Routine

Now that I have finally realized my dream of teaching art at the Chilmark School I have started to experiment with behavior modification in the art room.

This post is about routine. I think that school should be safe and predictable (which does not exclude adventurous and fun) so daily routines are important.

Every art class students come in and look at a prompt on the board, they then silently draw for 3 minutes. It is a warmup/transition into the art room, once they are finished they hand them to me, and sit on the rug.

The second half of the transition is reading the Word of the Week on the board. It is usually an art vocabulary word that aligns with the state standards and relates to the demonstration/lecture.

Once we have warmed up and students have read and discussed the Word of the Week, I tell them the plan for the day, and they get to work as quickly as possible.

It takes about 10 minutes to do this intro but I have found it is worth it for the consistency and stability it brings. If we ever skip this routine for some reason students always express that they miss it.

WHY?

Why is the question students ask the most. Why do we have to...? Why do I need to...? Why can't we..."
The why of this blog is to make a resource for new teachers like me to find effective tactics for managing the Wild Things in our classrooms.

Every student has a Wild Thing inside, and every classroom a jungle; but this blog will share ways to help tame the wilds and turn the jungle into a safe and fun place for learning and art making!

A New Chapter

I began this blog in grad school in response to a challenging class I taught at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design.
After two years of teaching art, I have suddenly found myself an assistant classroom teacher (eek!) for a 2nd/3rd grade class of ten.
I am back on Martha's Vineyard, teaching in the town that I grew up in, which is really an amazing experience!
I plan on adding on to this blog as the year goes on, and the lead teacher and I experiment with how to tame our Wild Things!

Individual Plan

We have one third grade boy who has trouble regulating his behavior. After trying a behavior contract, and logical consequences were tried and eventually proved ineffective we are trying something new!
Our principle used this new method with her own child when he was in school.
The student has a behavior report everyday with numbers one through four, one being low and four high. When implementing this plan we met with the student and parents and agreed on consequences for every number. If the student fails to show his parents the form, or "loses" it, that counts as an automatic 'one.'

For this particular student, 'three' = not going out on the playground after school, but going straight home, 'two' = no hat to school/no video games, and 'one' = dad picks out clothes, or dinner and all after school time spent in bedroom.

This number is earned over the whole day, if he goes down to a low number he has the ability to bring it back up as the day progresses. Specials and social time count as well. At the end of the day he checks in with teachers and then gets signatures from his classroom teacher and the principal.

So far this system is having positive results. Time will tell if this motivation holds!

New Behavior Modification Ideas.... and Enticements!

In our 2/3rd grade class of ten we have recently implemented a new experiment to encourage appropriate behavior.
Each student has an index card at their seat on which we place a sticker when we notice the student exhibiting great behavior. What usually qualifies as sticker behavior is a student working especially hard at something that is difficult for them, for instance sitting still in circle, or pushing through a tough math assignment. When the student has earned twenty stickers we have a short ceremony at closing circle, and the student chooses a small prize from our box of stuff (slinkies, sunglasses, bracelets etc).

There is also a group incentive. If the entire class does well; a good report from a specials teacher, an especially focused work period, then our class' Mr Potatohead earns a body part. 

When Mr Potatohead is complete with arms, legs, features and accessories the class earns a reward that they can vote on. We recently earned our first reward and the students voted on a class pet. Welcome Sheldon, our blue Beta fish.

Logical Consequences

The Martha's Vineyard schools all use the Responsive Classroom model.(www.responsiveclassroom.org)
This week we plan on introducing Logical Consequences; an idea that is an acceptable behavior modification model in Responsive Classroom.

There are three types of logical consequences:
The "you break it, you fix it"rule or in other cases maybe: 'you get it dirty you clean it,' or 'you took it out, now put it back.'
Loss of Privilege: A student demonstrates that they can not handle the responsibility given them, or the activity presented by misbehaving and therefore is no longer allowed to have/do that responsibility/activity.
"Positive" time out: A student does not seems in control of his or her body. Instead of waiting for the problem to escalate, the teacher sends them to a designated place to calm down and return when ready.

I am interested to see if this works with out students. The first type makes the most sense on a human level, it is unarguably "fair" even to a second grader!
Loss of Privilege is logical, but is sometimes not the best case solution. When I taught art teachers often took the "privilege" of art away from a student for misbehaving. Unfortunately those students were often the ones that needed art the most!
Positive time out I am skeptical of. In Montessori we had "Peace Corners" that achieve the same goal, but avoiding the "time-out" stigma altogether. Peace Corners were beautiful little places specifically for getting peaceful. Not a chair unceremoniously set in a corner of the classroom.
BUT we shall see! I have been wrong before.

Resources:
www.responsiveclassroom.org/article/three-types-logical-consequences
www.responsiveclassroom.org/article/responding-misbehavior
www.nsms.org/content/peace-and-montessori-environment

The Bell

You are a teacher, and you would like to talk to all of your students at once occasionally, right? The problem is it is difficult to do that when there are twenty wild things in your room! You need a signal. Someway to tell those wild things that it is time to FREEZE and be QUIET, so that you can impart your infinite wisdom.

One tool is bell: a cowbell, a tinkly bell, any bell will work.
Have the student practice freezing to the bell and time them to see how long it takes; challenge them to make it less and less each time.

The same system could be used with a whistle, a gong or turning off the lights/music.

Make sure you don't give up and try and yell into the jungle! WAIT.for quiet