Notes From The School Yard: Running the Asylum
Now for classroom management. This is something I’m not as strong in as I would like to be. I believe I would have benefited from education classes here. However, trial & error again works. Last year I learned how to discipline at least semi effectively. Now I figure it’s time to learn how to keep a class on task and cut off possible behavior issues. I’ve gotten a lot of suggestions about this (and still will take more) and I’ve come up with a few measures.
First one is a behavioral/participation point system. Each grade will be given a goal to shoot for. They earn points towards this goal thru good behavior, going above and beyond their normal classroom rules as well as exceptional class participation. If one person messes up badly, the whole class is affected so everyone has to pull their weigh. The precursor to this is last year when I gave a pizza party to my after school class for doing well on a test and behaving thru the last three weeks of school. This time it will be all classes in a grade level with be competing for a pizza party. Class with the most points at the end of the year gets pizza, end of story. I’ll have to pay out of pocket, but I think it would be worth it. This idea I got from my friends here in Daegu.
The next idea I have is to implement a behavior currency for individuals. The idea behind this is something I remember teachers using when I was in grade school but my brother brought it up to me. I’ll come up with some sort of money system for kids that I will reward them with for doing well in class and doing exceptionally well on assignments. Students save them up and they can buy things from me like candy and other various prizes. I’m going to try this one because while I often give out candy in class as a motivator, I find it’s like a quick fix. You can get a student to try to read a sentence quickly in class for a piece of chocolate, but will they remember it or try again later? So with this, they have to constantly work at it to get more. They will get the same candy, but have to work harder to get it. And the hope is that they retain knowledge over the process. Plus earning things over time seems to be a bit more rewarding in the long run.