The Pitfalls of Free-Range Teaching

Today, Free-Range Parenting has become popular among young parents.  Instead of establishing boundaries for children, parents allow children to explore life and learn from their mistakes.  When I began my career as a teacher forty years ago, a similar approach to teaching was popular.  Workshops encouraged teachers to allow students to discuss rules and consequences and create classroom rules that all of the students could agree on with appropriate consequences.  The teacher behaved only as the facilitator and the students democratically created their own learning environment.  It sounds good, but it doesn't work. First, it wastes valuable teaching time, second, it jeopardizes the physical and emotional safety of other students and third, it does not prepare students to live in the real world.

The first problem with Free-Range Teaching is there are a plethora of learning skills the teacher is responsible to teach and a limited amount of time to accomplish it.  Having students reach a consensus on anything takes a lot of time.  Time that could better be spent learning skills that would serve the student  It is more time effective for the teacher to develop boundaries for the students to learn in a safe, inviting climate than to spend a week of learning time discussing if students should be in their seats or near their seats when the bell rings.  Furthermore, teachers have classrooms filled with thirty to forty students.  Imagine the chaos if each of those students were discovering their own behavioral limits, Nothing would be accomplished.  Classroom rules need thought. A teacher should create a few general rules that safeguard learning and student safety with reasonable consequences.  Too many rules and too specific rules both confuses students and provides ideas for the creative young mind to challenge.  There is no way to develop a rule for every possible scenario, so general rules are more effective.

The second problem with Free-Range Teaching is students who are exploring their environment are either making it impossible for others to learn or making others feel uncomfortable and unsafe.  One year an associate teaching The Diary of Anne Frank proposed a learning activity where half of the class would be superior to the other half of the class.  The superior half could ridicule, misuse and abuse the other half without consequences. She was hoping the students would understand the Jewish experience in Europe under Nazi rule.  Fearing that worse, I went to the principal and begged him to intervene, because adolescents enjoy bullying and I was certain that this project would end with a student either physically or mentally injured.  Fortunately, he agreed and stopped the project before it began.  The problems with eliminating boundaries is children are self-centered and do not recognize how their behavior affects others.  It is the responsibility of the adult to protect other children.  Eventually, these students will move up Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs and become developmentally  capable of empathizing with others. Children and adolescents are often amused by the pain they can inflict on weaker students. It empowers them.  Unfortunately students who are bullied, don't feel safe or comfortable in school.  When a child does not feel safe, it is difficult for him/her to concentrate or learn.    The negative feeling can ultimately cause them to avoid school altogether.  When I was teaching in California, a young lady was ridiculed and assaulted by a group of boys while walking home from school.  The girl did not return to school for a week.  When I learned what had happened I discussed the events with the  principal who felt that since it did not happen on school property, it was not his jurisdiction.  Since the young men were allowed to attend school without consequences, the girl was denied her educational rights.  As educators, we need to insist that rules are followed to protect the rights of all students.

The third problem with free-range teaching is it does not prepare students to live in the real world. People live in a world where there are rules.  Learning to accept and follow the rules of society is also an important learning skill.  Few of us make the rules of our society or live in a world where we can explore the consequences of our choices unhampered by rules.  Rules should be designed to help students be successful and safe.  There are those who say that learning from mistakes and making decisions about the classroom rules teaches students to govern themselves. Although that sounds effective and their may be some value to it, it is not going to help the child when he loses his first job because he believes punctuality is unnecessary or honoring the company's dress code is obsolete. None of us live in a vacuum. The choices we make affect others, so trusting that everyone follows the rules is imperative. If the child never learns to follow rules established by an outside authority, he/she is going to have a difficult time with authority figures. 

Finally, what gives the teacher the right to create the rules?  That is an essential part of the responsibility of being a teacher.  That is the primary role of the parent; that is the primary role of the teacher.  Being in charge, is never easy, but if the teacher behaves as if he/she is unsure of the classroom expectations, the students will lose respect for the teacher and the class will run amuck. When my daughter was in sixth grade, I received a phone call from the principal of her school.  "Jill," Mrs. Puhr said, "I have to share this with you.  There was a paint fight in the art room when a substitute was present and I called each student in one at a time to learn who was involved.  When I asked your daughter, Jeanette, who was responsible, she said, 'The teacher. She told all of us to do whatever we wanted when we finished our assignment, and when you are in the sixth grade, a paint fight might be just what you wanted to do'" After Mrs. Puhr and I finished laughing she said, "You know she is right."  Young children often are not capable of making good decisions. They need leaders. The role of the teacher or the parent is the leader, so be a good leader.

Three Methods to Motivate the Unmotivated

Three Methods to Motivate the Unmotivated

By Jill Jenkins

          Most people who enter the ranks of educators have been academic bound their entire life.  Like me, many love to read. Visiting a library or a book store was more enticing than an ice cream parlor. I slept with a flashlight so I could extend reading deep into the night and I secretly wrote poetry and the family newspaper on my father’s old Remington typewriter.  I also remember the first student who shrugged his shoulders and said, “So” when I informed him he could fail my class if he didn’t complete his project.  It was unfathomable to me that a student could be so apathetic, but unmotivated students are more common than novice teachers realize. Here are three methods that I used over my forty year career with some success to motivate the unmotivated.

#1 Focus on the Rewards

“The moment you doubt whether you can fly, you cease for ever to be able to do it.”
― J.M. Barrie, Peter Panhttp://www.goodreads.com/quotes/tag/peter-pan

            Many students have never experienced success as a result they have no reason to believe that success is possible.  Instead of working toward being successful, they often entertain themselves with driving the teacher crazy by harassing other students.  When I was teaching in an alternative education school in California, I had many students like this.  From a workshop, I learned a method of discussing outcomes and rewarding students with frequent positive post cards when they had a small victory.  Instead of focusing on the grade, have them discuss what would their parents  will feel if they brought home a successful report card or how would they feel if they could make their parents proud.  Positive feeling is a strong motivator.  First, students must believe they are capable of succeeding.  Many students never realized that this was possible, but if the teacher takes baby steps, the teacher can sell "the idea of success" to them.  Like Peter Pan, a teacher has to help students believe that success is possible and then give them the skills to succeed.  The younger they experience success, the more likely it will continue.

 

#2 Confer With Each Child Individually

“Never believe that a few caring people can't change the world. For, indeed, that's all who ever have”. Margaret Mead
Read more at: http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/keywords/caring.html

            Students perform for other people that they care about.  They care about people who care about them.  As a result, if a teacher takes time to discover what difficulties a child might be facing and what needs the child has, that child is much more likely to perform.  For example, a young man, Randy, was sent by his parents to a parochial school to improve his academic performance, but Randy didn’t want to be separated from his friends, so he created havoc at the school hoping to be returned to his friends at his former school.  If his teacher had taken the time to talk to him and help him make the transition into a new peer group, the school and Randy could have had a successful experience.  Even if the teacher stands in the hall between class changes and interacts with students, a great deal of information can be gained.  Simply speaking to each student cordially when passing in the hall can increase the likelihood that they will be more successful in the classroom.  Students need to learn to set small goals and large goals to be successful in school and life.  Having frequent individual conferences with student enables the teacher to direct the student in creating and adjusting goals while reassuring the student that an adult cares about his/her success.  Remember some students have parents who do not have the time or the knowledge to have these types of interactions with their child. 

 

#3 Establish Classroom Procedures

“Almost all quality improvement comes via simplification of design, manufacturing... layout, processes, and procedures.” Tom Peters
Read more at: http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/keywords/procedures.html

            Students with learning disabilities or are on the autistic spectrum are more successful when they know what to expect each day in a classroom.  As a result it is a good idea to establish a set of procedures.  When students are confronted with changing classroom procedures, they often become apprehensive and even aggressive. If they know that each day, they will need a book, a notebook and a pen or pencil, they are more likely to bring them.  If they know that each class begins with certain activity: silent reading, an interactive debate, or a problem to solve, they waste less time getting down to the business of education.   These procedures can be set to music, timed and my even involve movement.  I know of one teacher who had “line leaders” pass out materials while dancing to rock music.   I know another teacher who passed out treasure maps to students as they entered the room.  Her students had to find the answers to a quiz by searching the room for clues.  I know another who gave a daily quiz on the work from the previous day.  Repetition of the same pattern is the key to success. 

Final Thoughts

            There are many methods that can be used to reconnect students to their education.  Don’t give up on them.  The best method is to discuss with other teacher a tactic that they might be using that might work on that particular students.  Each child is an individual, so there is no one method that works on all of them.  For example I had one student who wanted to drop out of high school and get a job.  I brought the classified ads to class and sat while he looked at prices of apartments, cars and I made him aware of the price of food, utilities, gas and insurance.  When he added it all together, he decided to complete his education and try to find a job that paid more than minimum wage.  Years later, I encountered the young man who was married with children living in a nice home in the suburbs.  He thanked me because that small exercise had helped him understand the importance of completing a trade school education and learning a trade that he enjoyed.  Motivating the unmotivated: it can happen.

 

 

 

 

         

 

 

Measure Twice and Cut Once

Pride: Measure Twice and Cut Once

 By Jill Jenkins

When my father was a child, he and his brother lived with their mother in his grandfather’s home.  To teach his two grandsons the value of work, his grandfather offered each boy a nickel if they mowed the lawns and clipped the bushes weekly.  During the depression, each boy could see a movie at the Tower Theater, and enjoy a bag of popcorn and a coke with their nickel. With their ticket stub in hand, they could cross the street and purchase a hotdog and a drink for lunch, all valuable commodities.  The lesson was also to teach the boys that a job done was well was worth the time spent.  When the boys completed their tasks, they would ask their grandfather to inspect their work.  He would point out the strips of lawn left uncut. (My husband calls these lawn-hawks, Mohawk haircuts for lawns.) The boys were instructed to cut the lawn again from another direction before retrieving their grandfather.  He would find the bushes that were uncut and they would return to work.  After a time, the two boys learned to take pride in their work and pay attention to the details before calling their grandfather. Each weekend, they cut the lawn twice in different directions to ensure that no “lawn-hawks” existed.   In today’s world, parents and teachers are often in such a hurry that they forget to take the time and require that a child complete a task correctly.  Teachers might recognize the value of having students’ revise their essays, but shirk at the idea of correcting each essay at least twice.  Who could blame them with over forty students in each of class? How do we promote a sense of pride in ones work to students who are also handicapped with demands from all sides?

 

Shop teachers promote the idea that students measure twice and cut once to avoid costly mistakes.  This is an idea that other teachers and parents need to promote.  Spending time writing and rewriting compositions and checking mathematical problems for simple mistakes will improve a student performance.  Perhaps like my great grandfather, teachers and parents will have to withhold reward until a child has not only completed a task, but completed a task correctly.  Students reach whatever expectations adults hold them to.  If teachers and parents hold students accountable to a high level of performance, they will achieve it.  Yes, it will be difficult, but it can be done.

 

During my teaching career, the teachers in my department demanded that students achieved a minimum level on all writing assignments to receive any credit.  Any student could rewrite a paper for a higher score, but those students who performed lower than an established writing goal were required to revise it until they reached the minimum score.  There was a significant improvement in the students writing.  Yes, teachers had to work harder.  Yes, some parents complained to the principal, but overall the policy improved struggling students’ scores. 

What about on end of the year tests where students cannot retake the test? Once students understand that substandard work isn’t appropriate, they begin to spend more time on their first draft.  Since most of these tests are untimed, encourage students to take their time, proof-read their essays and revise not only for technical errors but for content before submitting.  After one such test, one of my former students commented that even after he did this he wished the state recognized that writing is a process and if he had had an opportunity to revisit his essay two of three days later, he could have improved it because he would have seen it with new eyes.  There is some wisdom to that, but the test is what it is. 

 

As a teacher, I hope they skills they develop in my class have a longer effect than an end of the year test.  I hope they recognize that doing a job well may mean they take the time to do it right whether it is writing an essay, repairing an engine, or mowing the grass. 

 

The Final Hours

The Final Hours

The end of the school year is filled with students driving motorcycles down hallways, a barrage of water balloons, book inventories and parents demanding that school remain meaningful until the last day. How does a teacher face this insanity without resorting to inappropriate means?   Unbelievable demands are placed on educators during the last days of school.  To survive everyone in the school needs to work together.  Put down the bottle and relax.  There are solutions to the end of the year blues.

 

To facilitate the nonsense, teachers need to work before school and after school to complete inventories and storage of books and equipment. Dealing with both the behavior needs of disruptive, agitated students and the requirements at the end of the year will drive any teacher crazy.  If teachers try to do both simultaneously, they will not do either well.  Furthermore, every teacher is going to need help.    Teachers need to be able to work together to find time-out places for students too full of anticipation to control themselves in classrooms.  This is much more effective than putting Duct Tape on their mouths which will get a teacher into trouble.  Teachers need to develop interactive lessons that require students to move to enable them to concentrate during the final days of school.  A good child is a tired child, or is that dog?   Administrators need to design a plethora of activities to redirect students’ inappropriate behavior to more constructive modes.  What about a faculty assembly, a field trip or a field day on the lawn? Help the children burn off that energy in positive ways.   In all, the school needs to work as a team to survive the last days of a school year.

            Parents often wait until grades for the year are already finalized to confront teachers about an assignment their son/daughter missed ages ago.  To avoid this, teachers need to be vigilant during that final quarter to not only grade and record assignments in a timely manner, but to call or email parents often throughout that quarter about any lapses in their child’s academic work.  There is nothing worse than being attacked by a parent the last hour of the last day about an assignment or project due three weeks before that the child failed to complete.  Yes, the teacher may have done everything he/she is required to do, but it won’t make anyone less frustrated when that mother is screaming at the teacher.  Please do not resort to the thoughts that are flying through a teacher's frustrated mind:   “I put the grade on-line, maybe if you didn’t take your son/daughter on a Caribbean Cruise during the last month of school, you would have had time to check them.” Or even worse, “The only hope for your child is retroactive birth control.”   This is like opening Pandora’s box.  No one wants to face that kind of heat. 

            To curtail the hallway shenanigans, teachers need to stand in the hallways before school, during class change and after schools.  Students are far less likely to throw those water balloons or ride their motorbike down the hall if they are being monitored.  I know everyone is buried in make-up assignments to correct, inventories and polishing those desks, but believe me keeping the students from ripping down the building is more important.  First, the make-up work isn’t quality work.  A student working under duress pressured by an angry parent who forced him/her to complete a month’s worth of work from seven classes in two late nights, does not create quality work.  Don’t spend more time correcting this swill than the student spent creating it.  Second, completing the inventory is easier when there are not students or parents complaining.  by saving the inventory for an early morning or an after school activity, it will be more accurate and teachers will be less stressed.  Third, let the little darlings wash their own desks.  They made the mess; they should clean it up.  Fourth, administrators need to be vigilant about offering early vacations to students who are unable to maintain a certain level of decorum.  Otherwise, it will be pandemonium as students compete for the most mischievous behavior.  I have seen it all: a student who lit the school on fire, another lit a teacher on fire and one stacked picnic tables to create his own Leaning Tower of Pisa.  Finally, the district administrators need to be more conscious of the problems faced at schools in the final days.  This is not a good time to resurface the parking lot of the middle school making one hundred faculty and staff members park their cars on the street while parents, school buses and confused children wander across wet asphalt.  Recess is not a good time to deliver a semi-truck full of playground woodchips and uninstalling and installing windows over the heads of high school students taking final examinations could be ruinous to their concentration. The teachers, the school and even the district have to work as a team to complete the last few days successfully.

            Most importantly remember in a week or two teachers can lie in their hammock in the shade of their walnut tree sipping an ice tea or a cocktail.  They will have time to walk their dogs or go to a ball game.  Relax. There might still be a student in the boys lavatory without his clothing or a couple locked in an amorous embrace in the dumpster behind the school, but when the teachers lock their doors, turn in their keys and drive away for the summer, they are free.   The students will forget the stress the second that final bell rings and “they are free at last.”  Teachers will also find their freedom.  If it is too late, there is always next year.

Stay Out of The Faculty Room: A Cesspool of Virulent Negativity

Stay Out of The Faculty Room: A Cesspool of Virulent Negativity

By Jill Jenkins

            Poisonous people are lurking in the staff room spreading negativity, seeking the alliance of others and turning the staff room into a virulent cesspool of negativity. Such people can destroy the morale at a school, render TLC’s inoperative and destroy the self-esteem of developing young minds.  How do they operate? Their negativity spreads like a virus through the school beginning with a simple whine that a particular student is incorrigible and an attempt to cajole others into justifying their prognosis by agreeing.  Armed with allies, the virulent teachers stop searching for new perspectives and techniques for helping the struggling child.  Worse yet, the teacher never considers that he/she owns the problem.  To help the child, the teacher must change what he or she is doing.  The problem has no hope of being resolved.

            Once this virus is released in a faculty room, it continues to multiply.  Other members of the faculty begin to avoid responsible collaborative attempts to share positive solutions to troubling classroom behavior by whining to each other.  The shared alliance of whining is destructive to students with learning handicaps, emotional issues and irascible dispositions. Not only will the challenges associated with their unique learning styles be ignored, the teacher now armed with allies may feel empowered to mistreat them or ask for the student’s removal from their classroom.  Students are very perceptive to teachers’ emotions.  If a teacher does not sincerely desire a student to do well and care that that student succeeds, the student will know and act accordingly.  If a teacher feels hostile to a student, he or she will know and reflect that hostility back to the teacher.  Self-fulfilling prophecy is not a joke.  A teacher with a bad attitude can negatively impact students’ self-esteem and have a long lasting effect on students’ abilities to succeed.

            The toxic teacher with a hostile attitude can negatively affect the attitudes of other teachers.  These emboldened teachers may use this new-found power to usurp authority over school policies, procedures and/or curriculum.  Naturally, not all teachers are going to agree with every policy or procedure in a school or with every curriculum decision made by a district or state, but most teachers comply and do whatever it takes to make successful implementation; however, the toxic teacher not only becomes mavericks who refuse to implement policy or curriculum changes, but encourage others to join their mutiny.  Some conveniently miss meeting so they can fane ignorance.  Others arrogantly refuse to implement chances and announce their insubordination vociferously. Regardless of the tactic, the results are the same: they are the weakest link.  As an administrator this behavior needs to be addressed directly if it is going to be curtailed and quickly before it spreads.  If it is not curtailed, their employment must be terminated before it become viral.

            Poisonous people are everywhere: your family, your community and your work.  Avoiding these people can help a teacher maintain a positive outlook.  Avoid the staff room and take a walk during lunch.  Select your friends from colleagues with positive attitudes.  If you are an administrator provide in-service classes on the importance of teamwork and positive attitudes.  One book that you might want your faculty to read is Leadership and Self-Deception: Getting Out of the Box by The Arbinger Institute which discusses making decisions when you are not in the box.  Discussions or even in-service classes offered by this organization might improve teachers' attitudes and productivity. If you have a poison person in your staff, document his/her behavior, and address the matter directly with the individual and quickly before their attitude spreads. .  Nevertheless, if they don’t acquiesce, termination could prevent a mutiny.

Four Ways To Reduce Cheating or How is Cheating on a Test like Snagging a Bagel?

?

Four Ways To Reduce Cheating or

How is cheating on a test like snagging a bagel?

By Jill Jenkins

Stephen D. Leavitt and Stephen J. Dubner’s book Freakonomics examines the story of Paul Feldman who rewarded his department by bringing a knife, bagels and cream cheese every Friday.  He set out a basket with a sign indicating that the cost of each bagel with cream cheese was one dollar.  Ninety-five percent of those who took a bagel dutifully complied and put a dollar in the basket proving that most people are honest.  When Paul Feldman quit his job to start a company delivering bagels to other business, he kept data on how honest people really were.  Despite that fact that Feldman’s business still operated on the honor code requiring people to pay for the bagels they ate unsupervised, he was able to earn a salary equal to that at his previous job.  It is true that in companies where the employees did not know Paul Feldman, the percentage of those who paid was lower, 80-90%, but it was not enough to disprove that most people are honest.  Although putting an open basket out to collect dollars in an environment where everyone knew him and liked him, was not as effective as putting out a locked box.  No one took the cash out of the basket, took the basket or the box, but they were more likely to pay if there was an appearance of security. Furthermore, when the employees liked their boss, they were more likely to pay for their bagels.  Likewise, in smaller businesses employees were also likely to pay for their bagels.  At businesses where fewer employees paid for their bagels a simple note indicating that he was going to have to raise the price of the bagels since not everyone was paying fairly, the percentage of those paying increase, probably due to peer pressure. 

What can we gleam from the bagel data to reduce cheating in schools? First, like those bagel munching employees most students are honest and don’t cheat.  They are motivated by incentives: economic (which means grades in school because that is how we pay them); social, and moral.  There are four methods teachers can use to reduce cheating: first, make it difficult to cheat; second, develop an amicable relationship with students (guilt works); third, develop a sense of comaraderie among students; and fourth, make the consequences meaningful and significant.

One: Make Cheating Difficult

            Just as collecting bagel money in an open basket proved less effective than a locked box, failure to properly monitor students during testing could prove too tempting for students suffering from wandering eyes.  Technology makes cheating even easier for students who often share log-in and passwords to make a few dollars or for the friendship of a pretty girl or a handsome young man.  As a result, it is imperative that a teacher set up her/his room so access to all  students and monitor logins and test taking.  Be visible. (Don’t you slow down when you see a highway patrol car on a freeway?) Do not correct papers or leave the room while your students are testing. Absolutely, do not go to the faculty room to eat a bagel.

            Another problem I encountered while teaching in an affluent middle school was students who either plagiarized papers or parents who wrote their students papers for them.  In fact, one young man confessed when confronted that he felt overwhelmed, so his mother sent him to bed and copied a paper from the inter-net for him to submit.  A colleague suggested a solution: have students write their rough drafts in class.  I took it a step further.  On the first day I gave students a prompt, modeled how to unpack it and create a prewriting activity: an outline or a cluster.  Then I passed prompts out to groups of four students and wandered about the room helping them as they unpacked each prompt and completed a prewriting activity.  On the second day, I gave each student a prompt and the class period to unpack it, create either an outline or a cluster and write a rough draft.  I collected these at the end of the class period and recorded them in the roll book.  The next day, the students met in the computer lab, picked up their pre-writing and rough draft as they entered and had another class period to type the paper into the computerized writing program, My Access.  Before the next week, I printed each student’s paper.  The next week, I returned the typed papers to a different student and walked the class through a rubric so the student could evaluate the paper they were given and make constructive advice stressing the motto: “Friends don’t let friends turn in bad papers” ensuring that they would make positive and civil recommendations.  The next day, the students met again in the computer lab, retrieved their papers and were given a class period to revise their papers.  The process eliminated the problem of parents writing their children’s papers; it reduced the students’ stress because they were completing the assignment during class time and were given enough support that they felt more capable to complete the work successfully; and it improved the students’ ability to write.

Two: Create a Positive Relationship

When the employees knew and liked their boss, more paid for their bagels.  Likewise, fewer students will cheat if they have a positive relationship with their teacher.  Relationships are important to people.  How do you create a positive relationship with students?   Spend time in the hallway chatting with your students about their lives outside of the classroom.  Complement each student, a little sugar goes a long way.  Find something positive about each student and send a note home to his/her parent describing whatever sterling quality or behavior that student possesses.  If the child does cheat, use it as a learning opportunity to help him/her understand what he/she did that was wrong, why it was wrong, and how he/she could avoid the same errors.  Sometimes appropriate restitution is in order.  For example if a student plagiarizes a paper, perhaps after conferring with his/her parent and the student, he/she could be given an opportunity to rewrite the paper at 80% of the assigned value.  Be cautious of your vocal tones. Do not use anger; instead be disappointed that such a good boy could make such a poor decision.  Guilt is strong force. Don’t attack the child; attack the behavior.  Students who made a bad choice must still accept the consequences, even if they are nice children.

Three: Using Peer Pressure

            In smaller companies with fewer employees, the rate of unpaid bagels was smaller.  Each employee cared that the other employees might think poorly of him if he took a bagel without paying for it.  Children and adolescents care even more about their peers’ opinions than adults do.  As a result, many will choose to cheat to please another student hoping to gain his/her friendship. Teachers cannot control the size of their classes, but they can enhance the effect peers have on each other.  When students are seated in rows and never allowed to interact with each other, they fail to gain a sense of community.  That isolation can lead to more cheating.  At my former teaching assignment, the district decided that each grade level would be assigned to teach Sadlier-Oxford’s Vocabulary in grade seven through twelve.  To our surprise, a clever student had published a webpage with all of the answers making cheating simple.  Although the publishers continued to have these webpages, removed, they would reappear.  As a department, we decided we would approach vocabulary differently.  First, we made the completion of the workbook activities less significant to their grade than the subsequent tests.  Second, we organized students in learning groups of two to four students and gave them class time to complete the workbook activities collaborative during one class period.  Third, we added a variety of learning games to ensure their learning. Fourth we offered extra credit for students who found their vocabulary words in their reading. (Mine were Jenkins’ Jewels worth one point.) Another Jenkins’ Jewel could be earned if your parents signed a note indicating the student had reviewed his vocabulary at home before the test.  Even though the teachers worked collaborative on the workbook activities, they took the tests independently.  Furthermore, we provided each student who received a perfect score a small rubber duckie, a valuable prize for a ninth grade student.  As a result, more students learned the vocabulary and fewer students cheated. When children feel confident in their ability and know the learning material, they are less likely to cheat.  When children feel they are part of a community, they are less likely to risk alienating others in the community by cheating.

Fourth:  Incentives

Incentives can be both positive and negative.  Positive incentives can backfire and result in more cheating if they are too enticing. For example, if I offered students a new I-Pod for perfect scores on their vocabulary tests, students would create a black market of test answers. Rubber Duckies are silly, but lack the value associated with the I-Pod.  The prize or the punishment should not be so insignificant that it does not have the desired effect.  In the book Freakonomics by Stephen D. Leavitt and Stephen J. Dubner, a daycare center in Haifa, Israel wanted to reduce the number of late pick-ups.  They introduced a negative incentive: a three-dollar fine for each child picked-up 10 minutes late.  As a result, the number of late pick-ups increased.  The parents rationalized that they no longer needed to feel guilty about picking their children up late.  If the fine had been more significant they may have reacted differently.   If the fine exorbitant, they would have felt hostile.  Students like these parents need to feel that cheating carries such a high penalty that it is not worth the effort.  Losing all of the credit for a particular test may not be enough, but a one grade drop in their academic grade might be.  Choose your incentive carefully because a penalty too large can create animosity and be counter-effective.  More important there is powers in numbers.  If the school develops a school-wide policy on cheating requiring all teachers to administer the same rigorous incentive, cheating will be reduced. However, this means administrators need to discipline teachers who do not comply with the policy. 

Wise Choices by Schools Improve Students’ Choices

Wise Choices by Schools Improve Students’ Choices

By Jill Jenkins

 

Decisions made in youth affect the economic stability and life-long quality of life.  Many factors affect young people’s ability to make effective decisions:  socio-economic factors, supportive, involved parents, available educational resources, perceived ability and sense of self-worth.  Educators may have no control over socio-economic factors or involved, supportive parents, but there are ways to improve their choices and thus their quality of life.

Lower Socio-Economic Groups

            Although teachers cannot change their students’ socio-economic status, there are ways to reduce its negative impact and enhance students’ ability to make productive choices. Many students from lower-economic groups lack access to computers and/or the internet.  Since success has become tied to technology, lack of access to technology can inhibit their ability to be successful.  To resolve this problem, schools can computer labs available to students before school, at lunch and after school.  North Kansas City Schools and the Coquille School District Superintendent Tim Sweeney have another solution.  Both school districts have put WiFi in their school buses so students can access the internet with Chromebooks. Many school districts in rural areas do not have access to internet providers and many students in urban areas cannot afford them.  Providing this service is less expensive than many districts may imagine.  According to the Kanas City Star, “Coquille School District Superintendent Tim Sweeney said that his district was able to convince the Oregon Department of Education to reimburse 70 percent of the equipment cost for two wireless routers, each one coming in at around $1,100. Sweeney said ODE regularly reimburses school districts for student travel-related expenses, since long-distance road trips are just part of the students' reality in rural Oregon.  The district would be responsible for paying the approximately $80 a month bill from Verizon Wireless, the Internet provider used by the district.”   Some internet providers provide low-cost internet connections and computers to low-income students.  For example, Comcast Cable offers $9.95 per month internet connections and low cost lap tops for $149.00.  Schools need to inform parents about this resource in their own language.

 

Supportive Parents

            Most parents want to support their students’ education regardless of their economic situation.  Language barriers and fear of being deported often prevents them from being actively involved.  To help parents become more involved, invitations to parent workshops need to be delivered in the parent’s native language either by telephone or in handwritten invitations.  The human touch will lessen the parents’ anxieties.  Workshops about how parents might help their children with their academic lessons, resources that might be available to help them, and the processes of enrolling in college and finding financial aid would help parents be more proactive in their children’s choices.  Some parents will erroneously believe that since they never received a college degree, their children certainly shouldn’t require one.  I understand.  My father supported a wife and five children on an eighth grade education.  However, those jobs either no longer exist or pay so little that the child’s quality of life would be significantly reduced.  Workshops for parents about the economic advantage of education should begin as early as preschool or elementary school and continue through high school.  Beginning the process in high school is too late.  

Resources

            Resources need to be available for students during, before and after school.  This means that communities need to financially support schools. At South Jordan Middle School in South Jordan, Utah, a group of teachers are paid to provide tutoring during lunch hour (Lunch School or No Zeros Allowed).  Students who are identified by their teachers are given a sack lunch and their classwork is collected in a centralized location.  The student arrives at the location to eat his lunch while working one-on-one on his/her assigned work with a qualified teacher.  The student gets the individualized instruction he/she needs and completes assigned that he/she has chosen not to complete.  Both skills and understanding are enhanced and his/her ability to make responsible decisions is enhanced as he/she is not allowed to choose to be lackadaisical.  Teachers are the greatest resource and computers and the internet are available.  Students who feel teachers’ care about them and want them to be successful are more likely to make more responsible decision in an attempt to foster that relationship.

Perceived Ability and Self-Worth

            Students who do not believe they are capable will not feel confident to make positive decisions.  According to Luis J Rodriguez’s book, Always Running, La Vida Loco: Gang Days in L.A, as a student who spoke no English, he was placed in the back of the room and made to feel inadequate and incapable. A positive, warm environment is essential for a student to feel inspired and motivated to learn.  As a result, teachers spend hours decorating classrooms and bulletin boards.  Classrooms like those in Detroit’s City Schools that are not clean, safe and appealing send a message to students that their learning is unimportant to society.   Education needs the support of the entire community to instill in students that their success is a priority to the larger community.  Students not only need to feel that they can be successful, but that their success is important.  Teachers and schools need to make every effort to support every student with the resources he/she needs to be successful.  Doing all of this to improve students’ confidence (which means no negative language or insulting attitudes) and self-worth will greatly enhance his/her ability to make constructive decisions.

Natural Consequences

            Every action has an equal, and opposite reaction; every choice has a natural consequence.  Students should not be protected from the consequences of their action: whether they are positive or negative.  In order to understand the consequences of hard work, students who choose not to work must be given more supervision to complete the work or suffer the negative consequences.  Lunch school, summer school or weekend schools all provide students with opportunities and consequences.  They get an opportunity to complete work, but they lose the freedom of socializing with their friends during lunch.  Furthermore, students who refuse to take advantage of the opportunity lose more freedom by having to make up the class in the summer.  Parents should not be allowed to interfere with this learning opportunity because teaching students to behave responsible is too important. 

Win-Win

            Having an educated, productive community improves prosperity, reduces those incarcerated, homeless or on welfare.  Everyone wins.  Urban areas are filled with homeless populations who are not only disenfranchised, but a drain on resources.  It is not their fault.  When schools fail to provide students with the skills to make good choices, those students become entrenched in poverty and unhappiness.  Their frustration results in both drug use and increased crime.  Nevertheless, if these same people are given the skills they need to make more appropriate decisions, they become an asset to communities.  Wasting the resources of a bright, capable individual is a travesty.  Properly funding education is an investment not only of the individual, but of the entire society.