Skip to main content

Administrators as Classroom Helpers


In my first year of teaching I had two classes I didn't know what to do with. They were out of control behavior wise and they wound up not doing a lot of the same experiments and activities as the other students because of their behavior. Part of the problem was that I was a new teacher with no experience and another part of the problem was that I wasn't looking for another way to tackle the problem (other then to take away the activity/experiment).

When I moved down to fourth grade the behaviors were not as extreme as in my sixth grade class so everyone pretty much got to do all the activites.

This year, however, I have a group of students (fourth graders) who have behavior issues that had me thinking, "Oh dear, I am going to have to threaten and follow through on taking away an activity." That is when I started thinking outside the box a little. I realized I could do the activity/experiment if I had another set of adult hands...so my attention wasn't divided between the activity and the behavior.

I could have asked a parent but decided to go to my principal and asst. principal (because they have more clout in the students eyes) and explain the situation...basically that I wanted these students to participate but they couldn't unless I had another set of hands and their presence to reduce behavioral problems. They were both agreeable to coming in and helping out for 30 minutes or so (based on their schedules). I threw in the added suggestion that they could knock out a classroom observation or two this way...hoping to give them an incentive :)

My Assistant Principal (pictured above) came in to help students in this class make rain gauges. She has since helped us with several other activities (with our principal volunteering to step in if she couldn't make it).

It made all the difference. Behavior problems during experiments reduced drastically and all students were able to participate.

The only reason why I am blogging about this is that it NEVER would have occurred to me to go to my administrators and ask for help like this in my first year of teaching. It was a middle school so there was quite a lot more distance between administrators and staff (then in my current elementary school setting) but I think if I had asked I would have gotten help...in that situation even some of our tough (but lovable) support staff would have enjoyed the opportunity to help and "straighten out" some of my more disrespectful students.

The lesson I learned from all this is to look for ways to make things happen instead of look for reasons it can't.
Labels:

Comments

Mendy said…
What a brilliant idea.

It is often the students with behavior problems that need those hands-on learning experiences the most, and what an elegant way of handling it! It is too bad we didn't think of it, because you're right - I think the hall monitors or our SRO would have loved to come in for that hour!

Thanks for sharing!
January 24, 2010 at 3:23 PM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Secret Messages - How To (Light and Color)

This was fun activity that I got from Roper Mountain Science Institute. They suggested red theater gel to reveal the message, which can get pricy. Another idea I heard was to ask movie theaters to donate left over 3D glasses, which also have a red filter. A guest speaker we had last year said red jello would work. Tried it this week and it worked like a charm. The students thought it was very cool. I found my "attention challenged" students had trouble focusing on making their own secret messages so I was very glad that I had made extra copies of the sheets from the GEMS Color Analyzer book that they could color and then check under the jello.
2 comments
Read more

Picture of the Day - Activity

I attended a training class and a science coach shared an activity that he does with his students to help them differentiate between observations, inferences, and predictions. He puts a picture on the interactive white board as a warm up (he gets the pictures from a variety of sources but uses National Geographic's Picture of the Day a lot). The picture above is from the National Geographic site. He has the students make five observations. Then he makes the students make five inferences. Finally he has the students make five predictions. He does this every day and it really drives home the difference between those three key inquiry vocabulary terms. I've done this activity with both my sixth and fourth grade science classes and the students really got into it and became proficient at telling me the difference between those terms.
13 comments
Read more

QR Project - Open House

Twitter Post Link -  https://bit.ly/3Umic7r I saw this adorable QR code project on Twitter and decided to try it out with a couple of third grade classes. We have several schools in our district who are "Leader in Me" schools and I asked a teacher if I could come in and make them for her open house (you don't need to be a "Leader in Me" school but I know they do a lot of goal setting and mission statements). She loved the idea! I decided to use Flip (formally Flipgrid) to do the recording. The web based program is free for educators and automatically generates the needed QR code. We started on a Thursday. I pulled students into the hall to get a picture of them holding a square piece of paper prior to an ELA block. The paper acted as a place holder for the QR code (which is square) and ensured I got the correct hand spacing so the students looked like they were holding the QR code. I found a spot that didn't have anything in the background. The background...
Post a Comment
Read more