Expected, Inspected, & Respected.
"We do not learn from experience … we learn from reflecting on experience."
-John Dewey |
"We do not learn from experience … we learn from reflecting on experience."
-John Dewey |
Over the course of my practicum, I've been really happy with how smoothly my Grade 8 English class has been going. I follow this set schedule:
On Tuesday, because they had just handed in a personal narrative piece that they had been working on for a while, I decided to deviate from this routine and do something different and fun. I planned to use The Mysteries of Harris Burdick as a story starter, and then have a "snowball fight" collaborative storytelling activity. (Click through the slideshow for further explanation).
Can you guess the mistake I made? The problem happened on step two but my mistake came earlier when I failed to sufficiently prepare them to throw "snowballs" responsibly. When step two asked them to crumple up their paper and throw it somewhere, several students took this as their cue to go into full battle mode, picking up snowball after snowball, throwing, dodging, dipping, ducking, diving, and dodging, ending up writhing around on the ground in mock agony.
This group of kids were usually so calm and hard working during this period that I grossly overestimated their level of maturity.
There were three students in particular who, despite the majority of their classmates returning to their seats when asked, continued to throw paper across the room. I tried and tried to tell them firmly and respectfully to take their seats and finally got two of them to quit their antics. The leader just ignored me until, out of frustration and anger, I yelled at him in front of the class until he was sitting with his arms folded, pouting. I believe he ignored me on purpose because I had told him that he couldn't sit with his friends during the social studies inquiry presentations that morning and he still had a chip on his shoulder about it. The activity was supposed to be fun and now I was hollering at this adolescent boy while everyone else sat in an uncomfortable silence. I didn't like yelling, he didn't like being yelled at, and the class didn't like having to witness it. It was a lose, lose, lose situation. I apologized, took a deep breath and continued with the lesson, demonstrating very clearly how I expected the next round of paper throwing to go. And the rest of the lesson was smooth. They wrote when they were supposed to write and threw when they were supposed to throw. I just hope they were cooperating out of a desire to have a good time with the activity and not because they were intimidated by their usually mild mannered teacher who they had just witnessed transform into a raging giant, frothing at the mouth. (I may be exaggerating slightly for effect).
I guess the big takeaway is to never underestimate a class's ability to demonstrate their immaturity. Or maybe the takeaway should be "forewarned is forearmed". Or perhaps "proper prior planning prevents poor performance". Take your pick. A slight tweak to my instructions should solve this problem in the future.
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David Wiebe
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