Hi this is Jennifer Gonzalez back again for
Cult of Pedagogy and we are now going to talk about using a notebook for
classroom management. This is part 2,
the more advanced way of doing this. In Part 1 I described
how you can use it as just an emergency "flotation device"
to just calm everything down in your classroom.
you can actually use it much more thoughtfully though
you could use a simple spiral notebook like this or
I found a three-ring binder
where each student would actually have
their name printed at the top and you may actually even get more...
it may mean more to them if that student actually has to write their own name
at the top of each page, and you can sort of alphabetize these or do it by class period or whatever,
but basically one page per student.
And you can talk to your
students about this at the beginning of the year or at the beginning of when you
decide to start doing this
because, my feeling about things not going well
in a classroom is that you don't have to wait for a new school year to turn things around
and make things start to go better. So this could be February and you can decide, all right
starting today we're going to try something different.
So what you can say to your students on the day that you start this is, "You've got a fresh
start right now. You have a blank sheet with your name on it.
What I am going to write on these pages
are my observations of the things that you do in class.
I will be writing down positive things that I see you doing, and I will be
writing down negative things
if those things happen to happen." And so
you don't necessarily have to do anything else with this notebook
with this information and the students might say, "What are you gonna do with that?
Are you gonna show it to our parents? Are you gonna show it to the principal?"
You don't necessarily have to promise anything
or say that you wont, just say "I don't know what I'll do with the information,
but what goes on these pages is your character
and so your behavior and your decisions, those things are what tell other people
about who you are as a person,
and so I will just be recording." For example, if you come in
a few minutes late to class, or even a few seconds, I might record that,
you know? "Tasha came in 30 seconds late to class."
Not necessarily a positive or a negative. But if three days later
Tasha comes in late 30 seconds again, three days later Tasha comes in late one
minute again, and I start dating them
what I start to see then is a pattern of behavior, and that
is you. That's not necessarily a mistake
one time. That's a pattern of choices that you're making.
And you can choose to keep these private, or you can choose to share them with your
students as you write them.
The main rule that I would say for sure is that you don't share
one student's page with another student. So you need to keep this notebook
pretty secure.
Keep it in your bag, on your body, or in a locked cabinet or something like that.
But it's interesting that, for the most part, there really is no other
consequence for their behavior besides going in this book.
But I've found that students really respond to this, that they...
they don't want you to write down something bad about them.
It also will provide you a
really good system of documentation in the event that you end up with a child
who is
a chronic discipline problem and you need some sort of documentation
of a pattern of behavior.
You would have that. Additionally, if you have to
write a student a letter of recommendation at the end of the year, and you
are looking for some examples of things that they've done. Again, you have a record.
I would say the biggest challenge with keeping this kind of system would be to
be consistent with it, and it would take some energy. So the simpler that you
can keep it,
the better. If you can come up with a coding system, like putting a "T" for tardy
then you may be more likely to do it more quickly.
But I've found that
this keeps the power of classroom management in your hands
as opposed to passing it off to someone else, and I actually,
I even used a similar system to this when I was working with college students
because,
I worked with students who were not yet admitted to
a program where they were going to become teachers, and I would have to
at the end of the semester
recommend whether or not I felt they were a good fit
for the program. And I had to recommend them on a lot of different
parameters. So sometimes it was hard to remember, you know, is this person
always on time for things or, you know,
how are their communication skills, how is their relationship with their
colleagues. And so having some sort of a record of
of their patterns over the semester
it was helpful. I had something to refer to if I wasn't sure
about a person I could check back and see what I had written about them.
So anyway, it's real handy and I thought I would
pass that along and see if it can help you too. Thank you.
Have a great day!