“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.
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