Six Months That Saved My Life:
After teaching 7th grade science for 21 years, I'm doing something new... not doing it. I'm on leave for 6 months and certainly making the best of it. I've lost weight, worked on the house, gotten to know my kids' lives, visited my dad, and biked through sunny days and winter storms.

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Spring!
New growth and new hope. My December post had quite a bit of gloom in it, so I thought I would balance it with a more positive attitude that reflects the improvements in student grades. Regarding work load and student performance, I simply changed the expectations in order have grades based more on class time activities and less on homework. The number of F's dwindled and more than half the kids in all my classes moved into the A range. Did they amp up their efforts? Not really. I just made the high grades more attainable. Plus... after the grades were high, I didn't add many 'hard' assignments until the quarter closed. Copout? Maybe. But, I'm also a firm believer that students like to continue to get good grades once they are getting them.
It is now the beginning of fourth quarter and I'm back to pushing hard and challenging the kids with extension activities that are open-ended and are designed to go beyond the "just for the points" level of motivation. Funny thing about things like extra credit, though... the kids that don't need it, do it, and the kids that do need it don't do it. More on that topic next time.

It Takes Hard Work to Learn Well
The scores on the unit 5 test have me frustrated. For almost every kid who didn't do well, I can pull up many images and instances of them tuning out in class, being off-task with friends, and/or not responding to my abundant requests for them to pay attention, participate, and follow directions. I wish I could make them see the clear connection between their classroom actions and the grades they receive.
For every test item I gave, I could find the part of an assignment, reading, or activity from which and understanding of the content should have been gained. Everything we do in class is important and every assignment I give is important. The kids have to work hard and play along with me in order to learn the science topics and ideas for this year. Hard work seems prohibitively repulsive to some of the kids in my classes.
No matter how much I try to present each lesson with relevance, engagement, structure, and reward, there is still much action required on the part of the kids for the lessons to turn to learning and the learning to turn to understanding. I'm struggling with the whole idea of how much harder I should work to set them up for success, and how much they should have to work to achieve that success. At this point, I believe that it is in their court (and power) to take me up on what I have to offer.

IRS -- Individual Reward Systems
Here's a thought. What if, instead of having a set of consequences for negative behaviors, I had a set of rewards for positive behaviors? Deposits for being good instead of demerits for being bad. Food? Money? Entertainment? That kind of external reward system doesn't nurture the development of internal motivation, but for some kids it might be novel enough to be effective. Maybe, eventually, "being good" will become rewarding in its own right and they can be weened off of the life-support of external controls.

Creating a Calm and Productive Classroom

The beginning of second quarter creates a clean grade slate for each kid. For those that earned good grades in the first quarter, their efforts will likely continue unabated. For those that didn't, there is a great opportunity for an instantly-rewarding change in class behavior, personal productivity and the increased learning (and grades) that those yield. My role in grades is usually minimal, but based on the fact that there were almost 25% F's in the overall distribution of my classes, I think it is time for me to reign in on some relaxed classroom privileges and impose consequences that have more of a 'cost' to the students than my continual requests for class compliance and self control.

What is the key to effective classroom management? What kind of classroom environment is best for learning and most valued by kids? Of all the parts of teaching that make me think, this one comes up the most. I notice how hard it is for me to get my classes quiet enough for me to give instructions, teach topics, or manage discussions. There is a fragile balance between being an overbearing control freak versus a weak pushover that can't get a class focused, efficient, and productive.

Kids will have almost 50 different teachers by the time that they graduate from high school. Each of those teachers gives themslves the right and duty to try to mold and 'enlighten' their students in various ways and to varying degrees. It is often an unwritten and self-proclaimed right that is rooted in the well-intentioned goal to make the kid a better person.

I beleive that this process should be a two-way street. I believe that students can mold teachers and their practices almost to the same degree. Kids watch teachers, evaluate them, and freely communicate those feelings and evaluations to their friends, but rarely to the teachers themselves.

The purpose of this blog is to serve as an online suggestion box and discussion forum about a few things along those lines including:

• What kind of (realistic) classroom environment is best for learning science?
  
• How can kids know what they need in order to learn best and how can they communicate that with the teacher?
  
• Given the number of kids in a village as well as the limited amount of teacher time and energy, what kind of interractions make a lesson most effective?