Skip to main content

The Effects of COVID-19: Remote ST/ Independent Study

“Good morning, Vietnam!” While there are a million different ways to offer someone a greeting, the only one that feels sufficient for our modern crisis is reminiscent of Robin Williams’s cheer and the turmoil of the 1960s. COVID-19 has changed the world as we know it, if not temporarily, and my last semester at Saint Michael’s College has suffered a similar fate to those of other universities across the United States. As educators, we encourage our students to persevere through academic and social challenges. As humans and community leaders, we must continue to do the same.

In light of the changes taking place within my licensure program, the next few weeks will be filled with independent study of education-based topics from the safety of my own home. Together with my program supervisor, I have selected a few goals to work on remotely as a way to improve my teaching skills while practicing CDC guidelines and keeping out of a physical classroom. This week’s goal is a continuation of one that I have reflected on a lot in the past few months… Let’s talk about classroom management.

Some of the more awkward parts of my school day are the times when I need students to transition between activities that require supplemental direction. Of course, socializing is a part of growing up, and many classroom activities actually ask students to interact with one another verbally, but I often struggle with getting students to stop talking when it’s time to listen to instructions. I want to encourage positive social exchanges, but I also need 100% of my students to engage in my lesson without distracting themselves or others. I do not want to yell over them when the classroom volume gets too high, and I don’t want to adopt classroom strategies that the students feel are juvenile (like a quiet coyote, for example). How, then, can I get a classroom full of middle schoolers to listen up without yelling over them or watching a select few start to police the situation and call each other out?

Several established educators and education theorists have published their own classroom management strategies on a variety of platforms, including Jennifer Gonzalez, the brain behind Cult of Pedagogy. In the short clip below, Gonzalez shares one classroom management tip for talkative students that I am always hesitant to try: gathering student attention by waiting them out.




Keeping a normal “teacher voice” volume is sometimes difficult when I naturally feel the need to yell in order to gather attention in a loud environment. Even more, directing students to prepare for a transition and then waiting for them to recognize the transition I signaled could arguably take more time than any given schedule allows. After all, I am talking about teaching middle schoolers. However, Gonzalez’s strategy offers a lot more than wait time between transitions and activities: a transition is still signaled right away, but students are also encouraged to take the time they need to prepare for next steps without dragging their classmates into a spiral of distraction. The pressure of the whole class waiting on the group to come together does not single out any individuals. Rather, responsibility in learning is distributed among students evenly, and ensuring no students are lost when directions are given becomes the community’s shared task. Although five seconds may seem like five minutes, waiting for students to take ownership of their learning behaviors establishes habits geared toward success over time, and that is certainly worth the wait.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Teaching Alternatives: Book Reports

As a part of my elementary school's annual community-building program, students in all grades (which, for us, meant Kindergarten through 5th Grade) were asked to read the same short novel at home. Now, I know that sounds odd, considering the average kindergartener is likely at a lower reading level than the average fifth grader. However, with the option to have your parent or guardian read the story with you at home, I assure you that I was able to make it through some higher level reading with little trouble. By participating in year-round activities as a whole school, students were able to relate to each other across grade levels, all because they had read the same book and had followed the same characters. I will never forget how excited I was when I won a dictionary (Yes, a dictionary... I'd be less excited now, too) for answering the most trivia questions correctly about The Seven Wonders of Sassafras Springs . Though, if I had one complaint about the school- wide
1 comment
Read more

Place-Based Learning: Museums and the Importance of Physical Space in Middle School Education

Before there were formalized schools, there were living rooms, church halls, back steps, battlefields, and the great outdoors. Education came in all shapes and sizes, from the modern understanding of “traditional” study through the analysis of past writings and artifacts to the natural signals one learned to recognize on the farm before an approaching storm. Students were not just young people hunched over a book shielded from the world behind brick walls. They were citizens learning how to manage a family business, reading and printing newspapers, planting seeds, plowing land, and striving to better prepare themselves for the future, whatever it held for them. Today’s students aim to do the same. Yet their education seems to have restricted itself to the boundaries of school property, or perhaps it occasionally wanders beyond county lines. What happened to learning about your environment— and all the life that lived and lives within it— by experiencing everything it has to offer fir
7 comments
Read more

Troublemakers, by Carla Shalaby

Out of any word in the English language, I think I am most intimidated by “power.” It is full of contradictions: Power provokes a sense of accomplishment while implying the achievement and maintenance of power requires competition, hierarchy, and domination. Power is given and taken easily, and it yields to external factors beyond its control. Some people fear power, others are generous with it, and still more meet their doom when pride becomes its companion. Power allows for advancement. It provides a sense of order and control, but it can also create and fuel chaos. Individuals, groups, small islands, and large nations all possess a certain degree of power. As a future educator, the environment of my classroom will depend entirely on how I and my students handle the power we are given in our teacher-student relationships. More importantly, my power as a potential change-maker in their lives— through traditional lessons, personal relationships, worldly guidance, and honest compassion
4 comments
Read more