Kevin didn’t stick around after school long enough to see the lights on at 8 p.m. in his teachers’ classrooms, didn’t watch as the teachers left the buildings with their briefcases full of papers to grade, and didn’t come to school on the weekends when teachers set up labs or planned lessons. Kevin was a smart kid, but he had an inaccurate picture of what a teacher’s workday looks like (and paycheck, too).

I don’t have to tell you that the hours between the bells aren’t the only hours you spend on the job. According to a study by the Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice, teachers in public schools report working 52 hours a week, 27 of those as teaching hours. In private schools, teachers report a 48-hour work week and 26 hours of teaching.

So how can I live up to Kevin’s golf fantasy when I have a briefcase full of papers? I can’t, but I can take steps to try to manage my paper load.

Create online quizzes and tests. In my world, this still isn’t possible because I don’t have easy access to a class set of laptops every day. If you do, though, a quick online quiz is the way to go. No papers to handle; just record the scores.

Don’t correct everything. Give yourself permission to not check every homework problem you assign. Some teachers circulate during the sponge activity in the beginning of class and record student homework as complete or incomplete. If you feel you need to check the homework more closely, you might collect the homework and correct just question number three. With essays, you can grade just paragraph three, too (especially useful when grading for grammar, spelling, and usage).

Clear the desk. Set a goal for yourself that you won’t leave the building on Friday until you’ve finished grading papers for the week. Allow yourself to lesson plan at home, but don’t lug around a stack of papers on the weekend. You’ll feel better if you have a break.

Use a rubric. It almost goes without saying, but not only is grading with a rubric good teaching practice, but also it makes grading a lot easier. With a clear rubric, you won’t spend half an hour trying to figure out how to grade student work that looks nothing like what you had envisioned. For example, you assign students to write a poem about nature and a student hands you a recording of his band singing lyrics you’re not sure are from a known language. How do you grade that? A rubric will help spell out your expectations on the front end, reduce the number of unpredictable student responses, and speed up your grading with a checklist.

Plan your grading time. We all know that we need to plan our lesson time, but it’s a smart idea to plan your work time as well. Expand your weekly lesson plans to include your prep time, too. If you’ve planned for a quiz for your sophomores, block off time that same day or the next to correct it. I know it’s tough, but try to stagger due dates among your classes so you don’t have 80 freshman essays on the same day you have 40 junior poetry projects to grade.

Have a small bag for correcting papers. Take it from me and my back: you do not want to carry a heavy bag with every student paper and every book you’ll ever need everywhere you go. Instead, buy a small bag that has just enough room for one set of papers to grade. Include a set of pens and a calculator. Discipline yourself to grade just that one set of papers at home, but no more than that. Having a huge bag in your backseat is overwhelming and you might not even take the bag out of the car. But you can spare 30 minutes to grade one set of papers and you can probably do it while your child is at swimming lessons or karate. Done.

Develop a routine. Just as you’d brush your teeth before you go to bed, make correcting one set of papers part of your nightly routine. If you make a regular time to correct just one set of quizzes, you’ll work your way through the stack and sleep better, knowing that you don’t have a huge pile of papers waiting for you in the morning.

Do you have any suggestions for managing your papers to grade and working in a round of golf? Do you have any humorous misconceptions about teaching that people have shared with you over the years? Please share in the comments.

Photo credits:
Grading essays, 365-120 (April 30): nooccar on Flickr.com Creative Commons
Grading Papers [in a café]: juliecinci on Flickr.com Creative Commons
Dining room [with papers to grade]: MNicoleM on Flickr.com Creative Commons

I’ll be honest. I don’t handle extra credit well. In fact, I’m so lousy at it, I offered just two projects each year. If you’ve ever tried offering extra credit, you know the problems it can cause:

• Students might focus all their energy on the extra credit project and neglect their everyday work.
• Students will ask for extra credit projects the night before grades are due.
• Too much extra credit can skew a student’s grade to the point where you’re not sure if she mastered the material or just knew how to play the game.
• You get slammed with extra credit projects in addition to your end-of-quarter grading and have no time to sleep.

Since I taught high school English, my two extra credit projects had an English theme. I announced the projects at the beginning of the semester and explained to students that they would have either the week of Thanksgiving break or Spring break to complete the projects. Neither project interfered with class time and both were due the day students returned from break. Of course, some students worked on the projects before the break, but the idea was that it wouldn’t add to their nightly workload.

My projects were dioramas of famous literary works. The student had to choose a famous literary work (no film adaptations), identify the scene on a plot diagram, identify the main characters, summarize the action, and explain why the scene was important to the story. The diorama was made with Halloween candy (fall semester) or Easter candy (spring semester) – a Peanut Gallery for the fall (circus peanuts were the main players) or a Peep Show for the spring (marshmallow peeps as the main players).

The project was fun, a good use of excess candy, and done completely outside of class. I had a rubric and celebrity judges (principal, coaches) to award prizes for the top three entries. It was a popular activity among students and I promoted it to their parents at open house and parent-teacher conferences.

The problem? How much weight to give the extra credit assignment? I gave away fabulous prizes (cheap plastic trophies from the local party shop) and some of the dioramas were elaborate. I could tell that many hours went into gluing jelly beans and Pez to a shoe box for the honor of a plastic trophy, some points, and a place atop my bookshelf – the Diorama Hall of Fame.

My point-giving scheme was that any A-level project could move a test or quiz grade up three increments. So, a student could move a C- test up to a B-. A B-level project could move up two increments, so a C- to a C+. A C-level could move up one increment, from a C- to a C.

It wasn’t a bad scheme, but it took a ton of time to record the scores and give credit. I wrote a note in the grade book alongside that test or quiz, too. I tried to drop the project one year, but kids protested.

So, readers, I’m looking for ideas from you. How do you handle extra credit? Do you limit your offerings to one or two that you plan in advance or do you give many extra credit opportunities? How do you cope with the extra points and extra work load? Have you ever offered extra credit if a student attends an event like a school play or concert? Let’s start a great discussion in the comments. I can’t wait to learn from you.

As a teacher, I know better. If I have a student who’s hiding from me and unwilling to answer a question, I have a problem. That’s not a kid who’s learning; that’s a kid who’s miserable for an hour each day.

The obvious reason that these kids aren’t jumping out of their seats and waving their hands to answer a question is that they don’t know the material. Not only are they lost, but they’re also struggling to save face in front of their peers. No one wants to answer a question incorrectly and risk looking foolish. I’m not looking for 100% perfection when I ask questions. I’m looking for thought and for students to learn the material. It’s not a test or a quiz. It’s not a gotcha game. It’s a learning opportunity.

Here’s what I do to increase class participation and decrease worry about wrong answers:

1. Think time. This one’s the most obvious and yet it’s hard to wait for a student response to a question when we think the answer is so clear. Be patient. Mentally sing the ABCs while watching students’ expressions. When it looks like most of the kids have caught on, call on a student.
2. Write it out. Ashley was a bright student in one of my classes. She did well on every test, but if I asked her a question in class, she’d get a stunned look on her face. I could almost watch the information leaking out of her head. Invite students to take a piece of scrap paper and write down their answers to the question. That way, they’ll still remember the answer after the shock of being called on wears off. This method is best used for questions designed for critical thinking, not fact-based review questions.
3. Think/pair/share. Again, this isn’t a new technique, but it’s effective and the students like it because they can chat with their neighbors and still be on task. The teacher asks a question, gives some think time, asks students to discuss their answers with their neighbors, sets the timer for a minute and lets ’em talk. When the time’s up, the teacher asks any student for a response. That student can choose to share her own answer, her partner’s answer, or an answer the two developed together. Think/pair/share takes the pressure off the individual to be right and focuses the attention on ideas instead.
4. No big deal. Good try. That’s cool. These are easy words to take the sting out of a wrong answer. Acknowledge that the answer was incorrect, but smile at the student and shrug it off. Hey, wrong answers happen to us all. No big deal.
5. How about an assist? Sometimes a student is right on the cusp of giving a correct answer. You can see the wheels clicking in his brain, but he hasn’t quite gotten there yet. I circulate around my classroom, so if a student is struggling with an answer, I might stage whisper a hint to her. Of course, the other students know I’m giving a hint, but they also know it’s O.K. to do so. The hint is a safety net for them and it communicates to students that I’m not going to put them on the spot and embarrass them. Phone a friend or poll the class are also effective options for the student to use and they use the class in a way that offers help, not criticism. This is an opportunity to learn and learning from others is just fine.
6. Can someone expand on that? Can anyone translate? Jake was a student who had trouble articulating his thoughts. I knew that he had the words in his mind, but maybe half of them surfaced in his response. That’s the time I asked for volunteers to expand on Jake’s answer. Jake wasn’t wrong; he just wasn’t complete enough. That’s when I’d ask for someone to expand on Jake’s answer. He gave us a good start; let’s have someone give us a good finish.Breanna was just the opposite of Jake. She had so many thoughts in her head that her answers were often a jumble. When she said an answer that might have been right, but I wasn’t sure, I asked my class for a volunteer to translate. Maybe a student understood what I had not. “Translating” teen into adult helps students who might not be eloquent still participate and receive recognition for their ideas.
7.  Use your resources. Question-and-answer time is not quiz or test time. It’s about learning. Looking up facts in the textbook and referring to class notes is a habit I’d like to encourage. If reading a sentence from the book takes the pressure off a student, I’m fine with that.
8. I’ll come back to you. Despite my best efforts to make the classroom a safe place to give an answer, a student might ask for a pass on a question. I say, “No big deal. I’ll come back to you.” Giving a student a little extra time might give her the confidence she needs to answer the question, feel successful, and learn.
9. Circulate, observe, and call out good work. Opportunities for participation aren’t limited to a question-and-answer activity. Participation can happen even during work time. I circulate among my students while they work to monitor their progress, to redirect off-task behavior, and to answer student questions. Often, I’ll stop by a student’s desk and ask permission to see her work. Maybe the class is writing essays and Shanna has a really good introduction. It’s so good that I hand her an overhead transparency and a marker and ask her to copy her intro onto the transparency to share with the class. Shanna’s a quiet girl who doesn’t like to be called on, but she writes well and glows when I hand her the marker and transparency. When the students are working on an assignment, I might read out a really interesting answer from a student’s work-in-progress and take suggestions from the crowd about whether they would add or subtract anything from the response.
10. Never use questions as a punishment. Never use sarcasm. Nothing shuts a student down quicker than punitive questioning and a smart remark. The point of class participation is to learn, not to discipline students for not paying attention or to show the class how clever your comebacks can be. You’ll see students stop raising their hands to answer questions, no matter how many participation points you offer. You can almost watch the learning curve take a nose dive for the worse.

What about you? Do you have any ways to encourage student participation in class? How do you create an environment in your classroom where students feel it’s safe to offer an answer or an opinion?

However, if I could have looked back at the beginning of the school year, I could have picked out the major talkers. But, I was new. I didn’t know that to stop the problem of the whole class talking, I had to redirect those big talkers right away.

This post is about redirecting talkers at the beginning of the school year – before talking turns into a wildfire that the teacher can’t control. Next week’s post will be about how to douse talking that has spread and become a natural disaster.

1. Identify the talkers. You will have them; every class has them. The good news is that, like most people, their behavior patterns are set and they seldom change those patterns. If you’re watching, your talkers will identify themselves. Sure, their behavior is disruptive, but at least they’re predictable. Watch for them.
2. Circulate. Teaching from the front of the classroom is a lousy idea, so the sooner you cut your ties to the front of the room, the better off you’ll be. Make sure your desks are arranged in a manner so that you can walk to any student’s side at any time. Start feeling comfortable with lecturing from any point in the room. While you talk, read from the text, or lead a whole-class discussion, monitor your students. When one of your students talks to her neighbor, stroll over to her desk and lead the discussion from there until she’s back on track. Then stroll away. Locate your talking hotspots and visit those areas often.

Circulating brings the added benefit of being able to help all students, no matter how shy they are. Some kids will never raise their hands to ask a question or approach the teacher’s desk during work time. Rather than admit they don’t understand, they’ll sit in their desks and be frustrated. You can watch for signs of confusion or frustration and stop by that student’s desk to offer assistance.

3. Mention students’ names. If you’re talking to the whole class, an effective way to keep student attention and prevent talking is to just mention their names as if you’re having a private conversation with them. It feels weird the first time you do it, but if you’re circulating, it’s easier. As you wander around the room, mention the student’s name as you pass her desk. Make eye contact with these kids, too. Here’s how it would sound:

So, Jayne, it really doesn’t matter if Shakespeare wrote the plays or if it was Edward DeVere. It’s good writing no matter who penned it, Shaun.

Of course, you can mention a kid who isn’t right next to you, just to keep them all on their toes, too.

4. Redirection. Most of the time your presence is enough to quiet talkers, but not always. Assume that your talkative student is asking a question of her neighbor so that she can get back on track. You can tell if she’s talking about the assignment or her weekend plans from her volume – weekend plans are usually loud; classroom assignments are usually sotto voce. However, give her the benefit of the doubt.

If you can have a quiet word with your student without breaking the flow of the class, do so. You can turn the pages of her textbook so she’ll be able to follow along. You can put your finger on the passage the class is on. You can offer her a pencil or piece of recycled paper. You can bring her a textbook from the shelf along with the check-out sheet. None of these will disrupt class.

However, if this is your third trip to her desk, you might need to have a quiet word with her. Station yourself next to her desk and give the class something to do while you redirect Chatty Cathy. You could ask Matt to continue reading aloud to the bottom of page 52. You could ask the class a question, tell them you’ll give them a minute to think, and then ask them to write their response on the exit slip for the day.

Bend your knees and get on the same level as your chatting student so you’re eye-to-eye with her. Ask her in a low voice that only the two of you can hear if she needs something or if there’s a problem you can help her with. Again, give her the benefit of the doubt. Communicate to her your faith that she wants to succeed and be a good class member. Does she need extra help? Is she confused about the task? It’s like a used car salesman: what can I do to get you in this car/lesson/assignment today?

If you have to make yet another trip to her desk, keep the class busy, bend your knees, and explain that her talking makes it difficult for you to teach and others to learn. Ask her how she plans to solve the problem.  Let her know you’re disappointed in her behavior and that you’re sure her parents will be disappointed, too. Express your belief in her that she wants to learn and that you’re confident the two of you won’t have to make a phone call to Mom at work at the end of the class. Remember, keep your voice low. You’re at the disappointment stage, not the rage stage.

5. Praise.  After you’ve visited a talking student and redirected her behavior or had a quiet conversation, watch her. Try very hard to catch her doing something right. I don’t care if it’s just turning the page in the textbook, that kid is now following along. Wander over to her desk, make eye contact and give her a smile and a nod. If you can, whisper a nice job or a thank you. Once you’ve established that you want to catch these kids doing something good, they’ll try to make eye contact with you. You can give her a thumbs-up from across the classroom or a nod.

Make a note of her positive behavior and include it in your electronic grade book as a note for the day. Write something like: “Cathy followed along in the textbook during class.” It’s small, but Mom and Dad are used to hearing, “Cathy disrupted class.” They’ll like seeing “Cathy participated well” on a grade sheet.
If Cathy’s been difficult to redirect, but you’ve caught her doing something good, hold her after class and have her dial Mom at work. Mom will be thrilled to hear that Cathy had a good participation day in class, trust me. That’s 90-seconds well spent. You’ll have Mom’s support if you ever have a negative phone call to make and Cathy will think you’re on her side, too. Again, make a note of the call in your electronic grade book. That’s a call that will pay huge dividends with principals and guidance counselors, too.

6. Change seats. Sometimes Chatty Cathy just can’t control herself. The temptation of having her best friend or soon-to-be boyfriend next to her is just too much. You have two options: change Cathy’s seat or change the tempter’s seat. My first reaction is to move the non-talker.  Moving the kid who isn’t talking is less likely to provoke the talker into protesting her innocence to the entire class. Usually the non-talker is relieved to move, too. Then she doesn’t have to feel rude about pretending she can’t hear Cathy.

Cathy might be a hard-core talker, though. You could move a plant next to her and she’d talk to it. Cathy needs to be as close to front-and-center of the classroom as you can get her. If you can put her near your desk, that’s a great option, too.  Do it quietly, though.  Change her seat near the end of class, if you can manage it. She’ll have less time to complain to anyone who will listen about how you’ve singled her out.

7. Harness the power of the wind. Cathy’s strength might be talking. She might be a really good kid, but she needs to talk to learn. Again, assume your student wants to succeed and set her up for it.

Since you’re circulating around your classroom, it’s pretty tough to run your Smart Board when you’re nowhere near it. You’ve moved Cathy up front, though, so she can work the controls and even write on the board. Cathy can be your designated writer. It’s a challenge for her to talk to another student when she’s at the front of the class, but she still might need to talk. You can ask her for feedback while she writes. For example, you can ask her, “Cathy, how do you feel about the idea that Shakespeare might not have written the plays? Does it bother you?”

You might also ask a question of a class member and then get Cathy’s reaction to it. If she says something rotten, say I’m surprised to hear you say that, Cathy and wait for her to realize she was inappropriate and correct herself.  Offer her public praise. If she resists the self-correction, ask another student in the class: How would you have worded Cathy’s criticism?

Of course, these methods aren’t foolproof, but they’ll take you pretty far with individual talkers, before the talking situation gets out of hand.

Do you have any methods for redirecting your big talkers? Share them in the comments so we can all learn!

In my defense, I always asked the other teacher ahead of time to send Amanda, JoAnna, Matt, or Jason to the journalism room if they were finished with their work in class.

Last week’s post was about restroom passes. This week, I’m tackling passes to destinations unknown. How do you handle a request to go to the library/media center? The nurse’s office? The parking lot?

Library/Media Center. A pass to the LMC is hard for me to deny. I love it when a student wants to learn more, check out a book, or even read a hot rod magazine. I hate it when a student requests a pass just to hang out at the back tables and chat. It’s even worse when the librarian gives me a frown at lunch and tells me not to send a student to her because the kid is disruptive. Despite the few students who shouldn’t receive LMC passes, I don’t refuse them to many others. It’s tough to defend to my principal or a parent why I’m not letting a student use the library. Why would a teacher deny extra resources to a student? That’s not a question I want to deal with.

My solution? I send kids because the LMC is a destination that has supervision. If one of my students is really ticking off the LMC director, she can send the offender back to me. However, I never give a pass without first understanding what the student intends to do in the LMC. Sitting at the back table and gossiping is not a good objective. Furthermore, I write the student’s task on the back of the pass, so the LMC director can see what the student should be doing and redirect her behavior or send her back, if necessary.

Nurse’s office. This is another destination for which I usually gave a pass. Again, it’s hard to defend keeping a sick kid in class. Yes, I know that students abuse the privilege. However, good communication with the nurse and feedback for the student lets students know that you’re monitoring their passes to the nurse. A gentle word about too many nurse’s office passes and a suggestion to call home about chronic headaches or stomach aches usually either clears up matters or gets the kid some medical assistance. Either is good.

Someone else’s classroom. Yes, my class time is precious and I know that other teachers’ class time is important, too. If I write a pass for a student to come out of history, science, or family and consumer education, I’ll talk to the teacher beforehand. It’s just common courtesy, I think. If I needed a few dictionaries, I wouldn’t enter my friend’s classroom while she was teaching, walk back to the bookshelf, and help myself. No. I would ask her. Before class. If I needed a journalism student, I would do the same thing, before I wrote a pass.

I know teachers who wouldn’t allow a student to leave class to practice a band solo or finish up a science experiment. I know some of my colleagues felt insulted if another teacher asked them to allow a student an extra 15 minutes to finish an essay or meet a deadline. That’s fine. I respect that.

As for me, though. I wanted to celebrate my students’ achievements in other classes, especially when my English class was a struggle for them. It was great to know that although Tony couldn’t use a comma correctly, he could compose his own music. I loved it that Sami connected so well with the agriculture teacher that she wanted to help the teacher repot seedlings. If I could honor another teacher’s request for a student, I tried to make it work. I also hoped that they’d return the favor when a student publication was on deadline.

The locker. Here’s where I did a crackdown. I didn’t like to give locker passes. On the block schedule with a small campus and seven minutes between classes, I just couldn’t justify a locker pass. Need a pen? Here’s one the custodian picked up off the floor yesterday. Want a book? Great. Sign one out from the bookshelf. Need paper? Here’s some scrap paper from the recycle bin. Forgot your assignment? You can bring it to me right after class with no penalty. Forgot your group’s project? Well, what’s your group’s Plan B?

Let’s face it: the kids who forget things in their lockers are usually the same ones over and over. I know this because my own daughter is this kid. What do I tell her? Cope. If she’s going to forget things, then she’s going to have to figure out what to do without them. When I forget something at home, I can’t leave work, dash home, grab my whatever, and return to work. No. I have to cope. My reasoning behind no locker passes is more than clearing hallway traffic during classes; it’s one of those grand life lessons. I feel very comfortable defending this one to parents and principals.

The car/parking lot. Um. No. I’m not giving out a pass to the parking lot. No supervision, no accountability, and no reason to be there. Again: cope.

Guidance or attendance offices. If the attendance office wants a student, they can call and request her. Otherwise, I want my students clearing up their tardies and unexcused absences on their own time. I don’t give passes to the attendance office.

If a student needs to see a guidance counselor, I treat it like a hybrid of a pass from someone else’s classroom and an LMC pass. I talk to the guidance counselor or secretary before writing the pass to make sure that it’s O.K. to send a student. I ask the student what he wants to accomplish with the visit and write that on the back of the pass. I never want the guidance secretary to look up and see a bunch of kids fulfilling no learning objective other than waiting for the bell to ring.

Phone. In my last teaching job, each classroom had a telephone. Students were not allowed to use cell phones during school hours. The only phone available to them was the office phone. I didn’t give out passes to the phone. If a student had a class-related question for a parent, I might use my classroom phone to talk to the parent and hand the phone off to the student. However, in my mind, the phone is like the locker. If a student forgets to make a phone call, I’d be happy to help with Plan B, but I’m not willing for a student to miss class to make a phone call.

How about you? Are you stingy with your passes? Do you resent other teachers who request a student from your class? Do you allow locker passes? Passes to the car? The Library Media Center? Share your strategies and stories in the comments.

Photo credits:
Library jump: Zef Delgadillo on Flickr.com Creative Commons
Sleeping at the library: umjanedoan on Flickr.com Creative Commons

I learned from watching other teachers that children who go to the “restroom” hardly EVER really need to relieve their bladders. It seems that the restroom is the place to meet friends, exchange cell phones, listen to music, make out with the opposite sex, or fight. Teachers should be very careful about sending students to the “restroom” unescorted and untimed.

When I taught, many horrible things happened when I gave out a restroom pass. I learned from my mistakes and came up with this system:

• Never refuse a restroom pass. Sometimes I asked a kid to stay until I finished giving instructions or until she’d finished her test, but I never denied a restroom pass, even though I’d been burned on them before. Why? I never wanted to have to defend to my principal or a parent why I kept a kid who had a genuine bathroom need or emergency from leaving class.
• Set restroom time limits. My limit was five minutes in the restroom. At seven minutes, I sent a search party. If the search party reported back that no one was in the nearest restroom, I called the office to report a missing student. Students who spent too long out of class wouldn’t be able to use the pass for a week or two.
• The classroom pass. My last two schools both had classroom passes that had the teacher’s name on one side and a sign out sheet on the other side. It was a great way to keep a record of which students left, where they were going, and what time the students came and went. The classroom pass is only effective if the teacher monitors it regularly. Make sure to keep it under your control and to verify student names, destinations, and times are correct. It’s very easy for students to “lose” the pass log, write their names and destinations illegibly, or fudge the times. Being vigilant and double-checking students will ensure that the pass record is correct. If someone lost the pass, I didn’t give out passes until the classroom pass turned up again.
• Talk about abuses on an individual basis. Sami took the restroom pass every day during work time. Photocopied the pass log and highlighted her name. Sami and I had a quiet conversation about why she left class every day at 2:35. She said she needed a break from the crowd and a little bit of peace and quiet. Even though it appeared that she was abusing the pass, really Sami was self advocating. So I built more movement into my lessons to help students who needed to move continue to focus. For Sami, I gave her a quiet classroom chore to complete every day at the beginning of work time. She stayed in class, my white board was clean, and we were both happy.
• Don’t let it disrupt class. I decided that the restroom pass was not going to be something that interfered with teaching and learning. I posted the class schedule on the board and instructed my students that they should not request the pass during whole-group instruction. Work time was the perfect time to ask for the pass. However, if an emergency arose, the student should point to the door and wait for my eye contact and nod before taking the pass.
• Only one student out at a time. I had one pass, which is a self limiting thing. When another student had the pass, no one else could use it. And no, I’m not going to put myself in charge of who goes next and settle arguments about skipping someone.

My system’s not perfect. Sure, students still abused the restroom pass. However,  most students were pretty respectful of the rules because I applied them uniformly to every student every time.

I knew teachers who issued each student two restroom passes to be used at will during the semester or quarter. That method limited disruptions and students using the restroom every day during fourth period, but it still doesn’t address the issue of the parent/principal phone call about why a kid who needed the restroom couldn’t go.

I also knew teachers who refused all restroom requests. Our high school was on the block schedule, so students had a seven-minute passing time between 84-minute classes. Teachers considered the passing time enough of a break for students to take care of restroom issues.

Of course, there are many ways to handle the restroom pass. If you have a good method, or even a so-so method, share it in the comments! Have you had trouble with the restroom pass? Yeah. Me, too. Share those troubles in the comments! Maybe we can come up with a solution.

Next week: Passes to other school destinations

Photo credits:
Restroom Directions: Clyde Pool on Flickr.com Creative Commons
Restroom Reminder: RogueSun Media on Flickr.com Creative Commons

But what did you learn? Did you catch that spark? Did you have an ah-ha moment? I’m out of the classroom and able to talk education experts. Here are my ah-ha moments:

1. How to tame out-of-control parent volunteers. I had a parent volunteer who tried to take over the school newspaper I was advising. She was a well intentioned person, but being the wife of an editor didn’t make her an editor. An election made her a school board member, though. You can imagine how difficult it was to manage her.
   Inside the School presenter Suzanne Tingley taught me that it’s best to have an idea of what you’d like the volunteer to do in the classroom and spell it out in writing. Include guidelines about privacy and safety. Ask the volunteer to sign the expectations sheet and commit to showing up at the same time every week. (How Can I Use My Classroom Volunteer Effectively?)
2. Don’t sugar coat bad news. Gavin disrupted class again today, so you held him after class to make a parent phone call. Tingley said in an online seminar that you might think you’re helping parents by sandwiching the bad news about his behavior between two not-so-bad things. You’re not. Mom has answered the phone at work and wants to end the painful phone call as soon as possible. Explain what Gavin did to merit the phone call and keep your words objective. Come to a solution with Mom and tell her how glad you are that the two of you can work together to help Gavin. End the call on a positive note, but also review the actions you’ll both take so both you and Mom are clear about what the problem was and how you’re going to solve it. (How to Give Feedback No One Wants to Hear, Dealing with Difficult Students, 2-part series)
3. Most students have used a cell phone to cheat. About one-in-three kids with a cell phone have used it to cheat, according to a Common Sense Media report. Two-thirds of students say they know other students who have used a cell phone to cheat. Many teens don’t understand that storing class notes on a cell phone and using the notes on a test is cheating. They think texting friends for an answer isn’t a serious offence and 20 percent say that’s not cheating at all. We’re never going to get rid of cell phones, so it’s clear that we need to educate students about cheating and its consequences.
4. Blended learning is coming. What’s blended learning? It’s blending the physical classroom with the virtual classroom. According to Inside the School presenter Curt Bonk, Ph.D., blended classes will have online resources, an online learning space, and an online ideas exchange among students and the teacher. Maybe your school is on the cutting edge of this and you’ve been using Moodle or Blackboard for years. If you haven’t, you will soon. (Prepare for Natural Disasters and Outbreaks with Blended Learning)
5. A little zaniness is O.K. The brain loves novelty; a little bit of zaniness will create a learning hook that your students won’t soon forget, Stanley Pogrow, Ed.D said in an Inside the School online seminar about Outrageous Teaching. As long as the outrageous part of the lesson meets an objective and involves the students in learning, it’s just fine. You don’t need to teach in a zany way every day, but a little bit benefits students. The bonus is that off-task behavior goes way down during an Outrageous Lesson. (Teaching Content Outrageously)
6. Good teaching is universal. Sandra Rief, author of How to Reach and Teach Children with ADD/ADHD, visited our studio last fall to present three online seminars about teaching students with ADHD. Chunking up material, differentiated instruction, and providing opportunities for student interaction aren’t teaching strategies that just work with ADHD students; all students benefit from these strategies. It’s just good teaching. (ADHD and LD Training Series with Sandra Rief)
7. Front load. Prepare as much as you can in advance of everything. Make sure everyone is clear what the expectations are. Presenter Tingley said in her Dealing with Student Discipline online seminar that the best discipline plans are front loaded. The parents, students, teachers, and administration all understand the behavioral expectations up front, so there’s no question about what will happen if a student breaks a school rule. Front loading takes time to do, but saves time in the end. (Dealing with Student Discipline)
8. Teachers are important, too. Nathan Eklund, author of How Was Your Day at School? visited last winter to present online seminars about teacher morale. It’s common to hear teachers say they want to do What’s best for kids. Eklund says that we also need to consider the school as a workplace for teachers. How happy is the faculty? Are they burnt out? Teacher attitudes affect student performance. Ignoring the welfare of half of the learning equation isn’t smart policy. (Ways to Improve Staff Culture to Benefit Teaching and Learning)
9. Recognize accomplishments. In the latest Trends and Tudes newsletter from polling and research company Harris Interactive has information from the latest MetLife Survey of the American Teacher and the Scholastic/Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation study.  What really caught my eye was an essay from a high school intern who had worked on the project. Amanda Welch of Rochester, NY, has noticed that the same 24 students receive academic awards in her school. Other students receive nothing. A student might be hardworking, really improving, or struggling to overcome learning disabilities, but Welch wrote that school doesn’t recognize their achievements.
   “When you try really hard and believe you are doing a good job, it is natural to want to be rewarded or recognized,” she wrote. “If schools begin recognizing underdogs who put forth their best effort, I think that there will be more students excelling because they will feel supported and satisfied. We want to walk across that stage at graduation (or even award ceremonies) with confidence, knowing that the people around us believe in us
10. Connections mean so much. Dr. Ivory Toldson of Howard University presented two online seminars for Inside the School based on his research about helping black males achieve. A recurring theme from his presentations, as well as Eklund’s, was that the personal connection is powerful. One teacher’s belief in a student can give that student belief in himself, Toldson said. Just one personal connection between a student and a teacher can help prevent behavior problems, too. Personal connections among teachers are also important, Eklund said. Those connections among colleagues keep teachers from feeling isolated in the classroom. (Breaking Barriers: Reducing Gang Violence, Improving Security and Creating a Culture of Learning in Schools)

Did you learn any teaching lessons this year? Maybe what you’ve learned is as simple as: keep track of the restroom pass. Whatever bits of wisdom you’ve garnered, share it in the comments!

My central noise problem didn’t come from my students, loud hallways, or sound bouncing off the classroom’s hard, bare walls and floors. My noise problem came from the enormous air conditioning unit that hung from my classroom’s ceiling. I don’t think I’m exaggerating when I write that this unit had the dimensions of an office cubicle, but just half as tall.

I know many readers don’t have air-conditioned classrooms and can’t figure out why my jet-engine A/C made such an impact on me. In my part of the country, the heat was unbearable. We had 100 days of 100-degree weather and 100 percent humidity. In my area of the country, air conditioning wasn’t a luxury; it was a necessity.

Another necessity was delivering the curriculum to my students so they learned and met the state standards. Unfortunately, teaching while the air conditioning unit taxied the runway was nearly impossible. I could shout over the A/C, but not for long, and not for seven class periods a day. The positive outcome: fewer lectures from me and more hands-on work from the students.

A noisy A/C unit isn’t the only noise obstacle to overcome in the classroom. Here are three noise problems and five possible solutions. Your obstacles and solutions are welcome in the comments!

Loud work groups. Every time you ask the students to form groups, the teacher next door begins to pound on your wall to let you know how loud everyone is. Alright, maybe she’s not pounding on the wall, but the noise is bad.

I encouraged my students to make eye contact with their group members and then silently point to the place in the room where they’d meet. No one was to drag chairs along the floor, but rather pick them up. We’d practice this like a silent fire drill, especially when the class was squirrely. It’s a good way to encourage quiet as well as movement.

As for the loud work group, I’ve found that when groups are making plans for Saturday night instead of making their story map, the volume increases a lot. The key to decreasing noise is to walk among the groups, monitor their progress, and use a low-volume voice yourself.

Loud teacher talk. You know the science teacher down the hall who hollers at her students to get their attention? Sure, her yelling was effective in the beginning of the school year, but now her students just tune her out with all of the other noise in the room.

Talking over the students is never a good idea. Always wait for students to be quiet to start talking. Never raise your voice. Project to the back of the room, but let them strain just a little to hear you. In other words, model the voice your students should use.

Have activities ready to go right when your students enter the room so they’re quiet and at work when the bell rings. Never shout at a misbehaving student; in fact, approach the student, kneel down to her level, and talk to her in a quiet voice so you don’t disrupt the class further. If the student off-task behavior is minor, use a hand gesture instead to mime picking up a pencil or put a finger to your lips to indicate silence.

End-of year whooping. Those of you who are looking at the last days or weeks of school don’t need a noisy A/C in your rooms to tell you it’s nearly summer vacation. You can figure out the time of year based on the amount of noise and chatter your students produce. You think it’s bad now, wait until half way through your last final exam. Some kids have completed the exam and are fidgeting and whispering. It won’t be long until the whispering reaches a crescendo and no one can concentrate on the second essay question.

In an ideal world, your administration will have given you a hand with the final exam crowd and allowed you dismiss the test takers as they finish their exams. Students exit the building through the nearest set of doors and aren’t let back in.

If you don’t teach in the ideal world, my plan B isn’t going to be very helpful. Plan B is to rely on your classroom procedures. The best way shut down disruptive test takers is to lay down your testing expectations months ago and shut them down consistently. Students who have finished with the test should begin on the independent activity on the board. It’s a great scheme if you have another unit to teach, but if the clock’s ticking ever closer to the final bell, having another assignment isn’t going to work very well.

Your plan C can include high-interest reading materials such as old magazines from the school Library Materials Center, the day’s newspaper, and some supermarket tabloids. You can also give students the opportunity to work on one missing assignment for partial credit. You might offer a puzzle that’s relevant to your discipline and offer students one or two extra credit points for completing it. In other words, plan C is finding materials to keep them quiet and working while the other kids test.

These three suggestions to lower classroom noise are helpful, but none would have solved my A/C problem. Have you overcome a noisy problem in your classroom? Anyone have an echo? Have you had a good experience with the one-foot voice technique? Let’s start a discussion in the comments.

Feel about it? How do I feel about it? “Well,” I answered truthfully, “I’m not sure what you mean, but I will say that without good discipline in a school very little learning takes place.” I went on to talk about the importance of a good school discipline plan, of consistency, of communication with parents. All the while I was wondering, why is this such a major issue here?

It was a small rural high school, and frankly, I figured the kids would be pretty well behaved. My first week on the job was a real eye-opener. There were fights in the halls. The f-word was part of everyday speech. Kids were disrespectful to teachers, and teachers were impatient with kids. One teacher pushed a student against the lockers. My office was inundated with discipline referrals.

I had taken the job with dreams of developing curriculum, upgrading technology, and implementing new initiatives. It was abundantly clear in a few days that nothing like this was going to happen until we got the house in order.

The first thing I did was meet with the faculty to address the issue of discipline directly. They knew they had lost control of the situation and were ready to offer full cooperation to restore order. We put together a committee composed of teachers, staff, parents, and students to develop a school discipline plan. The money I had planned to spend on curriculum development went to classroom management training. When the plan was finished, my assistant and I talked with students in small groups to explain the plan. We mailed the plan to every home and held several open forums for parents to ask questions. It became clear that most students and parents supported the plan, and many seemed relieved that order might be restored in the high school.

Things were a little rough that first month as students tested the plan. The turning point came in November at a home basketball game. Our team lost, and at the end of the game one of our students, on a dare, jumped out of the stands and punched the opposing point guard, breaking his nose. The incident occurred literally before hundreds of people – students, faculty, parents, and community members – all of whom would be watching to see what happened next.

Untoward incidents like this were covered in the school-wide discipline plan, and we simply followed the guidelines. We had been careful to check with our school’s attorney to be sure that our plan adhered to state education regulations before our school board adopted the discipline plan. Consequently, we knew it was within the school’s purview to hold a disciplinary hearing and suspend the student (with home instruction) for a substantial amount of time. You can be sure that the students, along with everybody else in the community, knew then that we were serious about our behavioral expectations.

Of course, the question is, how does a school get to the point that my school was at when I first arrived? In this particular case, there had been a series of administrative turnovers, so every couple of years the priorities changed. There was no adopted discipline code, so school discipline was something that was randomly applied to individual students rather than a part of the entire school culture. Teachers felt that they were not supported by administration, and some students realized that there were few in any consequences for poor behavior (the student who hit the opposing player earned the first suspension in years). Some teachers just gave up; others became angry. Still others were intimidated. Teacher absenteeism was high.

Caught in the middle were the kids who just wanted to come to school every day to learn and socialize in a safe environment.

The school turnaround didn’t occur overnight, but at the end of two years of consistent application of the discipline plan, things greatly improved. Besides working with students and parents, the assistant principal and I also worked closely with individual teachers who had developed some bad habits in their interactions with students. We addressed directly the issue of forcing kids into a corner so that they felt they had to save face by being disrespectful. We talked with teachers about speaking individually to students and not embarrassing them in front of others. Changing some of these habits that had developed over the years took time, but eventually teachers and staff recognized that the behavioral expectations of the school culture applied to students and the adults who worked with them. Poor choices carried consequences for both.

Before coming to this school, I had been fortunate enough to work in other schools, both as a teacher and an administrator, that were well-run with clear behavioral expectations. I knew what school discipline was supposed to look like, and I also knew that the great majority of kids don’t like confrontation, don’t want classes disrupted, and don’t want trouble. They want to have input and freedom, but they want the adults to be in charge.

As it turns out, kids and adults actually do have more freedom to learn, to interact with one another, to experiment, and to simply laugh and have fun when behavioral expectations are part of the everyday school culture. Above all else, our students deserved to learn in a safe environment.

How does your ideal principal feel about student discipline? How does your ideal principal handle the f-word or student-teacher disrespect? How do you handle it in your classroom? Please share your stories in the comments for all of us to benefit.

Retired superintendent and former teacher Suzanne Tingley is the author of How to Handle Difficult Parents: A Teacher’s Survival Guide (Cottonwood Press 2006). You can read her blog, Practical Leadership, in Scholastic’s Administrator’s section. http://blogs.scholastic.com/practical_leadership/

Cheating isn’t new with the 21st century; according to Justin Crozier, it’s been around since the invention of the standardized test in China (Han dynasty, 206BC-23AD). The tests were for people who wanted to enter into government service and they were amazingly hard. Test takers had to memorize Confucius’ Four Books and Five Classics. The amount of the material was so vast and the incentive for success was so large, that cheating flourished. Scholars could purchase miniature books that they could conceal in their palms, shirt lapels often had crib notes in tiny stitching, fans contained cheat sheets, and scholars-for-hire could be rented to take the test under someone else’s name.

Today, according to the authors of Cheating in School, cheating is pretty common in our schools. They cite a study from the Josephson Institute of Ethics, which surveys American high school students about their cheating habits every two years. In 2004, here’s what they found:

• Sixty percent of teens cheated on tests at least once and 38 percent cheated twice or more
• Over one-third of high school students had plagiarized and 18 percent had done so repeatedly
• Eighty-three percent of your students are copying one another’s homework. Well over half (64%) are doing it more than once

These same kids, the study found, value honesty and ethics. Ninety-three percent believe that integrity and good character were important qualities. However, two-thirds of these students also said that successful people did what they had to do to succeed, even if some people might consider the methods to be cheating.

So, while she was finishing up a test, my kid left her seat, took a piece of paper out of her binder, and went back to her chair. The teacher stopped talking to the class and stared at her. In front of the class, he asked her what she was doing. My daughter was so flustered, she didn’t respond. He asked her again, still in front of the class. She stammered something. The teacher approached her and gave her, and the class, a lecture about cheating and how he should give her a zero.

Students cheat for a variety of reasons. Sometimes, like their ancient Chinese counterparts, the kids just find the subject matter too overwhelming. They also cheat because:

• They’re afraid of failure
• They didn’t have enough time to study
• They found the material too difficult
• They found the material unimportant and not worthy of study
• They think the teacher doesn’t care
• They feel pressure from friends to share their answers
• They don’t manage their time well
• They think that everyone does it, so they should, too
• They don’t respect/like the teacher
• They don’t like the subject
• They think that cheating doesn’t hurt anyone
• They think it’s easy to cheat, so they should do it

After the teacher confronted my daughter in front of the whole class, my daughter showed him the piece of paper. It was the overflow answer sheet from her test. In other words, she’d been using an additional sheet of paper to record answers that didn’t fit on the test sheet. She mistakenly put it under her books when she moved to the back of the room. Embarrassed and flustered, she left her test unfinished, fled the room, and sobbed in the bathroom.

It’s now April. Even the newest teachers among us have witnessed cheating, but how have you handled it? My theme was: low key. My goal: interrupt class as little as possible and try to keep the kid’s dignity intact. I’ll tell you how I used to do it.

Catching a kid with a cheat sheet. It’s a good habit as a teacher to circulate among your students when they’re completing assignments or taking a test. It’s good practice to do it all the time so that no one thinks your wandering is an unusual occurrence. When you wander, it’s easy to have a quiet word with a student who is off-task, answer a question for a shy student, or observe the kid who is copying answers from the bottom of her sneaker.

I allow the cheating student to finish the test and return to her seat. At the end of class, in private, I pull her aside and ask for her sneaker or her crib sheet. I explain that I understand that she wants to do well in the class, but this isn’t the way to do it. We make a telephone call to her parents and she explains what happened. I offer to give her another test that same day after school and make arrangements with the parents for a ride home. I explain that a second cheating episode will result in a note in my grade book and a report to the office where they can handle the disciplinary action. This technique also works for kids who are texting in their sweatshirt pockets or under the desk. Walking around and being vigilant will alert you to students who aren’t moving a pen, but are texting covertly instead.

Catching a kid with wandering eyes. This one’s relatively easy. Quietly bend down and ask the student with the good paper, the cheatee, to move to a seat away from the cheater. Usually this kid won’t protest; after all the cheatee has studied. The wandering eyes phenomenon is difficult to prove, so I pull the cheater aside and say, “I noticed some behavior that wasn’t usual for you. Did you feel unprepared for today’s test?” I listen to the student. After all, this is a kid who is trying to succeed, even though she’s going about it in the wrong way. I direct the conversation to options the student has before a test to get extra help. I return to my desk and document what happened.

I’m not a perfect teacher. I’ll admit that in my early days in the classroom, I didn’t know what to do with cheaters. I’d yell. That just built resentment. I’d send them to the office to finish their work. I’d hold them after class or I’d tell the football coach. It took me a while to land upon this calm, quiet method of dealing with cheating.

I guess that’s why I expected more of my daughter’s teacher. I left word for him to call me and we spoke on a Saturday morning. I asked him what happened. He said that he was maybe a little upset and over-the-top. I asked him if he verified that my kid had been cheating before he called her out in front of his class. I asked him if she had actually been cheating. Then I asked him how he’d make it right on Monday. I was nice on the phone, because I’ve been on the other end of the line myself. However, I confess that I wanted to make him squirm.

The teacher gave my daughter time to complete her test on Monday. He never apologized for his behavior, either to me or to my daughter. I didn’t force the issue on the phone, but I am disappointed. He passed up an opportunity to win me over and to earn back my daughter’s respect. Instead, he saved his pride and reinforced her resentment. Studies show that a personal connection between teacher and student, a bond of trust and respect, helps students learn. He didn’t just pass up a teachable moment, he passed up an academic one, too.

References:
Crozier, J. (2002) “A Unique Experiment.” China in Focus Magazine. (online) Accessed March 30, 2010 from http://sacu.org/examinations.html.

Davis, S.F., Drinan, P.F. and Bertram Gallant, T. (2009) Cheating in School: what We Know and What We Can Do. San Francisco: Wiley-Blackwell.

What do you think? How do you handle cheating in the classroom? Am I not taking cheating seriously enough? Am I being way too judgmental of my daughter’s teacher? Should I take additional steps? Should I have let it go after that Saturday phone call? Am I being way too dramatic and should let it go already? Let’s discuss.