Hi, this is Jennifer Gonzalez for Cult of Pedagogy. I am going to share with you today a strategy called
"Distract the Distractor."
This is a way of dealing with off-task behavior in your students.
It is appropriate for high school, middle school, elementary school,
college teaching, corporate training.
If you're working with a group of people, and you need them to stay on task with something,
This is a way of dealing with the off-task behavior quickly,
in a way that saves time, doesn't distract the rest of the class, and avoids lots of larger discipline issues.
So. Here's what is. Let's look at an example.
Suppose you are a math teacher, and you are
going over the homework problems from last night, you're going through them one at a time,
and you've got one student in the back of the class who is
whispering to the girl next to her.
So, there's a high-tension way of dealing with this,
by calling her out in front of everybody and saying, "Jane, stop talking..."
If Jane is the kind of kid who responds
with hostility to something like this, then she might
talk back and say, "I wasn't talking," and
"Why are you always picking on me?" And it can escalate and escalate into a big power struggle
where you write her an office referral, and she gets in trouble for defiance and...
It can turn into a whole big thing.
So, that's something you want to avoid.
You could redirect her and just say, you know,
"Jane, let's get refocused." She could react the same way.
Some teachers respond to things like this with silence,
and that's very effective actually, to just stop what you're doing,
and the silence generally gets everybody's attention and makes
those who are doing something they're not supposed to do...realize...
"Oh, she notices...I'd better stop."
So silence is helpful -- it's really good -- but the only disadvantage to it
is that it can
pull everybody else's attention away from the work also.
You've got a good flow going with everybody else
except for one or two kids, and to stop...
that prickling sensation of "Something is wrong..."
that comes over everybody: Everybody's wondering "What did I do?"
and they start looking around to see who's causing the problem.
And so it can slow down a really nice flow that you have with everybody else.
So...
With "Distract the Distractor," you save even more time,
and you've got no tension. So here's what "Distract the Distractor" is:
You've got Jane talking to her friend.
You simply ask her
a content-based question to get her back into the lesson.
So you could just say to her, "Jane, what did you get for number 5?"
And that pulls her attention away from the talking,
all the attention is on her, but it isn't the kind of attention that says,
"Ooh, you were talking, you're in trouble..."
It's just...
You're acting as if she was engaged the whole time.
This preserves her dignity, it preserves your relationship with her,
It keeps the flow of the class going, and
it avoids all the big power struggles that come with some of the other approaches.
Here's a big key, though:
The question you ask must be something that you know she can answer.
So it should be something pretty easy.
If you're not sure if she got number 5, or if you're thinking number 5...her answer might be wrong,
then have her just read number 5.
Say, "Jane, can you just tell...you know, go ahead and read it so we're all, you know, looking at the same problem."
Just any kind of a content-based task or question that you know she can do.
Because we're not trying to embarrass. That, again, leads to the problem or the power struggles.
I should note, before I go,
that this term, "Distract the Distractor"...
I've been using the technique for years, but I just found it online the other day,
and I thought it was really catchy,
and it comes from a book called "Opportunities and Options in Classroom Management."
The authors are Patricia Kyle and Lawrence Rogien,
and I will put a link to that book below this video. So...
The next time you have a student who is daydreaming,
or talking, or fooling around, or texting,
instead of using an approach that you've tried already, consider
trying to "Distract the Distractor" instead, and see how it goes.
Good luck, thanks for watching, have a great day.
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