Addressing Student Behavior in Post-Covid Era
Many are finding students’ class behaviors challenging, from students not having been in school during the covid shutdown at a time of their formative years. How can we re-orient students to school?
I learned little from the teacher I taught with during my student teaching, so it was pretty much sink or swim, but she did make one comment I thought was good thinking. She said, “I don’t like that student. That’s why I’m really nice to him.” It worked. What could have been a lot of tug and pull, recalcitrance, annoyance, instead was an ease in interaction.
Conferring with others on strategies to re-build that necessary positive in-class behavior in order to move learning along, can help. Also, using those covid era strategies of calling home, emailing the student and families, simply not hearing some “backtalk” comments, smothering a student with love, all can help.
We try any means necessary. Pulling a student aside before or after class, having a supportive after-school two-way talk, and continuing to monitor, can help. One-on-one two-way discussion establishes a better relationship, especially when the student sees that the teacher cares. Allowing that student to shine works wonders. Positives work. A teacher tells me he has recalcitrant or disruptive students sit outside the classroom until the student says he or she is ready to have cooperative behavior. Apparently administrators don’t patrol his area.
The great clinical psychologist Harvard professor Fred Jones has an abundance of class strategies to monitor behavior: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zfGttNFuaWw
Fred Jones Tools for Teaching https://www.fredjones.com › single-post › 2016/11/09
Samples of Professor Jones’ sage advice are:
Responding to Backtalk: When in Doubt, Do Nothing.
It takes one fool to backtalk. It takes two fools to make a conversation out of it.
Open your mouth, and slit your throat.
Teamwork and conferring with colleagues can help. When we all pull together to strive for those earlier better behaviors, and aim to move forward for even better work today, this teamwork can be key. Collaboration can help immensely to move to the better learning environment needed today. When I was team-teaching, my co-teacher, who’d attended boarding school, only knew how to treat students with respect, because that was how students had been treated in his earlier school. This respect was reciprocated.
Always, of course, it’s what works for us. Trial and error can be the path to a class that’s working well, which we all prefer, and allows for the good teaching we all want to have.
~ Kay
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