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Teaching isn’t about managing behavior

theatlantic.com

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Re: Teaching isn’t about managing behavior

#31

Post by kilroy_jones »

RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: post #5

> The best teachers don’t just keep teaching. Instead, they use their pedagogy as protest: I hope not. I think teachers should teach to the status quo and let students when they are older or their parents make the decision about what they are going to protest, and what changes they are going to push for. In general, I think students, especially young students, should be shrieked from the ugliness of life as much as p…

That statement is taken way out of context. The full quote is below.

>The best teachers don’t just keep teaching. Instead, they use their pedagogy as protest: They disrupt teaching norms that harm vulnerable students. In my years in the classroom since 2001, I’ve learned something about how to do this. I call it reality pedagogy, because it’s about reaching students where they really are, making sure that their lives and backgrounds are reflected in the curriculum and in classroom conversations.

Basically this comes down to teaching to your audience, not blandly regurgitating content. It's recognizing that changes in that curriculum and school materials can move too slow to reflect research and reality.

Re: Teaching isn’t about managing behavior

#32

Post by wisty »

nickff wrote: post #4

This piece is very nicely written, but they never describe what their definition of 'successful teaching' is. "Reality pedagogy" might achieve some emotional or social objectives (though the piece relies entirely on anecdotes), but do they help the student's long-term life outcomes? As an aside, despite the article's assertions, there is very little evidence that experience improves teaching ability, despite many stu…

Ill-defined descriptions of how to teach (or manage) better often seem a bit silly to me.

In these fields, people generally improve with a bit of experience and effort, to the point where they're happy with the results they're getting.

Having a fancy framework might help (by giving them some cognitive "pegs" to hang various observations on), or hurt (by distracting them with meaningless or biased assertions).

It's like the four humours in medicine. Maybe it helped some doctors to spot patterns and offer treatment. Maybe it just gave them a toolkit to dismiss their failures with some silly hand-waves. Maybe it distracts them. Who knows.

A good acid tests is whether teaching in red underpants could also be a good method. When you first start teaching in red underpants, it might seem a bit unusual, but you'll gradually learn to do it more proficiently. You'll have to wash them every day the right way (if you don't, you might experience some trouble in class, but at least you'll know how to fix things next time!). You can also develop some useful cognitive "pegs" to spot problems - maybe you realise at the start of a class that you're potentially "riding high" (whatever that would mean in terms of student behaviour) so you need to adjust your teaching to compensate - what the underpants are doing and how they impact the teaching is irrelevant, but at least you have a word for what you are seeing, right?

Re: Teaching isn’t about managing behavior

#33

Post by catalogia »

danielheath wrote: post #25
catalogia wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Suppose a child disrupts class for 30 of his peers because his dad beats him. His dad has now effectively victimized 31 kids. Wouldn't it be productive and moral to find ways to help all 31, perhaps by putting misbehaving kids in special classrooms where they can receive specialized help?

Assuming the specialised help isn’t just worse facilities somewhere else, maybe (or maybe not). In practice - who is going to ensure the other facilities are of a good standard? The abusive parents? If you don’t help that kid, the other 30 will spend their whole lives sharing a society with an adult who didn’t get help. That’s an unfair drain on their life too (increased crime, policing costs, etc). Putting the disru…

One of my aunts is a such a specialized teacher; her program is called "emotional support" or something to that effect. From what I understand it's a classroom in the same school building and the students sent to her classroom are troubled in frequently very sad ways which she won't discuss in specifics. She's accountable to the same principle that the normal teachers are.

From what I know of this sort of program, it seems to be a sincere attempt to help kids, not merely brush them off into a corner to forget about them. I don't know how often it's successful, but I think in that school district at least it's well motivated. From what I know of it, it seems like a much better system than allowing those kids to disrupt normal classrooms.

Re: Teaching isn’t about managing behavior

#34

Post by 082349872349872 »

Managing behaviour in a mid-80's soviet classroom.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XT9VBW87QXw

Note the rigid uniformity, and how students are expected to stand when giving answers. It may also be a good example of the extent to which academically strong students were dragged down by their peers?

(The whole movie is subversive in certain ways. I understand soviet children were indoctrinated to be helpful to adults, but in the movie Julia's grandmother —who may have had some experience herself with the value of keeping one's mouth shut— helps them buck the system.)

On sexism in the soviet union:

Today, little Johnny's class has a pair[1] of teaching observers. After waiting a moment with no hands raised, the teacher calls on Johnny, asking him what inspired Pushkin to write To the Beauty. Johnny answers, "she has such fine legs. I bet her ass — exquisite." "Citizen John!" exclaims the teacher, "go straight to Principal, and tell him what you said!"

On his way out the door, Johnny angrily denounces the teaching observers: "next time you prompt, Comrades, please ensure you know correct answer."

[1] one who can read, and one who can write. Their job is to keep a watchful eye on the intellectuals teaching the classes.

Re: Teaching isn’t about managing behavior

#35

Post by gnicholas »

The WTC story reminded me of what happened in one of my college classes that day. I was in a linguistics class on syntax and the teacher was diagramming sentences. It was around 11 AM ET, and students were aware that the towers had fallen. The teacher was annoyed by the students who were whispering in the back of the smallish classroom, so she diagrammed the following sentences:

• The students were talking in the class.

• It annoyed the teacher that the students were talking in the class.

After class she learned what had happened and sent an apology email to everyone (and cancelled the next class). My guess is that she had been prepping class all morning and hadn't read any news.

Re: Teaching isn’t about managing behavior

#36

Post by heimatau »

082349872349872 wrote: post #34

Managing behaviour in a mid-80's soviet classroom. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XT9VBW87QXw Note the rigid uniformity, and how students are expected to stand when giving answers. It may also be a good example of the extent to which academically strong students were dragged down by their peers? (The whole movie is subversive in certain ways. I understand soviet children were indoctrinated to be helpful to adults, b…

This video has edited the children's mouths and the teachers. This is an intentional edit when they speak. It's really trippy to watch. Because it's fairly good in some instances but...also terrifying.

Re: Teaching isn’t about managing behavior

#37

Post by mantas »

082349872349872 wrote: post #34

Managing behaviour in a mid-80's soviet classroom. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XT9VBW87QXw Note the rigid uniformity, and how students are expected to stand when giving answers. It may also be a good example of the extent to which academically strong students were dragged down by their peers? (The whole movie is subversive in certain ways. I understand soviet children were indoctrinated to be helpful to adults, b…

Isn’t standing up when answering the norm? I grew up in ex-USSR in 90s/00s and that’s what we did. It felt totally normal and giving kinda a 1-to-1 connection to teacher instead of being a random voice in a classroom.

As for “helpful to adults”, it’s not exactly Soviet thing. All cultures/nations that were forced under Soviet rule had that mentality. And still have to big extent. Although there’s less and less automatic respect to adults/elders in last decade or two, it’s still there.

Re: Teaching isn’t about managing behavior

#38

Post by burfog »

swsieber wrote: post #9
ARandomerDude wrote: post #8

> In the next five years, most of America’s most experienced teachers will retire. This is true of all career fields at all times.

But moreso in teaching right now: > In 1988, a teacher most commonly had 15 years of experience. Less than three decades later, that number had fallen to just three years leading a classroom.

Teacher burn-out is mostly ignored because fixing it would require undoing some very deliberate changes, like keeping bad kids in school and even in normal classrooms. We'd have to empower teachers to expel kids who refuse to be students.

Re: Teaching isn’t about managing behavior

#39

Post by lifeisstillgood »

catalogia wrote: post #22
nickff wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with applying your priorities (for the idealists) is that the misbehaving kids tend to come from the 'victimized' groups. This means that by enforcing clasroom discipline, they (often) feel that they are reinforcing the patriarchy, white supremacy, or other evil side.

Suppose a child disrupts class for 30 of his peers because his dad beats him. His dad has now effectively victimized 31 kids. Wouldn't it be productive and moral to find ways to help all 31, perhaps by putting misbehaving kids in special classrooms where they can receive specialized help?

This is still behaviour management, but not entirely in the schools circle. Society as a whole needs to help manage the behaviour - we manage the dads behaviour by arresting him, manage the rest of the family through in person support and finally worry about the school.

Re: Teaching isn’t about managing behavior

#40

Post by dataduck »

nickff wrote: post #19
xhkkffbf wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. And winning a war isn't about feeding your soldiers, but you can't win the war without good mess hall sergeants. One loud, misbehaving student can ruin the class for the other n-1. Idealists want to dream that there are no bad kids and it's all the fault of the patriarchy, white supremacy or worse. They may be correct, but work won't commence until everyone is sitting still.

The problem with applying your priorities (for the idealists) is that the misbehaving kids tend to come from the 'victimized' groups. This means that by enforcing clasroom discipline, they (often) feel that they are reinforcing the patriarchy, white supremacy, or other evil side.

That's because it's the same thing. Creating the level of order necessary for learning (or any other civilized behaviour) is the entirety of what "Patriarchy" really means. White supremacy recently got redefined to include things like punctuality and objectivity, which is even more on the nose.
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