Clear Expectations

What You Need To Know... Get Them There

Ideas...

I have picked up "Never Work Harder Than Your Students" by Robyn Jackson and wanted to take this time to reflect -- an activity and principle that she strongly encourages -- and jot down some ideas, which I have gathered from her resource section at www.masterteachermindset.com.

• "Classroom Commitments" vs. "Classroom Rules or Norms"
• Three-Five Classroom Commitments
• Making a Classroom "Greener" (See downloaded Tip Sheet)
• Having a dedicated station for students where they can find:
•  paper
• pencils/pens
• extra folders
• "Late Work" forms
• "Absence Procedure" - includes student contacting another student and requires another students' signature - must have done before scheduling a lunch/afterschool appointment. 
• Calendar
• lunch/afterschool appointments
• donation jar...

Teaching Expectations and Curriculum Design Notes

Plan to teach by:

1. Telling what type of activity they will participate in next
2. Outlining the expectations you have for the given activity using a visual display such as a notebook    flip chart (or "anchor charts") 
3. Modeling the behaviors you expect to see with particular emphasis on participation
4. Having students demonstrate the expectations
5. Verifying that students understand the expectations -- Dave Levin in "Work Hard. Be Nice" does an excellent example of this when he asks students, in a middle of a lesson, to: "Raise your hand if I lost you. Raise your hand if this is seeming easier to you. Raise your hand if you already to do it by yourself" and continues to teach (Mathews 306). 

I found this list from "Teacher Planner for the Secondary Classroom" by Randall S. Sprick, PH. D. If you click on the book and the first few pages they show you on amazon.com, you will find two hand-outs that are called "CHAMP" and "ACHIEVE" -- acronyms for "Conversation, Help, Activity, Movement, and Participation" and "Activity, Conversation, Help, Integrity, Effort, Value, and Efficiency." Each category has a question or two for teachers to consider in constructing their lessons and curriculum; I have not used them in a classroom but they seem extremely helpful (and I want to record them here for my sporadic amnesia.)

Responsibility

"I've come to the frightening conclusion that I am the decisive element in the classroom. It's my personal approach that creates the climate. It's my daily mood that makes the weather. As a teacher, I possess a tremendous amount of power to make a child's life miserable or joyous. I can be a tool of torture or an instrument of inspiration. I can humiliate or humor, hurt or heal. In all situations, it is my response that decides whether a crisis will be escalated or de-escalated and a child humanized or de-humanized" - Haim Ginott

Crocduck

I'm currently reading "Work Hard. Be Nice" by Jay Mathews and the main purpose of this site is to keep tabs on texts that deal - for the most part - with educational issues (in the United States) and teaching strategies. 

So, here is my first post - my efforts to unstitch the golden embroidery of rules we were taught in school, stretch it out tight, and keep record of the measurements so we can possibly weave a better version of what we currently have. Idealistic? Yes, but I'm already disgusted by how many times I might have photocopied worksheets that were ducks holding umbrellas. 

Given many issues within our nation's educational system, I consider the image above to be a fairly accurate daemon - from Philip Pullman's series - of public schools and thought it might be necessary to have such an icon to affectionally refer to when analyzing its tendencies.