WHS: Another Visit!

Today was an especially rambunctious day for the seventh grade students. Within the first few minutes of the lesson, it had become clear that the students were talking over the teacher more than usual, ignoring the teacher’s instructions repeatedly, and the students were contributing little to no effort into their learning. This proved to be frustrating for the teacher, but the frustration began to emulate within all of the teacher aids and college student volunteers. It was not solely the issue that students were not engaging in their learning, it was the disrespect and lack of care within their learning that was the most frustrating. The teacher was teaching a lesson on how to multiply improper and mixed number fractions, a topic that most students kept shouting out that they did not understand or remember from before their winter break. However, when the teacher or any of the classroom aids walked around and asked students clarifying questions, almost every student knew the answers. Thus, it was not that the students were disruptive because they did not understand the material, rather the students were being disruptive for a variety of personal reasons.

The frustration and lack of patience that the teacher was developing became ever more prominent as the class persisted. However, the teacher made a very interesting decision that completely grabbed the attention of the students. When students are upset in class, frustrated, or misbehaving, the teacher instructs them to sit in a chair at a long table in the back of the room to take a break and calm themselves. This is a great teaching technique in itself because it allows for students to reflect on what they were doing wrong or what was upsetting them, and then join back into the class with a cleared mind. In today’s class, however, the teacher became so frustrated that she announced to the class in the middle of her teaching that she was going to take a break because she was upset with the lack of student engagement. She took a break for about four minutes and instructed the students to think about the math they were learning while she was taking a break. The class was absolutely silent during these four minutes, and showed a clear level of discomfort for having their teacher take a break. Not only were the students more focused after this tactic, but they also became calmer and showed a higher level of respect for the teacher and the aids in the room.

This is a teaching technique that I can use because it allows students to remember that the teacher must be respected in the classroom. It is nice to have a relationship with the teacher, but talking over him/her consistently and being disruptive is disrespectful. Taking a quick break allows students to see that the teacher is upset, and fosters the idea in students’ minds that they need to change their behavior because the students were clearly upset and uncomfortable when the teacher took a break. It is a relatable, effective teaching tool that I had never thought of before, but once I saw the effectiveness of this practice, it is a great way to suggest to students that a higher level of respect is needed from the class, but also to refocus students on their learning.