|
One of the greatest impediments to the hiring of blind teachers is the concern that they will not be able to deal with classroom discipline. This is, of course, an issue for all teachers, but it is especially relevant for the visually impaired candidate. Carla Hayes, an experienced elementary and middle-school blind teacher shares the strategies for confronting this problem with younger students.
Carla Hayes
It has been a long time since I have written a column
about classroom discipline. Since discipline is such an
important issue for educators and one of the biggest
challenges for teachers who happen to be blind, I thought
that it is high time that we deal with this topic. So, I present
to you the ten commandments of effective classroom
discipline.
1. Devise no more than four or five classroom rules
which will govern your classroom. These rules should be
clear, concise and easy to enforce. The first day of school,
explain your rules to the class along with the
consequences for violating them and allow students time
to ask questions about them. The rules should be posted
permanently in a prominent place in your classroom and
reviewed periodically until students are familiar with them.
2. Enforce your classroom rules consistently and
judiciously. Inevitably, students will break your rules from
time to time. When this happens, you cannot play favorites
or discipline one student more severely than another. You
must always be fair and consistent with the way you
enforce your rules and the consequences for breaking
them should be predictable to students. This way,
students will always know what to expect and you will
maintain better control of your classroom.
3. Devise fair and appropriate penalties and
consequences for violating classroom rules and other
classroom misbehavior, and communicate these to your
students at the beginning of the academic year. Ideally,
the consequences should be the natural results of a
student's misbehavior. For example, if students fail to
complete homework assignments, they will lose the points
they would have received for the assignments; they will
not be as prepared for class as they could have been; they
will not learn the material as well; and chances are, they
will not perform as well on quizzes and tests. As a result of
these consequences, they will receive lower grades in
your class. The penalties for student misbehavior that you
design should be purely punitive in nature and never
related to the subject that you teach. For instance, never
punish students by assigning extra classwork because this
will only make them hate your class. Instead, have them
write a sentence 100 times, such as, "I will never bully
other students again," or have them copy a page out of a
phone book. A student who talks constantly during class
can be moved and isolated from other students.
4. Arrange your classroom in such a way that you can
move around in it freely, and there is as much room for
students to spread out as possible. Classrooms that are
crowded and cluttered with furniture invite discipline
problems. Students who are sitting too close to one
another are more likely to cause disturbances. Arrange
desks and tables in such a way that students will have
plenty of room to spread out and work. If your classroom is
arranged in the traditional configuration of rows of desks,
allow as much room between the desks as possible and
make the aisles as wide as you can. If your students sit at
long tables, space the tables as far apart as possible. With
smaller classes, another possibility might be arranging
desks or tables around the perimeter of the classroom with
a large open space in the middle. This would enable you
to get to any student's seat quickly and easily.
5. Take special care with where you seat your
students. When assigning seats, try not to let friends sit
beside each other because they may be more likely to
chat with each other during class. It's also not a good idea
to let students who clearly don't get along sit near one
another because this could allow for more conflicts and
resulting behavior problems during class. It's also
important that students who have difficulty seeing, those
who will require more of your attention, and students who
are more likely to act out sit as close to the front of the
classroom as possible. I usually allow students to choose
where they will sit the first day of class with the warning
that if they misbehave, or the seating arrangement doesn't
work out for any reason, I will move students. Wherever
students sit, they should always sit in the same places.
This will make it easier for you to learn your students’
names and to figure out who may be causing discipline
problems if they should arise.
6. Don’t sit at your desk or stand in the front of the
class for the entire period. Instead, try moving around the
room as you teach. This will help you to stay in constant
touch with your students and maintain better control of
your classroom. If you hear a disturbance taking place,
quickly move to that part of the classroom and stand there
for a few minutes. Sometimes just the mere proximity of
the teacher can discourage student disruptions.
7. Divide each class period into two or three shorter
learning activities rather than one long one when possible.
One of the chief causes of many classroom discipline
problems is student boredom. Once students stop paying
attention to you, they start paying more attention to their
classmates and other things in the classroom. To
complicate matters even more, students' attention spans
are shrinking due to their constant interaction with
electronic devices. It's very difficult to hold the attention of
most of your students for an entire class period which
typically lasts 42 to 50 minutes, especially if you are
engaged in a single activity such as a classroom lecture
during that time. However, if you divide your class period
into two or three 10 to 15-minute different learning
activities, students will not have time to become bored and
they will be more likely to stay on task and less likely to
cause discipline problems.
8. Do everything possible to ensure full participation
of every student in classroom activities. This involves
planning lessons which will accommodate all the various
learning styles, abilities and disabilities of the students in
your classroom. The favorite presentation style of many
teachers and professors is the traditional classroom
lecture where the teacher teaches and students just listen
and take notes. However, lectures only accommodate
auditory learners and perhaps visual learners if effective
visual aids are a part of the presentation. You must also
plan activities for students who learn best through
movement and hands-on experiences. Similarly, you must
consider the abilities of your students. It's important to
provide some learning activities that are simple enough for
students who struggle with your subject, and more
challenging activities for students who are more advanced.
You must also make adaptations for students with
disabilities so that they can participate as much as
possible in your class. What does all of this have to do
with classroom discipline? Remember that students who
are bored or frustrated are less likely to participate in
learning activities, and idle students are more likely to
cause discipline problems. It only stands to reason that
students who are more involved in the learning process
are less likely to misbehave. Therefore, it will be to your
advantage to make sure that all of your students are
involved and engaged in the lessons that you plan.
9. Employ peer discipline when appropriate. This
involves using peer pressure to encourage students to
behave well in class. Most elementary and secondary
school students are greatly influenced by their peers. Why
not harness this influence to your advantage? Peer
discipline involves the entire class working together for a
common reward with measurable incentives and
disincentives along the way. If the entire class behaves for
a predetermined period of time, they earn tokens such as
points, stars on a chart, or buttons or marbles in a jar.
Tokens can also be taken away for unsatisfactory
behavior by anyone in the class. When they have earned
a designated number of these tokens, they receive a
reward such as a pizza, free time or the opportunity to
choose a favorite learning activity. In order for this strategy
to work, the tokens must be displayed in a prominent
place so that the class can chart its progress towards the
reward. The policy must be enforced consistently and the
time it takes to earn the reward must be age-appropriate,
shorter for younger students. Peer discipline is especially
effective when you have a difficult group of students.
Perhaps the best way to explain this strategy is with an
example. During my first year of teaching, I had an
especially difficult seventh grade French class with several
students who misbehaved constantly. One day, I brought
in a bag of marbles and a jar. I told the class that for each
fifteen minutes of good behavior, I would put five marbles
in the jar. When the jar was full, the class would earn a
party, complete with French music and refreshments. If
any student misbehaved, marbles would be taken out of
the jar. I put the jar and the bag of marbles in a shallow
box on my desk where everyone could see it. Then, I
continued teaching the class as usual, adding or removing
marbles without a word according to the behavior of the
students. At first, the class "lost their marbles" more
frequently. One day, the class was so bad that I didn't say
a word, but dumped the whole jar of marbles into the box.
You could have heard a pin drop. After that, the class
worked hard and eventually earned their party. Then, we
continued to work towards larger goals. The class
accomplished more than ever, and the students enjoyed
the process. Even the principal was amazed at this
group's change in behavior. The best thing was that I no
longer had to constantly discipline individual students
because students kept each other in line so that they
would earn the rewards.
ten. Do not reprimand or punish students in front of
the class. Doing so is unprofessional, unacceptable and
could leave psychological scars for a lifetime. No matter
how good your classroom rules are, how well you plan, or
how engaged your students are in learning, sooner or
later, someone will do something wrong and will need to
be reprimanded or punished. When this happens, take the
student or students aside and deal with the situation in
private. Doing so will accomplish several things. First, you
will not be humiliating students in front of their peers.
Second, waiting to deal with the situation in private will
give you time to catch your breath and decide what your
response should be, and you will be less likely to act in
anger. Third, talking in private will give each student the
opportunity to give his or her side of the story, and you will
be more likely to learn why the misbehavior took place.
Knowing why the incident occurred could help you to take
steps which could prevent similar incidents from
happening in the future. FINALLY and most importantly, if
you take this approach, students are more likely to respect
you and cooperate with you in the future.
In conclusion, classroom discipline problems can
undo even the best of teachers. The best way to deal with
discipline problems is to prevent them from happening in
the first place. This can be done by planning and
implementing effective classroom management strategies.
It's important to note that most of the above ten
commandments of effective classroom discipline deal with
planning for and preventing behavior problems. When
behavior problems do occur, it is your responsibility as a
classroom teacher to deal with them fairly and
consistently, and maintain control of your classroom so
that learning will continue to take place. As a blind
teacher, it is essential for you to be aware of what is
happening in your classroom at all times and deal with
disruptions and other problems before they get out of
hand.
Top of Page
|