Posts Tagged → Classroom Management

Like a lighthouse keeper with a broken bulb sitting on the rocks and weeping at the tide

Yesterday was ACT day at my school district and it was just…depressing.

It had snowed the night before (in April?!) and there was talk of a snow day, but we really only had about an inch, it wasn’t super icy, and all of it melted by early afternoon. Still, it was chilly and there was a bit of traffic. As we left the house, I felt bad for students who had to wait for a bus to come pick them up, which is (unfortunately) a lot of my students.

I was a proctor in the “Late Start” room, which meant I would be monitoring everybody who didn’t get to school by test time. My room would wait 2 hours and start normally so all the students who weren’t here on time would have a place to get their ACTs done. I was worried there’d be a bunch of late arrivals (more than last year) because of the weather, but there were only a handful.

On ACT day, only juniors come to school (because it somehow makes sense to give people an important test when they’re not yet finished learning English, Math, or Science). The juniors who were late that day weren’t just students whose cars wouldn’t start — they were the chronic absentees, students who are almost never on time. There are a lot of kids with this issue; Absenteeism is a big problem in American education.

It’s such a problem that I feel bad about speaking ill of these students. I know some of them and know that they don’t have easy lives, so disparaging them doesn’t feel all that cool.

Still. They are simply and frankly so dim-witted that I cannot fathom it. Literally. I cannot wrap my head around their lack of common sense or the complete absence of basic academic skills. I try to find reasons; I try to understand, to make sense of it. But, ultimately, I have no idea how or why they came to be this way. It has to be something systemic. A fundamental and (series of) major malfunction(s) in the way these children are raised and educated. Not just parents, not just teachers, not just friends — some combination of everything that can possibly go wrong going wrong.

I’ll just tell you about one student’s actions on ACT day so as not to over-pick all this low-hanging fruit.

One student, call him “Steve,” was having some trouble with the non-cognitive portion of the test. (That’s basically the part at the start of the test where you write down your name, address, and email. It’s not even really “part of the test.”) At the top of his question booklet, there was a spot for his “Name” and “Signature.”

As we read instructions, we made it explicitly clear that everyone had to write their name and add their signature. We announced it. We went around to tell everyone one-to-one that they needed to both write and sign their name.

“Steve” left this part of his question booklet blank.

As I was making my rounds, going desk to desk and helping each student in turn, I stopped by his desk and gently reminded him, “You write your name right here and then, right here, under that, add your signature.” Then I continued making my rounds to help the others. (“Steve” was, unfortunately, not alone in struggling to add his name and signature to a piece of paper.)

When I returned to “Steve”s desk, I was pleased to see that he’d written something.

Only…it wasn’t quite right.

The “Name” section he’d decided to keep blank. Where it said “Signature,” he’d written “STEVE” in big, elementary school block block lettering. That’s right–just his first name. He saw “Name” and “Signature” and thought to himself, “I can just write ‘Steve.’ Those ACT people will be able to sort it out.”

“Almost,” I said to him. “See here? You need to sign this. Do you have a signature?”

“Steve” didn’t respond.

“Just…uh, write your first name and last name here. And then, uh, write your name in cursive here.”

“Steve” didn’t respond. He almost never does. In my Creative Writing class, he’s one of the students who puts his head down and will not participate at all. I’ve tried to reach out to guardians, I’ve got admin involved, I’ve spoken to counselors. He doesn’t work, doesn’t respond, doesn’t seem to talk to anybody. I try to approach him with grace because…well, shit, what else is there?

At this point in our ACT journey, I figured it was a typical “lead a horse to water” scenario. If this kid doesn’t know what a signature is, then he’s got bigger problems than his ACT composite score. Besides, there was no time to teach him how to sign his name on test day. There were other students waiting, and the ACTs are very rigid on protocol — we have to start and stop at certain times, so we had to keep going.

“Just write your name twice,” I said.

“Steve” looked at his paper. Then he put his head down.

After that, I had to look up “Steve”s address because he didn’t know it. Same with his school email. While explaining that to him (“No, you need the ‘at’ symbol. It’s right there. No, there. This one.”), I had to explain how bubble tests work, because he’d apparently forgotten the PreACTs (and all the other Scantron tests he’s had to take over the years). Then I had to show him how to turn his answer booklet to page 3, which was beyond him. (“The pages are numbered — just like a book!”) In a lot of ways, it was like trying to get a cat to take a test.

The only difference was that cats don’t ask questions. Throughout the whole day, “Steve” had two things he wanted to ask about.

First (and this was before the test started) was, “When is lunch?”

The other question (that he asked 6 times over the course of 4 hours) was, “Can I go to the bathroom?”

As I write this, I feel like I’m not accurately showing you what the whole thing was like. It is so depressing that “blogging it up” with any sort of humor feels like I’m not treating it as seriously as I should.

It was like watching a car wreck.

No.

It was like sitting on the shore of a rocky beach somewhere, watching people struggle for breath beneath the crashing of tremendous waves, hearing their shouts, seeing their arms flail out beyond the breakers. I try to throw flotation devices their way, but they don’t know what a flotation device is, so they slap it away. The cry and wail and holler toward the shore, “Are we going to get some kind of snack at least? It seems unfair that we can’t eat!”

“Of course you can have a snack!” I shout back at them, “but could you focus on not drowning for a bit!?”

I’m met with a chorus of barely-audible gurgles that rise above the sound of the surf and all seem to moan, “I need to go to the bathroom!”

(Yes, I know the kid who went to the bathroom 6 times was probably vaping in there. But guess what? I am not the goddamned bathroom police. I refuse to be. Short of following him in there and standing right outside his stall, there’s not much I can do to curb that kind of shitty behavior. Plus, you never know. Maybe he had the rumble tums and legitimately needed to poo.)

Fresh printz & bell air

My students are reading The Crucible by Arthur Miller right now, which means I’m coming up on my … 25th reading of the play? I’m not entirely sure, but it’s a high enough number that my mind is numbed by it.

I don’t think Gandalf intended us to read things that many times.

Anywho, I almost never give quizzes over things we read in class, choosing instead to do project-based activities for most units. For The Crucible, though, I give a total of 4 quizzes — one over each act. They’re the only 4 quizzes I’ll give in a year, and the reason I give them is both simple and hard to believe: Variety.

Students don’t want to do acting or socratic seminars or posters all the time. Believe it or not, a lot of students will respond to a quiz more positively than they will an art-related activity. Why? Quizzes seem more serious, more “official.”

In my last class today, which is full of some very challenging students, I managed to get nearly 100% of students to give the quiz a try. Did they ace it? No, but they went along with it, they treated it seriously, and I think it’s because of all the solemnity and formality of a quiz.

Like it or not, students react to quizzes. They’ve done so many of them that they know the expectation: They’re supposed to sit quietly and complete all the questions. No phones, no talking, just a paper and a pencil and 30 minutes to do your best. It’s easy to grasp.

Are quizzes great? No. Not at all. But they are useful, and I’m not going to abandon a tool that works just because it’s boring as hell.

If we got rid of everything that was a snoozefest, then everyone in Idaho would be in a lot of trouble.

I did accidentally print about 200 of the wrong quiz, though, and I have no idea how it happened. I’m usually pretty good about this — I have about 200 students in my academic English class, so that’s the number of handouts I generally make whenever I need handouts

Somehow, I printed 400 copies of the 2nd Crucible quiz and I … well, I can’t explain it. Where did the extras come from? It’s like they just appeared in my quiz file. At first I thought I might have typed a “4” when I meant to type a “2” in the print window, but I certainly would have noticed that I’d printed twice as many when I got them from the printer. Then, I thought I might have had a bunch left over from last year, but that’s equally as unlikely, since I recycle all my leftover paper right before summer break.

Anybody out there want to take a quiz over act 2 of The Crucible? 200 times?

Troublesome times & behavioral defiance

At the end of last semester — just before winter break — a troublesome student of mine handed in his final assignment and told me, “I’d better pass this class. Otherwise, I’m coming for you.”

I didn’t feel particularly threatened by it. This student talks a lot, but they’ve never been violent, so I didn’t think there was any substance to what they’d said. However, you don’t get to threaten people.

So, I took the student into the hallway and explained it to them. “You can’t talk to teachers — or anybody, I guess — like you just did. Making threats like that is very serious.” I sent the student to his admin and wrote them up.

All of this happened literally 15 minutes before school got out for winter break.

I took some time before leaving for the day to speak to administration about it; I wasn’t sure what the protocol was for threats, so I wanted to cover my bases and make sure I’d informed everyone who needed to be informed. Admin told me not to worry — that particular student was being moved out of my class. So, I thought, problem solved. Hopefully the student will be put someplace where they can find success.

Except, of course, that wasn’t the end of it. That student simply got moved from one class of mine to another class of mine. So, I’m still teaching them, but at a different time of day.

(Thanks for the help, admin! Shuffling students around like troublesome Catholic priests is sure to solve this issue.)

Yesterday, this student got in some more trouble. They were late for class without a pass, lied about where they’d been, lied about talking to an admin when told to get a tardy slip, lied about having their phone, lied about using their phone while they were supposed to be reading, and refused to stop using their phone multiple times. All of this was within the first 10 minutes of class.

I called for security to get an escort to take this student to the administration office. The student said, “I don’t need an escort. I can walk to the admin office by myself.”

I said, “I’d like to believe you, but you’ve lied pretty consistently today and you have been caught walking the halls several times this week. We’ll just wait for an escort to make sure you get where you need to be.”

Only no escort showed up. We waited for over an hour, but … nothing. The student just sat at his desk. I carried on with the lesson and emailed admin to ask what to do in this situation but heard nothing in response before the end of class.

It is incredibly disheartening. I’m not mad at the student, just as I’m not mad at admin for keeping this student in my class, just as I’m not mad about no security escort showing up.

The cold, hard truth of it is that security was probably busy with other problems and didn’t have time to send an escort. Admin probably kept the student in my class because there was no other choice with scheduling — every student takes English and there are only so many English classes. And this student has problems of their own — I’m sure their propensity for lying is learned behavior that has helped the student in the past. They need more help; they need a classroom with fewer students and a different structure.

This is the kind of student who, if I asked them, “Please write your name on this piece of paper,” would fail the task. Not because they can’t write or anything; it’s more likely something along the lines of behavioral defiance. The student opposes anyone in authority “just because.”

I wish I could say I didn’t have other students with the same issue, but it’s actually pretty common.

Who would’ve thought a country like ours would produce so many people with behavioral disorders?

Balance Beams & Playing the Heavy

I had to give out so many referrals yesterday. About an order of magnitude above the usual number (which is nothing overboard — maybe a handful a week). It was exhausting and just … terrible. I’m not sure how else to describe it.

We recently learned that a significant portion of the students at my high school are “off track,” or missing the credits they need to graduate because they have failed or are currently failing classes, and admin freaked out about it. They sent out a slew of emails, held lots of meetings, and then sent out more emails about the meetings, which required further administrative communication (in the form of emails about emails about meetings). They didn’t say it directly, but the essential message to teachers was: We’re panicking; we need to do something.

There’s a perfectly rational explanation for this perceived dip in student performance — it’s the start of a quarter and grade books only have one or two grades in them. My classes have only had around 2 graded assignments after these first few weeks, so the students’ entire grade is currently based off of a very small sample. I mean, if a student missed one single assignment so far, they’d technically be failing.

It’s the equivalent of a baseball coach yelling at a batter after missing the first pitch of the year because his batting average was too low.

The grades will normalise after we get a better sample of students’ performance. In two weeks, I’d say, things will be closer to normal, with final quarter grades being the truly accurate measurement.

However, in the meantime, I’ve decided to try to help the problem anyway because, A) What if I’m wrong? Maybe there’s another reason why on-track data has slipped, and B) Why not try some new approaches? iI there’s a chance they help, why not give it a whirl?

I decided to focus on a group of students that are often overlooked and brushed to the side: The Barely-Theres. The ones who are at school, but only barely. Those students who do zero work, who contribute about as much as a cardboard cut-out.

In most classes at our school, there are at least one or two students who, for whatever reason, do absolutely nothing. They sit in the back of the class with their head down, don’t respond to questions, don’t turn in assignments, will ignore nearly every instruction, and are perfectly fine with failing the class. You can ask them, “Hey, is everything okay? I notice you’re not doing this assignment. Would you mind telling me why?” And they will just stare blankly at you and/or maybe shrug. Even hit them with an office referral and there will be no change. Email home? No response.

It’s heartbreaking. But in a class of 35 students I can’t spend 10 minutes trying to get little Tommy to read Abraham Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address when all he’s barely willing to sit up (and even that only sometimes).

This week I decided to spend a little more time with those students. After all, if I can get a few of them to up their performance just a little bit, they’ll be passing, right? It’s good for them, good for admin, good for the school.

Not so “yay” for me, though. It sucks to have to “play the heavy” all day long. I had so many hallway conversations (“I want you to finish this assignment. What can we do to make that happen?”), sent so many emails to admin (“Tommy didn’t come back from lunch–have you seen him?”), wrote so many referrals (“Tommy, after repeated warnings, decided to make a TikTok dance videos in the back of the classroom while he was supposed to be writing a rough draft.”)

I was never mean about it. Just adamant. You will get this work done. I’m sorry, but putting your head down for 90 minutes is not acceptable.

I got a lot of nasty looks, got cussed at, threatened with the ol’, “My mom will hear about this!” gambit. (Which is not at all as frightening as students think it is. Oh, sweetie, I would LOVE to have a chat with your parents. Let’s call them right now!)

On top of having to be confrontational the whole day, I lost instructional time because I had to spend all those extra minutes having hallway convos; doing everything just took a lot longer and I wasn’t able to spend as much time with students who needed more academic help.

By the end of the day I was wiped. Utterly exhausted, both physically and emotionally.

You’ve got to find a balance, but I’m still not sure where that balance is for me. I’m certainly not sure if I can keep this up.

My only wish to catch a fish so juicy sweeeet

Making lesson plans stresses me out. It always has and I see no reason to assume that it will stop — everyone says you need to spend 5 years at a teaching position before you’re “comfortable” there, so I figure I’ve got years of stress left. And, while I consider this kind of stress to be a “Good Stress” (a B.S. term for stress that produces better results from us working-class drones), I do think it is sometimes detrimental to my health.

It doesn’t help matters that I’m a perfectionist when it comes to planning. “Perfectionist” might not be the right word. I’m a planaheadionist. A person who believes that being well-prepared is one of the best things you can do to improve your classes.

In any classroom, there are a million things you can’t control. You can’t control whether or not Timothy is going to refuse to participate. You can’t control if or when Susan will throw a pencil at Timothy because he keeps whispering at her. You can’t control if you’ll get diarrhoea and you certainly can’t control whether or not 90% of your students haven’t ever heard of Mark Twain.

One of the only things you can control is how well you’ve planned that day’s lesson. Depending on all the other factors, your preparation can make or break the whole day. It’s not a silver bullet, but it is a bullet, and bullets are strong. Wait, what? (Maybe bullet metaphors might not be the best metaphors to fire off in this situation.)

Anywho. If I find myself ill-prepared, I get so anxious about it I’ll make myself physically sick. Not even joking — during my first 1-2 years of teaching at a public school, I’d call in for mental health reasons once or twice a semester. I used to feel guilty about it, but now I think fuck that. I’m going to take as many sick days as I see fit.

It does explain why I get so manic sometimes. I’ve known so many great teachers in my life that doing anything less than my best at this job makes feel like I’m letting everyone down.

That’s why you’ll find me so frequently on a school night mumbling over Amazon.com like some suburban Gollum whispering, “Why shouldn’t I have a PRINTER all my own. Yes, yes! A Brother printer for my desk and maybe one more for my classroom…!”

Not to make myself sound like God’s gift to anything. While I know that preparedness is a key to success, all that amounts to most days is I’m painfully aware of how ill-prepared I am.

And that stresses me right out.

Failing & Meetings About Failing

It’s early in the spring semester at the high school where I teach, which means it’s time to have meetings about failing students.

What a treat!

This year’s crop of Juniors (to whom I teach English) are securely buckled into the struggle bus with their “on track” numbers (the number of students in the class who are on track to graduate next year) falling wayyyy behind other classes. Something like 1/3 of the students are missing required credits.

It’s not that they won’t graduate. It’s that they’re behind.

This isn’t the school’s fault, it isn’t admin’s fault, and it surely isn’t the fault of the parents or the students or the teachers. These are students who went through all the remote-learning pandemic nonsense right when “socialization” was most necessary — in elementary and middle school. It should come as absolutely no surprise that they are struggling; their view of education has been wrecked by years of shake-ups and the whole crap chute of “remote learning.”

The biggest educational detriment provided by the pandemic was, in my opinion, convincing millions of students that they just didn’t need to be at school. They went through years of remote learning, which is wildly ineffective, but they still passed all their classes. Now it seems like many of them (and their families) are questioning the whole institution of public education.

Fair enough. Question away! I say. But you can’t be surprised that over 1/3 of the class isn’t on track to graduate. And we certainly shouldn’t be having meetings where we point fingers and assign blame. “How do we best support students who aren’t showing up?” is a question that most classroom teachers aren’t equipped to answer, and the solutions are probably things that most classroom teachers can’t implement.

It’s not like we can sneak into Billy’s house and set his alarm for him.

When I look at a list of students who are failing my English classes, the unifying factor between them is they simply aren’t coming to school. And, on the odd day when they do show up, they don’t get enough work completed to receive a passing grade.

Example: Last semester, I had a student submit a total of 2 assignments. 2 assignments out of 25. And she still expected to pass! It came as a shock to her that she didn’t.

“I got a good grade on the final. I thought that would be enough!”

The student definitely could have passed — she’s got tremendous writing skills, speaks well, and I’m sure would be able to analyze a literary text — but she didn’t show any of that in her work. Why? She was only here for a handful of days.

That student isn’t alone. It’s happening a lot with the students in my classes, and it’s happening all over the country. In 2019, pre-pandemic, about 15% of students missed at least 10% of class days. After the pandemic hit, that number doubled, rising to around 30%. It’s been going down, but 23-25% is what’s being projected now (in the ’25-’26 school year).

(It’s normally the Department of Education’s job to keep track of these statistics, so it’s a good thing our nincompoop-in-chief shut the whole department down via executive order. Who wants to help kids stay in school, anyway? Certainly not republicans.)

Is that an over-simplification? Sure it is! There are other obstacles standing in students’ way — hello, cell phones! — but this problem, “Chronic Absenteeism,” is the first thing my school needs to tackle if we want our students to walk across that stage next year.

And, quite honestly, I have no idea what to do about it. Decisions are made by people who show up, but what decisions do you make about the people who are staying home?