Teach Like Your Hair’s On Fire
I usually read books, but I found a book in audio format and was intrigued by the name, “Teach Like Your Hair’s On Fire”. It’s by Rafe Esquith, a 5th grade teacher who teaches students of roughly the same background as my own students. In listening to this book I feel uniquely guilty about the way I have handled my classes this year.
Last year was my first year at a new school radically different from my first teaching assignment. At my first job there was almost no accountability or structure in a boarding school for 9th-12th grade students. Because of a quirk of the educational system the students at my previous school never had to take standardized tests that were used to evaluate the school/teachers.
I currently teach at an urban public elementary school in the 7th and 8th grades. I have been observed formally and informally over 50 times this year, by a variety of assessors. My students must walk everywhere in nice, neat, silent lines. My students must always be controlled and “learning”. Last year in this same school I let my students run rampant in my class. I had no control over my classroom or my students’ learning. I began this year with only one objective…to control my classes. I created routines, lessons, and resources aimed at this objective. I was successful. My principal congratulated me over and over on the improvement in my class discipline and control.
I told my students from the very first day this year that they could ask me questions only about whatever lesson we were learning. They were never allowed to question my discipline (I spent a good amount of wasted learning time last year arguing with students) in class. I gave them very strict boundaries and enforced them. My homeroom students have more detentions on their tracking cards than any other students in the Jr. High. They never come in to see me on their out-of-class time. I was proud of all of this and certainly, in the beginning this year, it was all working.
Then I made a mistake. Our leadership team at school came to us and told us that our classrooms were not cutting it. We were not doing what we needed to do. We were lacking in organization, presentation of curriculum, and structure. They started walking through, sitting in, and sometimes taking over our classes daily. Did I respond to this added pressure by helping my students to adjust to the new environment? I tried, but no. I was afraid and I used fear as a weapon in my classroom. I have screamed at my students, humiliated them, and manipulated them.
Wow, said like that it seems even worse to me. I did yell. I yelled when my students, exhausted by a week of testing right before spring break, came in complaining to my classroom and did not follow directions. I did humiliate them. I took my homeroom students out to the playground and made them walk in lines as all of the other students in the school were dismissed past them in order to emphasize to them the importance of walking in straight, silent lines and following directions. I did manipulate them. I told them about a death in my family in order to make them feel guilty about how they behaved for a substitute teacher. These are not the only instances of this kind of stupidity, but they are the worst.
Yet here is Rafe (book’s author) whispering in my ear about a classroom culture where students learn, not to act/react out of fear, but with a sense of their own moral compasses. Students learn to care for each other and to act with civility and decency. Rafe actively teaches his students about this idea and then models it for them unfailingly. He gives examples of how this affects students and you can’t argue with the results he’s achieved. Yes there are other things he does, but this is the one that pricks my conscience the most.
I am left wondering if I can repair the damage done to my classes. Middle schoolers are not the most trusting of individuals in the first place. I know they’ve tuned me out. I can see it in their performance…both in the classroom and out of it. Will they listen to me again ever? Was everything I did this year wrong? Could Rafe’s method actually work for me or is it different when you have 30 students all day long vs having 7 sets of 30 students for 45 minutes at a time?
I think I will start with apologizing to my homeroom students…and then go from there.
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