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What if I told that success in your classroom does NOT depend on which students are assigned to your roster?
Would you believe it if I said that happiness in your career is NOT tied to the transfer request you submitted for the highest-performing school in the district?
Success and happiness in education come down to one factor, and one factor only - you.
And you are in charge of you.
For students to succeed and teachers to take charge, six things need to occur.
Confidence - Teachers need clarity about why they teach and what their role is.
Heart - Students need belonging because relationships are the heart of teaching.
Anticipate - Classrooms need structure because structure provides freedom.
Reinforce - Behavior needs improvement and what you focus on is what increases.
Grow - Skills need targeting so students develop emotional literacy, grit, and curiosity.
Engage - Assignments need reimagining because low-level tasks simply don't work.
Join me for a free, 4-week web series designed to disrupt outdated behavior management models and help you create the classroom culture of your dreams.
Taking charge is hard. Fully releasing the potential of your students will take time and effort as you deconstruct some of the bad habits you might have fallen into.
But the destination is worth the journey.
Beginning August 9, I'll release a blog post each weekday for four weeks. Each post will contain excerpts from the book and a 10-12 minute accompanying video.
Make 2021-2022 the year of Taking CHARGE!
The following is an excerpt from my book Take CHARGE of the Classroom.
Let me paint a picture for you. Think about what you’re going to read with two simple questions in mind: Does this describe your classroom? If not, would you like it to?
As you walk into the room, you see students in groups or pairs engaged in various activities. They aren’t working silently but are instead talking and laughing in a subdued but energetic manner. You look over the shoulder of a pair of students, wondering what could be so interesting. You see a problem that they are collaborating on. The students are not only working to answer the question, they are discussing which representation would best prove their work. After a short debate, they decide to use two representations, one for each of them.
You move on to a group of three students and ask what they are working on. One student pipes up and articulately responds with a learning statement spoken in the first person. Thinking that she might just be reading off a posted objective, you ask follow up questions to see if she really understands what she’s doing and why. Her answers, and the rigor of the task, show that the students are not only fully aware of what they are learning but are also able to give descriptions of how far along they are on the learning continuum.
Looking up, you try to spot the teacher. Sitting at the back table with two students, you notice the teacher working with manipulatives on some type of intervention lesson. That winds down and, as you watch, the two students get up, push in their chairs, and move to join their classmates in the activities they are already engaged in. The teacher silently gets up, glances at a list on her clipboard, and kneels down next to a few other students. They join her at the back table and a new small group lesson begins.
As you take one final look around the room, you see an environment rich in print and content. Students are actively working on tasks, many of which seem self-selected, and do not need behavioral directions or verbal cues. You theorize that if, for some strange reason, the teacher were to leave the classroom, everything would continue without missing a beat.
That vision is not some distant utopia. It can happen in a virtual, face-to-face, or blended classroom. If you desperately want the previous scenario to be a description of your classroom, then you are in the right place.