Never Play Another Man’s Game

Never Play Another Man’s Game

By jill JENKINS

            In 1983, I went to New Orleans with my former husband.  A group of twelve or thirteen year old boys wagered a bet of twenty dollars with my ex-husband shouting, “I bet I know where you got your shoes at.”  They had me hold the money while they instilled their bit of wisdom (to my delight).  They explained that, “You should never play another man’s game.” They went on to reveal that they had used the preposition “at,” not “from,” because “at” implies the location of an object, while “from” implies its origin.  Since they said, “at,” the location of his shoes were on Bourbon Street in the French Quarter of New Orleans.  Laughing I happily handed them the twenty dollars, a cheap price for the important lesson: “never play another man’s game.” 

            Teachers would be wise to learn from these pint-sized sages.  Several years ago, I had a student-teacher, Miss Greene, who was taking command of my seventh grade language arts classes.  My classes were filled with docile, well-behaved students from an upper-middle class suburban neighborhood whose parents were mostly professionals: computer programmers, doctors, attorneys, and professors. The classes were easily managed; it was an ideal teaching positon (a tub of butter).  Like most seventh grade students, they did not always listen to all of the directions given to them, but considering their age, this is natural behavior.  For those of us who have gone through the change of life, we know what it feels like for our ability to concentrate to turn on and off randomly like a dysfunctional light switch.  Being an adolescent is very similar, but additionally their bottoms and feet are growing so fast that sitting still is a near impossibility. Do you get the idea of what being a hormonal, emotional teenager is like?  Apparently, Miss Greene did not.  She had just given them directions, but they did not immediately comply.  Instead they began clucking like chickens turning to their neighbors to ask what those directions were.  They were confused, but instead of clarifying, Miss Greene burst into tear screeching, “You children never listen!”  Then, she ran from the room leaving me and the bewildered students wondering what had just happened.  I took over and got the children on-task, but the damage was done.  Word spread from period to period.  We made Miss Greene cry and run away.  Suddenly the students realized they had power and they could make Miss Greene play their game.  They began planning bad behavior, manipulating Miss Greene into playing their game and soon my well behaved seventh grade classes became manipulating monsters.

            Most bad behavior can be prevented if the teacher learns the wisdom of those pint-sized sages of New Orleans:  “never play another man’s game.”  Instead make the children play your game.  Come on, you’re the adult.  You’re smarter than a pack of twelve or thirteen year old children.  Use your power of manipulation.  Miss Greene could have easily avoided her mistake.

            First, the best way to avoid the chicken clucking sound is to check for understanding.  Each time you give instructions, select a random student and ask him to repeat your instructions.  If he doesn’t know, call on another student.  Offer rewards like a small pencil eraser with a smile on it or a piece of candy.  There are a myriad of cheap rewards available at The Oriental Trading Company.  If you don’t have a budget for erasers, print off small reward tickets. Mine were “Jenkins Jewels” worth one point when attached to an assignment.  Students never noticed that one point is not worth much when there are 3,000 points available each quarter and does not make much difference in their grade, but they still loved getting them. It doesn’t really matter what the reward is as long as everyone knows that each one is a “winner. . .winner. . .winner. . . chicken dinner.”  Class becomes a fun game and they are more than willing to play your game.  They will pay attention.  Better yet, you are in charge because they are playing your game. 

            Another way to make certain they are playing your game is to break your learning into ten minute segments.  This will force them to pay attention to what is going on in class instead of scheming against you.  “Idle hands are the devil’s workshop.”  Most students have very short attention spans.  If you keep them busy with a variety of different kinds of activities that appeal to a variety of different learning styles (kinetic, visual, audial etc.) you will reach more of your students, but then there is the problem of transitions. How do you create smooth transitions between these activities?  There are several easy methods.  One is to hold your hand up and repeat, “If you can hear me, raise your hand.”  The goodie-two-shoes children will break their backs to be the first to raise their hands, the less confident ones will follow and even the child who is never listening will stop talking and raise his hand (even though he has no clue what is going on, but he doesn’t want to be left behind.) Another method that my neighboring teacher used to use is to clap her hands on the desk once, clap her hands together twice and put her hands in the air.  All of her students would imitate her and they got all of their wiggles out.  I bought a xylophone from Rick Smith author of the Conscious Teaching.  I play three notes on it and they are ready for our next activity. The sound clue tells them to stop, look and listen.  They are playing my game.

            Why do these children play these games?  Often they want someone to set boundaries and stop them from acting out.  They are testing the limits to see how far a teacher will allow them to go.  Other times, they want attention: negative or positive.  I was the third of five children, born one year after John, my brother who had birth defects requiring several surgeries.  A year later, my brother, David was born.  My mother had her hands full with children so close to the same age, but she also cared for her mother who was dying of cancer. I was a child who needed attention. The circumstances made it difficult for my over-worked mother to give it. There was so much squabbling over breakfast that she unilaterally passed a mandate that there would be no talking to each other during breakfast.  We were all to read our cereal boxes and not even look at each other.  While we ate, she was busy cleaning the house and doing the laundry so she could go to our grandmother’s house while we were at school.  As a result, she was not paying much attention to us, except to bark orders to keep eating and stop looking at each other.  To get her attention, I collaborated with my older brother, John, against our younger brother.  While we all appeared to be eating our breakfast quietly behind our cereal boxes, I slid beneath the table, untied my younger brother’s shoes and retied them to the legs of his chair.  Then, ever so quietly, I crept back to my chair.  Everything was quiet until David decided to stand and leave the table.  His chair flipped over, upsetting his milk and our father.  My older brother and I denied any knowledge of this and enjoyed a good show of our parents’ anger.  Do not allow students to be unattended during your class or they will plan some calamity for their own entertainment.  Do not allow them to control the show. 

            When students take control of a class they are not learning the academic curriculum, and they feel frustrated.  Their behavior can become out of control making the situation unsafe for all of the students.  Don’t play another man’s game.  Create your own game and invite the children to play. If you don’t create the only game in town, your students will create one that you do not want to play.  

Where Should States Invest Their Educatonal Dollars: Technology or Teachers?

            

Where Should States Invest Their Educational Dollars:

Technology or Teachers?

    With the current economic situation many state legislatures are forced to make difficult decisions when allocating their educational budgets:  technology or teachers, but is this really such a difficult decision?  Assuming that all students come to school to learn (which they don’t)more technology: more computers, more IPads, more Smart Boards and more computerized education program seems like an easy fix.  Seriously, would you set your five years in room with a plethora of educational toys and no responsible adult to direct his learning?  I don’t think so.  Computers, IPads, ITVs, Smart Boards, Voice Enhancement Equipment, and any number of computer generated testing and teaching programs may enhance education, but they aren’t the core of education. 

                Schools are not learning factories that can be manned by robots and machinery to turn out high quality students.  Students are people.  Some students are highly motivated to learn and can learn virtually independently of others. Often these students learn, but do not develop social skills like Sheldon Cooper in The Big Bang Theory, absolutely brilliant person, but completely socially inept.  In our society, it is not enough to be brilliant.  Students need to develop the communication and social skills to work in a diverse world.  Most students are not highly motivated.  Most people (students included) need someone to direct their learning; someone to spark a flame of curiosity; someone who can be proud of them when they succeed and give them emotional support and encouragement when they fail.  Most of us need a teacher. 

                Technology can enhance learning.  It can make learning exciting and fun, but if a teacher gives students a computer without appropriate direction, the student zips to  bored.com  to play mindless games.  Students need teachers who are passionate about their subjects, who can instill in them a love of learning.  Computers or any other electronic gadget cannot do that.  Anyone who has a teenage child who is texting under the table at dinner can tell you that technology used incorrectly can alienate teenagers more than it can connect them with others.  If you look at the suicide rates among teenagers, or the violent crimes in schools, the last thing our society needs is more alienated young people.  There are far too many deaths of youths from violence and drug over-doses for us not to recognize that there is a problem with youth alienation. Teachers add the human interaction that all people need to learn and grow into responsible adults. Schools need good quality teachers, not more computers.

                How do we attract the right people to be teachers?  Teaching used to be a highly respected career. States have cut salaries and benefits for years. Media has vilified teachers blaming them for every problem in society.  To attract the right kind of teachers, we need to stop thinking teaching is a short-time career that women waiting to get married settle for. Good teachers take a long time to develop, yet some have implied that a teaching career should last be no longer than seven years and be a stepping stone to another career.  What that really means is states don’t want to be responsible for teachers’ retirement.  That is not a good way to attract the brightest and the best to become educators.  Spending money on lavish building and  bulky microphones to hang around teachers’ neck while teachers’ pay is so low that teachers are in the faculty room begging the water department to not turn off their water or are working two jobs to support their families deters the brightest minds from pursuing a career in education.  Where should states invest their educational dollars? Try high quality teachers.

               

Has Technology Reduced Teachers’ Stress or Increased It?

Has Technology Reduced Teachers’ Stress or Increased It?

            Has technology reduced teachers’ stress levels or increased it?  Teachers are connected twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week with electronic grade books, web pages, social media, text-message programs, and computerized instructional programs.  Although all of these programs increase both communication with parents and instructional effectiveness, does it decrease teachers’ stress levels or increase them? 

            What was teaching like forty years ago?  In February of 1976, I was hired in an inner-city high school to replace a teacher who had decided to move back to the middle school.  In those days, we recorded attendance and grades in roll-books containing many pages of large spread sheets.  Because the school had a large mobile population, students were frequently transferring out and transferring into my classes.  As this happened, my neat little alphabetized roll-books became disordered with students crossed out and others added to the bottom.  This meant I had to recreate my roll-books every quarter to maintain some order.  Of course, in today’s world electronic gradebooks hide students that are no longer enrolled and re-alphabetize students when new ones enroll. 

            To determine a student’s grades in those days, a teacher had to decipher that student’s percentage based on the tests and assignments that were given during his enrollment.  This meant that each student’s grade had to be calculated one at a time.  In today’s world, the electronic grade book does this for teachers every time a score is added.  Furthermore, the parents and students can access their grades through their computer, their smart-phone, or have text messages or emails sent to them regularly.  The old roll-book could not do that.

            What happened when the roll-book got lost or stolen?  It did happen.  It happened to me my first year of teaching.  I left my roll-book on the corner of my desk, locked my door and went to supervise a pep rally.  When I returned, my door was still locked, but my roll-book was gone.  Years later, a former student confessed to me the details of this crime.  Three students came to my room during the pep rally.  One of them stood as look-out; one of them unscrewed the vent in the bottom of the door; and the third crawled through the opening, retrieved the roll-book and crawled back.  Afterwards, they replaced the vent and its screws, took the roll-books three miles from the school to the Arctic Circle Dive-In Restaurant.  Next, they dug a hole behind the parking lot, threw the roll book into the hole, poured gasoline on it, and lit it ablaze.  Afterwards, they buried the ashes.  Quite an elaborate plot to get rid of the roll book, but as a novice teacher its loss sent me into a panic.  I asked my principal what I should do.  He suggested that I say nothing.  If I knew my students well enough, I should be able to estimate their grades.  I did and not a single student or parent questioned me about them. 

            I was not the only teacher to have their roll-book stolen.  The science teacher managed a movie theater at night to supplement his income.  One night at the end of quarter, he put a pile of uncorrected tests and his roll-book into a briefcase.  After his shift at the movie theater, he was locking up with briefcase in hand when a robber, thinking he was taking home the nightly receipts from the movie theater, pushed a gun in his back and demanded the briefcase.  The teacher gave it to him knowing how disappointed the thief would be when he discovered the uncorrected tests and the roll-book.  In today’s world if a student or a thief were to take a teachers’ roll-book (if they indeed had one) it would not matter.  If their school was to burn to the ground and all of the teachers’ computers were destroyed, it would not matter, because all of the grades are backed up on the cloud and no one really knows where that is.  

            Obviously, electronic grade books make grading easier and safer, but is it less stressful for teachers? The constant connection between parents and school has created many helicopter parents.  As these parents become more demanding, the stress level for teachers increases.   For example, at the end of seventh period one afternoon, one mother was waiting outside my door anxiously inquiring whether her daughter, Elizabeth, had turned in her assignment that period since she did not see it on the grading program.  I had to explain to this parent that I have to actually read the assignments before assigning them a grade or entering that grade into the electronic grade book. Since I taught seven periods (not six periods with consultation like I had 40 years ago) with 40 students in each class period, I had to read 280 papers before I could record the grades.  In another instance, on a Friday I had collected all 280 of my ninth grade students’ ten-page research papers and had gone home for the weekend.  About midnight, my husband went into Sudden Cardiac Arrest.  Needless to say during that next week while I sat next to my husband in intensive care watching him in his drug induced coma, the papers were not a high priority; nevertheless, I was bombarded with angry emails demanding to know when their son or daughter’s paper would be corrected and recorded on the grading program.  Electronic grade books are easier and improve communication, but I can’t say they reduce stress.

            Other applications that have vastly improved communication between parents and teachers include: school and teacher web sites, Twitter, Facebook, and Remind 101 Scholastic Read 180, Accelerated Reader, Scholastic Reading Inventory Test, STAR, My Access Writing Program and many others improve instruction and allow teachers to evaluate students’ learning and individualize instruction. 

            Facebook and Twitter may allow student to access their teacher with particular questions about assignments, but also can create problems for teachers.  For example, I heard of one teacher who posted a picture of her enjoying a beer in the Beer Gardens in Germany during a summer vacation on her personal Facebook page.  When she returned to school the next fall, she was fired because a parent saw the picture and felt it was inappropriate for a teacher to be seen drinking alcohol.  Be very careful with social media. Make sure you have very restrictive security and be cautious about what you post.  If you use it to communicate with students make sure you are only communicating about how to complete an assignment.  Keep it very professional or it can create issues.  A better choice is Remind 101 which allows you to text reminders about assignments to parents and students, but they cannot respond to them.  If students or parent needs to communicate with you, they can still talk to you in class or email you.  

            Although technology improves communication and the quality of instruction, it adds extra work for teachers.  As a teacher, I usually arrive an hour early to answer emails, update my web site, sent out text messages on Remind 101, and update the agenda on my classroom white board.  After school each day, I stay an hour to respond to writing on My Access, enroll new students in Accelerated Reading, and update my grades on our electronic grade book.  It is like the laundry; if you don’t keep up, it will overwhelm you. 

            Teaching can be a stressful job.  Teachers need to take a break from it once and while, so learn where the off- button is on your computer.  Don’t always take it home with you. Don’t put your school email on your smart phone and know when to leave that computer at school.  When you need a break, take one. My dear Aunt Fae, once told me about a teacher she had an Onequa Elementary School who 70 years ago.  She told me how “Old Lady Kennelly pulled off her wig, and as bald as an eagle ran around the school and swung about the tricky bars.  Don’t be “Old Lady Kennely.”  A relaxed, happy teacher is a better teacher.