less time "dealing with" your adolescent learners and more time inspiring them to be their best selves in school and beyond. Managing with heart means accepting teenage students as they are and recognizing what they need: a connection with the curriculum; a sense of order; and most essentially, a sense that someone cares. In this book, you'll find practical strategies for

* Balancing care and discipline
* Interacting with students and their parents
* Establishing classroom routines that keep students on task
* Communicating expectations and ensuring accountability
* Handling common challenges, from classroom noise and personality conflicts to inappropriate clothing and disrespectful language
* Building trust and helping students feel emotionally and intellectually safe.

Vivid, real-life examples and questions for reflection make this a perfect choice for faculty reading groups and any middle or high school teacher looking to create a positive learning community, enhance students' confidence and interpersonal skills, and rediscover the reward of being a teacher.

Chapter 1
Choosing to Care

There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.

—Albert Einstein

Teaching adolescents is a tough job. Those of us who enter the profession with glorious visions of intellectual conversations and quiet, industrious classrooms soon realize that these come only through lots of hard work, convincing, and cheerleading.

We also find that being a teacher involves much more than teaching a subject. Our job is to educate the population we have been given to teach: to teach these particular students to learn and to learn about themselves. Before we begin to think about curriculum, we must make a connection with our students and establish a classroom environment in which they feel safe, physically and intellectually. We must convince them that we will protect them in this way, and we must help them be physically comfortable enough to access their intellect.

There are many obstacles that can stand in the way of this connection, including age difference, economic difference, values difference, and attitude difference. As professionals, we have to make it our job to recognize these obstacles, plan for them, and deal with them. When we bridge the gaps and connect with our students—when we manage our classrooms with heart—we move closer to the vision of the teacher we want to be and the classroom we want to have. Once students know that we care about them, that we are on their team, they will learn any grammar rule and read any book.

A Look into an Uncaring Classroom

Trust in yourself. Your perceptions are often far more accurate than you are willing to believe.

—Claudia Black

Every day at lunch, Ms. Hall mutters, “I can’t stand them. They think they’re cute, but they’re not. Not in the least.”

She never expected to dread her fourth period sophomore English class this way. She readily admits that one of her students, James, controls the classroom. James has ADHD and comes from a troubled home. He is also really smart. Ms. Hall complains that nothing works to “shut James up.” When the rest of the class is discussing the previous day’s reading, he regularly interrupts with stories from his own life.

Today is no different.

“Yesterday we continued our reading of The Pearl,” says Ms. Hall, beginning the day’s lesson. “What seemed to be something that could bring great joy, now seems to be wreaking havoc on the family. As we—”

“Ms. Hall, I was thinking that this novel is a lot like my own life,” James interrupts.

“Well, that’s no surprise, James,” Ms. Hall replies, “but we do not have the time to talk about that right now.”

“Oh, it’ll just take a minute,” James promises.

Ms. Hall relents, and James begins.

“Well, you know how in the story Kino beats his wife? Well, my mom is telling her lawyer that my dad beats her and that’s why she wants a divorce. She also figures it will help her alimony case. Well, I told my dad what my mom was planning. Now he’s even madder at her, and he says she will only get half of everything now, just like the law says. And now my mom is pissed at me because she overheard me on the phone with my dad talking about where I’d like to live. I made a joke about how he might hit me if I didn’t live with him. Well, my dad thought it was funny, but my mom sure didn’t. Now I’m staying with my dad until my mom cools off. Weird, huh?”

“Yeah, weird,” agrees Ms. Hall. She is careful to keep her voice even and hide her growing impatience. “But, James? I do not see how that relates to The Pearl. Let’s get back to the lesson now, OK?”

Cynthia raises her hand.

“Yes, Cynthia. You have something to contribute?”

“Ms. Hall, what happened to James has happened to me too.”

“No, Cynthia, we really don’t—”

“It’ll only take a minute!” Cynthia insists, and then continues with her story.

Some of the students are pleased that they have gotten off task, but others can see Ms. Hall’s anger mounting. By the time Cynthia is finished, Ms. Hall cannot contain it any longer. “Cynthia, did you just waste five minutes of class time to tell us about your grandmother’s lungs? Why does this matter to us? How does it relate to The Pearl? I’ll know better than to call on you next time.”

“Ms. Hall, my story is certainly more interesting than this crap by Steinbeck,” Cynthia retorts.

“You know you cannot talk to me like that,” Ms. Hall points out.

“I just did,” Cynthia says.

“I would never in my life have spoken to a teacher in the way you have just spoken to me!”

“You were disrespectful to me, so I’m disrespectful to you.”

Ms. Hall sighs deeply. She rubs her eyes and runs her fingers through her hair, the same hair the kids love to ask her questions about. (“How long does it take to dry?” “Why don’t you ever wear it down?” “Is that your natural color?”) She remembers this and thinks, annoying, annoying, annoying. Then she says, “You know, this is supposed to be an advanced class.”

She now has almost everyone’s attention. But not James’s. “Can I go to the bathroom?” he interrupts.

“May I, you mean, and yes, you may,” Ms. Hall answers wearily. “Get the pass off my desk.”

James jumps up, taps a girl on the head, grabs the pass, and twirls out of the class. The students are in hysterics. Ms. Hall is furious.

“OK, is that what you want? You want to watch a foolish child leap around because he can’t hold it for another 25 minutes until class is over? You guys are on your own. Silently—that means no noise—silently, I want you to read to page 95 and then tell me how the pearl is affecting the decisions that the family has to make. I want three paragraphs, in ink, turned in at the end of the period. This is for an essay grade.”

“Ms. Hall, you want us to read 15 pages and write an essay in 25 minutes? You’re nuts!” Tommy calls out. His classmates murmur their agreement. For Ms. Hall, this is the last straw.

“That’s it! Tommy, go to lockout. I’m sick of you kids being so disrespectful. What can I do to teach you not to be so disrespectful? Never mind. You’re in the 10th grade; you should know how to behave.”

Tommy has not moved.

“Tommy, go!” Ms. Hall commands.

“Why should I? I just said what everyone is thinking,” Tommy responds.

“Oh, you know best,” she says, rolling her eyes. “Just stay seated and do your work.”

“I need a book,” Lynda says.

“Me too,” says Mary.

“Oh, yeah, my mom left mine on the kitchen counter,” says Ronnie.

“You guys know I don’t have extras. How can we do silent reading if you can’t bring your books?” Exasperated, Ms. Hall pairs the students up, ignoring the whispers and the note writing. The class settles into a low hum. Just three students are actually working on the assignment.

Ms. Hall goes to her desk in the back of the room. Just as she sits down, James walks in, saying, “You wouldn’t believe what someone—”

Ms. Hall interrupts James with a loud “Shhh! Sit down and do the assignment.”

“What’s the assignment?” James asks. “Oh, and does anybody else need the pass?”

“James, I tell people if they can use the pass or not, not you,” Ms. Hall says.

“I need it, Ms. Hall. I have to call home. It’s an emergency,” Tonda says, unconvincingly.

Ms. Hall hands Tonda the pass and then tells James, “Read to page 95 and then write a three-paragraph essay about how the pearl is affecting the decisions that the family is making.”

“We’re not going to read out loud? Come on. Who wants to read out loud?” James asks, looking around for votes.

“Yeah, Ms. Hall. We’ll never be able to read this on our own,” Latisha chimes in.

“You guys are pitiful,” Ms. Hall says, but she relents. “OK. Out loud. James, you start on page 80.”

“But I’m already on page 85. That’s not fair,” says Stephen, who has been working conscientiously.

“You will just have to start over with us or continue reading on your own,” Ms. Hall replies.

Stephen scowls and pulls out his math book to start his homework for that class.

The rest of the students lean over their books and pretend to be following along with James. Ms. Hall makes no attempt to define the words that she suspects are unfamiliar, and she does not stop to ask questions to gauge how well the students are understanding the novel. She keeps her eyes on her book. James reads on.

Finally, the bell rings. “Do the essay for homework!” Ms. Hall yells over the ringing.

Caring as an Avenue to Teaching

It is not because things are difficult that we do not dare; it is because we do not dare that they are difficult.

—Seneca

Ms. Hall acknowledges that these students are, in fact, “advanced” students, yet when they try to create a connection from their lives to the story, she becomes frustrated. She doesn’t recognize the value of their sharing their personal lives. A caring teacher realizes that behavior that is a distraction often provides insight into the students’ needs and personal situations. In this case, Ms. Hall could have used the information her students had volunteered to enrich the lesson plan and strengthen classroom relationships. James was the first student to cause a disruption. Ms. Hall knows that James has a lot going on in his life. Although she hears the story that James tells about his home situation, she does not pick up on the desire to feel understood that lies beneath it. By listening attentively to his story, she is telling him that his use of class time is valid; and yet, she does nothing to try to connect his story with the lesson.

Ms. Hall could meet James’s needs by actually listening to his words and picking up on the energy he uses to tell the story. If she had taken the time to do that, the situation might have gone like this:

Ms. Hall: James, it sounds to me like you feel torn choosing between your mother’s side and your father’s side.

James: Yeah. It’s hard, you know? I’m an only child. I don’t have a brother or a sister to talk to.

Ms. Hall: So it’s easy to see your home situation in every part of your life. So much so that when you read that Kino beat his wife, you thought of your mom….

James: Yeah. I do that a lot when I read. I see stuff that goes on in my life in the story that I’m reading. Is that weird?

Ms. Hall: Class, what do you think? Is it weird to connect your own life with what you read?

In this scenario, Ms. Hall connects with James and reframes his behavior as a connection to a curriculum-related topic. “How life and literature mix” can be a difficult concept for students to grasp, but James’s concrete example is a great illustration. Ms. Hall’s sympathetic response to James makes it more likely that other students in the class will be willing to contribute honestly to a discussion of this topic.

This same sort of approach could be used with Cynthia, who sees a similarity between her grandmother’s life and the life of the novel’s main character but cannot quite verbalize it. Does Ms. Hall see Cynthia’s story as a potential bridge to the novel’s content? Does Ms. Hall help Cynthia step up to make that connection? No. Ms. Hall gets angry because Cynthia did not make her story relevant to the lesson. Here’s another, much more positive way Ms. Hall could have responded:

Ms. Hall: I understand that your grandmother is a really strong person who didn’t give in when she was a child. But I’m having a hard time seeing how Kino is like your grandma.

Cynthia: My grandma had such a hard life for such a long time, and she made it even worse by smoking.

Ms. Hall: By smoking?

Cynthia: Yeah! She can’t go anywhere without an oxygen tank, and nobody will hire her with that thing. She’s been on welfare for 20 years.

Ms. Hall: And how is her life like Kino’s?

Cynthia: Well, Kino’s life was never great, just like my grandma’s wasn’t ever great, but she used to able to breathe at least. Kino loved his wife. He didn’t beat her, I mean. That is, until the pearl came along and ruined everything.

Ms. Hall: In your grandma’s life, what do you see as similar to the pearl?

Cynthia: The cigarettes. The cigarettes ruined her life, like the pearl ruined Kino’s. She thought smoking would make her look glamorous and attract wealthy men. She spent her time trying to look good instead of educating herself. The knight in shining armor never came, but the lung cancer sure did.

Ms. Hall: Now I see your connection with the book. Kino allowed the pearl to dictate his actions, like your grandmother allowed the cigarettes to dictate hers. So, what are some things in our own lives that are like the pearl? This question is open to the class….

In this alternative scenario, Cynthia is validated both emotionally and intellectually. And again, the rest of the class also benefits because this real-life example of a situation similar to that in the novel gives them another way to relate personally to the story.

A second problem in this classroom is that it’s not the teacher but the students who are in charge. Students today have mastered the art of manipulating the direction of a lesson by acting out or changing the subject; they knock the teacher off track, and the teacher has a difficult time getting back to the point. Ms. Hall has fallen into this trap. More than likely, James doesn’t really need to go to the bathroom. He’s on autopilot; when the classroom gets dull, he finds a way to get out. Ms. Hall is left seething, but she is too angry to recall what she was saying prior to his interruption.

When students do this, we have to recognize it for what it is: an attempt at control. Students want to feel that they are in a controlled environment. I do not mean a dictatorship type of control, but a managed control, where reasonable, logical thinking reigns. If the teacher is not controlling the class, the class will control itself. Ms. Hall needs to recognize this. She needs to stop and assess the situation: This is James. He always asks to use the restroom, but I need to finish what I’m saying. She might then just look at James and raise her index finger to indicate “just a minute please,” telling James that she has heard him but that he will have to wait until she has a spare moment. Doing this also sends the rest of the class the message that interruptions are not acceptable and that the teacher is in control. This helps Ms. Hall maintain a calm classroom where...