Using strengths, not discipline, in your classroom management

You're sitting with a student looking over her work for the last week.  The rest of the class is supposed to be working on the vocabulary for the current unit.  Quietly.  Independently.  It's the only way you can be certain they're all working while you conference with individual students.  It's the only way you can keep them all accountable.

But who is throwing a wrench into your plan because he just cannot stop talking?  Enrique.  You've moved him three times and put him in a corner.  You're tired of moving him.  You've given him incentive tickets for times when he can sit quietly and work.  You've kept him in for lunch detentions for not shutting up.  You have called home because there is no end to his chatting with his peers.  Honestly, you're frustrated with his incessant talking, and you're about ready to lose your cool!

The way I see it, you've got a few choices.  You can lose your temper and unleash your teacher dragon on him, which will feel better initially but only to you and not for long.  You can kick him out to sit in the hallway.  This will "drive home the message", "teach him a lesson", and make and example of him.  Again, this might make you feel better for teaching him a lesson and using him as an example, but will it really stop the behavior?  It also removes him from under your watchful eye and gives him more room to mess around.  The likelihood he will get much done out there just went down about fifty percent . . . . or more.  You could write him a discipline referral - again driving home your message of "too much talking".  But will this eliminate the problematic behavior?

Sound familiar?  You're about ready to get into a struggle with a thirteen-year-old kid who likely doesn't care whether he is in your classroom or in the office.  Guess who else has had enough too.

Let me tell you a little bit about this boy.  After taking a multiple intelligences test and test of learning styles, Enrique's scores show that he is highly interpersonal and prefers to take in information by listening (aural).  He's people smart.  He watches body language and listens to tone of voice and is able to interact with you the way he should to get just the response he wants.  And now if you look at him, you can see this is very true.  No matter who he engages in conversation - his peers, the principal, even the school resource officer -  his body language shows high sense of self.  As long as he is talking and listening, one has to wonder even if he isn't eighteen or nineteen years old and not thirteen.  He carries himself in a conversation beautifully, and he even has a tendency to bluff his way through things you're certain he doesn't know.

Unfortunately, since he was five, his teachers have made it clear that the constant talking is inconvenient, inappropriate, and unwanted.  Upon his entrance to kindergarten, Enrique's strength in his interpersonal has gotten him into more trouble than not, but no matter what his teachers did, they just couldn't squash this boy's gift for gab.  By the age of thirteen, his weakness in math and reading has gotten so out of control, and his teachers blame most of it on his inability to stay focused on anything but his peers, that Enrique can't wait to turn sixteen and drop out of school.  He has no qualms with sharing his goals and puts little focus on anything academic.

Enrique doesn't feel comfortable doing much academically.  Neither does his friend Dalia, who is also in this same class.  But instead of talking nonstop, Dalia spends most of her time drawing.  During whole class activities Dalia keeps a sheet of paper on her desk and doodles or draws while she tries to listen and/or participate.  Dalia's strength is . . . ?  You guessed it - visual/spacial.  And maybe a touch of kinesthetic since it seems like her hands have to be moving often.  

Reading is difficult for both of these kiddos.  They both struggle with linguistic activities, and when they feel unsuccessful in an area, they tend to feel bad about themselves.  Being the still-very- egotistical beings that they are, they try to salvage what little self esteem they have by doing something that makes them feel good.  What better way to do this than by doing something in which they excel?  For Enrique, his answer is to talk. For Dalia - drawing and doodling soothes her.  What we find to be blatant disobedient or disrespectful acts might actually be mechanisms they are using to save the little bit of academic self esteem they have left.  Will dishing out punishments stop the behaviors that are being conceived as disrespectful?  Absolutely not.

So what do we do with these two and others like them?

Honor their strengths.  We all have had the drummer.  You know, the one who taps her pen or pencil to rhythm without even realizing she's doing it.  Musical strength?  That's likely.  Barking orders to stop tapping is probably going to chop her down a little and make her feel bad.  She may stop.  She may not.  But nothing beneficial comes out of calling her out in class and making her stop.

Point it out.  For example - Gabby, I see that you're tapping again.  That musical strength of yours could be put to some good use if you could find out a way to fit those definitions into a rhythm.  Can you work on the first one for me for a minute and I'll come help you with it after I'm done here with Dylan?  or Enrique, you're talking again.  Your interpersonal strength is distracting Charise from getting her work done.  How about you and George go into the back corner and work on the vocabulary together?  Make sure that you both talk about the answer before you choose the correct one.

Sometimes you can't let them showcase their strengths, but just bringing the strength into focus and honoring it - maybe even asking your kiddo to tone the strength down a bit will help a lot more than a disciplinary action or being called out in front of peers.

Your students want to be respected, honored, and understood.  Being aware of each of them, how they interact with others, and why they behave certain ways will most certainly benefit you in more than just a few ways.  This is truly the key to building their confidence and creating learners who take control of themselves as learners.  And then maybe - just maybe - Enrique's talking will no longer be a nuisance to you, but a message that he needs something a little different than what you're offering today.

The most important lesson ever

It's been a few weeks.  In fact, I was almost of the mindset not to blog again this week until my husband and I sat and chatted this morning about  how things were going this year.  After I rambled on and on for about ten minutes straight, he encouraged me to blog about it.  Either he thinks what I said is worth the read or he was tired of listening and thought maybe if I wrote about it I would shut up.  Or a combination of both.  :)

I have to tell you all, this year has been a ride so far.  Going back into the classroom was a challenge that I knew I could handle, but it wasn't something I wanted to handle.  I liked what I had been doing - supporting our students in their content areas and working with them in their intervention classes, going through school-wide data and making program change recommendations, and being a resource for our teachers who needed support in reaching their resistant readers.  But once I got back in front of a group of my own kiddos, life got amazing.  And it reminded me why I went into this business in the first place.  As a colleague of mine keeps gritting her teeth and saying, "It's all for the kids."  Any educator worth her salt today has to keep reminding herself of this because nobody is making this job easy.  Nobody.

My plan at the beginning of the year was to instill a sense of self-worth in all of our kiddos who either were performing out of fear or who weren't performing at all.  I wanted them to feel free to take risks and reach for success.  I knew it would be a challenge.  I knew I would have to work at it and tweak my approaches along the way.  I prayed it would just happen.  Well, to say it's been a challenge has been an understatement.  To say I've had to tweak my approaches is putting it mildly.  And I've needed a lot of prayer this year.  And a lot of Kleenex.

But what I'm seeing is kind of blowing my mind.

After spending a month at the beginning of the year learning about ourselves as learners - our learning styles, intelligences, learning types, interests, and even love languages, these kiddos now had the tools to advocate for themselves.  They have been given the gift of self-knowledge and have been helped to understand why they struggle with things and excel at others.  Why they can't shut up or sit still for forty minutes.  Why they hate PE or art or language arts.  When their high energy or chatterbox-ness is getting on my last nerve, instead of getting exasperated and directing frustration at them, I point out how one's interpersonal or kinesthetic intelligence is getting in the way of their learning and ask them how they can bring that strength into their learning.  I point it out as much as I can, we joke about how things are hard when we don't get served to our strengths and what we can do to communicate our needs to others.

What happens?  My kiddos work.  Not for a grade or for a ticket to buy things at the school store.  They don't get a "good job" at the end of the period, and I don't give them candy.  Heck, I don't even email home or send home postcards to tell mom and dad how proud I am.  But I do talk to each student as much as possible.  I give them the gift of my attention, and I point out what I see them doing.  And when it comes time for them to measure their growth, they get nervous about it and celebrate when they see the quantitative proof that they've worked and grown.  I'm proud of them.

It's funny that I didn't notice this growth until my husband and I started talking about it today.  But now that I'm reflecting, I wish there was a quantitative way I could "prove" that my approaches are creating more confident, happier kiddos.  I see it, and I hope their teachers and parents are seeing it too.

It says something when I have kiddos who "graduate out" of my class and choose to stay.  When I have students who ask if they can work on the eighth grade vocabulary rather than the seventh grade.  When, even while I'm working with a small group, I look over and see heads bent over interactive notebooks working or hands flying over desks of vocabulary matching activities - all by just saying, "Okay, go ahead to your first activity today.  You've got fourteen minutes until we switch."  There's no participation points or names on the board.  No way to keep track of who is working and who isn't.  I have students who come in to get their notebooks so they can take them to the library to check out a book on their list or to take it home and study their vocabulary.  We don't have homework, nor do I expect students to take their work home - and yet they're choosing to do this on their own.

So - go ahead - ask me. How is my year going?  It's a tough change, and I DO mourn the loss of what I was able to accomplish the last three years.  But I'd never ask for it to be different this year.  What I'm learning this year is going to be invaluable as I continue my research and work with students on intrinsic motivation.  And by the end of the year, I forsee dozens of my babies walking out of my classroom with their heads held higher and a lighter step because they were able to learn.  Not phonics or fluency or reading skills.  The most important thing in the world ever to learn.  About themselves.

Metacognition (originally published in 2011)

Several years ago I wrote this article in lieu of a conference presentation.  Dr. Carol Santa actually enjoyed it so much that she recommended it get printed in the CRISS national newsletter after I revamped a few things.  The article below is the original article (before the Dr. Santa revamp - although it was good both ways!).  I was very proud of this research, and I am looking forward to using some of it this year at both the Day of Reading Conference and the IRC Conference as well.

The Epiphany

                Metacogntition  - a word that even Microsoft Word doesn’t recognize, and yet eighth graders in my language arts class can tell you that it means “thinking about your thinking”.  This year, however, I was compelled to step back and take a look at just how much I really knew about the word.  That one act opened up a flood-gate of research, ideas, and discoveries that I could not wait to share with anybody who would listen . . .

                My name is Heather Lambert.  I am a read/write learner.  Five learning-styles tests have proven that I am incapable of being a successful learner by kinesthetic means.  Teach me to play hockey by writing it out for me.  Teach me to fix a toilet or make a cake by giving me written directions.  Do not show me or tell me.  Let me read it. Interestingly, I am both intrapersonal and musical.  Put that together with read/write, and you get a poet.  Spiritual balancing has indicated that I am also a communicator.  I love words.  So what is the problem?

                The problem is sadly simple. 

                During our study of Flowers for Algernon in eighth grade, my student teacher drew attention to Howard Gardener’s theory of Multiple Intelligences.  She had students perform a self-assessment on themselves that ultimately indicated their highest intelligence.  Most of our students scored highest in kinesthetic, musical, and visual.  Not a match to their highly-wordy teacher. 

                Still don’t see the problem?  

                After assessing my own teaching, I discovered that most of my teaching methods, although highly engaging, were language-based.  I was comfortable with words, but I was not working with subjects who had the same strengths.  Without knowing it, I had clearly set up some of my students for failure because I had not reflected upon myself as a learner/teacher and allowed myself to see my students through my multiple-intelligence glasses.  Yikes!  Even scarier, I was so wrapped up in my intrapersonal-self that I didn’t take into account that many of the adults with whom I engage are not like me either! 

                In the six years that I have been training for CRISS, metacognition has always been a word that meant “reflection on act”.  But the idea that I was teaching toward my own learning style on a daily basis allowed much more than reflection on act.  It allowed understanding that my lessons needed to become more multi-modal if I am to reach all of my students.  But it was more than that.  It was not just about giving students multi-modal work, but about seeing them as learners who take in information in different modes.  Even one-on-one informal discussions take on new meaning when you think of it that way.  What an epiphany!  And what a heart-break.  To discover that the blood, sweat, and tears that I had put into my work was not enough was devastating to me!  And how was I going to sell this to our overworked, over scrutinized staff?

The Three-Tiers

                Upon attending a stirring talk by Dr. Carol Santa on what really works in education, I was inspired to move forward with my research, and I wanted to drag my colleague Pam McGreer along with me.  With one eyebrow up in curiosity for literally thirty minutes, she listened to me go on and on about Dr. Santa’s ideas in the three tiers of CRISS understanding.  The more I talked, the more it made sense to me.  Dr. Santa had hit the nail on the head for me.  We understand CRISS at three levels: by strategy, by principle, or by a deeper clinical psychological level. 

                Most teachers, having gone through their first level 1 training, are so overwhelmed by the strategies and how they can be tied together that often the metacognitive piece is overlooked.  Strategies are fun and engaging; they allow for differentiation by level and by learning style.  Reflection on a strategy takes time.  I don’t have it.  Done. 

                After four or five years of training, I finally was able to wrap my head around the second tier, principle, and it dawned on me that the P&P were a set of guidelines that, if followed daily, one can hit a variety of learners in a lesson with little major changes in those plans.  Discussion?  Check.  Writing? Check.  Explanation and modeling?  Check.  And so on.

                But to ask a teacher to know oneself as a learner before even evaluating oneself as a teacher?  Then to meet students head-on with your knowledge of self?  And to engage in activities that take student strengths/weaknesses into account all the while knowing where your strengths and weaknesses lie?  Well, that is the root of where communication lies, and that is where we must stoop to reach the kids who seem unreachable.  At the base. 

Implementation

                So what does this mean for us, as educators?  Throw up our hands and walk away – the task is too daunting?  Certainly it does not mean that we need to revamp our entire curriculum, does it?  The answer is no.  What is does mean is this:

•  Before you go any further, take a learning styles test (http://www.vark-learn.com/english/page.asp?p=questionnaire)and a multiple-intelligences test (http://www.businessballs.com/howardgardnermultipleintelligences.htm or http://www.thomasarmstrong.com/multiple_intelligences.php).  Reflect upon both and journal about parts of your life and your teaching that align with the results.  If you are not satisfied with your results, take another one somewhere else (I took five, remember?).  In your journal, take time to reflect upon your teaching – focus on strategies and activities that you do that align with your learning styles and your strengths.* After this, jot down things that you do already as a teacher to reach students who are of other intelligences and learning styles.  Visit some of those websites listed above to give you a thorough explanation of the types of intelligences you will encounter.  Make lists of things you can do as an educator to keep all intelligences in mind.    *I say “journal” because that is how I would do it – remember, I am a read/write/intrapersonal type.  If you have a better way of keeping track of yourself, use it!  But don’t let the information go away.  Save it somewhere so that you can reflect back upon it later. 
•  Give students a learning-styles and multiple-intelligences questionnaire and allow them to reflect upon themselves as learners as you did above.  Expect them to give examples from their lives that support their learning style.  Some will disagree with the outcome.  Have a second test handy for this reason.  Dive into what learning styles and multiple intelligences mean for them as learners so that they can carry this new knowledge with them from class to class.
• Make a CRISS P&P checklist and be sure to hit as many of the P&P as possible during each lesson.  Understand and accept that some activities will support some students better than others and that handfuls of students will be more comfortable with certain strategies more than others.
•  Teach strategies and directly relate them to students as learners.  Confess that some of the strategies just don’t work for you, and get excited when you, as a learner, benefit from a strategy.  Encourage your students to reflect upon their strategy usage in this way.
•  Use CRISS vocabulary and multiple intelligence/learning-styles vocabulary when introducing activities and strategies, not only for strategy-calling, but for principles.  For example, “To help you to build background knowledge we’re going to be using a discussion strategy called Mind Streaming.  Our interpersonal and verbal/linguistic students will love this activity because it involves discussion, and you love to connect with others and talk!” Build in reflection time and have students draw their strengths into their reflections to different activities and strategies.
•  Give students choices within the same activity.  In eighth grade, we spend time in language arts supporting our students with note-taking strategies so that they can take these skills into their content area courses and be more organized learners.  Modeling different note-taking strategies at the beginning of the year and pinpointing what types of learners may benefit from using the different types would be a great place to start!  When discussing learning styles, I often recommend that our verbal/linguistic students try power notes because we (the verbals) tend to be pretty wordy.  Power note taking gives students lots of room to reword and summarize.  Two column-notes might work better for those kids who are kinesthetic and aural because they don’t see much value in note taking.  Two-column notes are easy to organize and allow for very brief summaries to be written.  Webbing or mapping, although challenging for me, is really easy for a more visual learner because that type of learner can see relationships visually.  I am completely distracted by the lines and boxes, but then I would be.  I’m verbal.
• Get crazy.  Set up a portfolio system.  At the beginning of the quarter go over a list of the learning targets that students will hit by the end of the quarter.  As you hit each target in your lessons and assignments, direct students to this list and remind them that they need to be able to prove with physical evidence (ie. a piece of writing, test/quiz, assessed project, reading logs, journals, etc.) that they have been able to meet that goal.  At the end of the quarter, have students put their portfolios together.  Included should be a checklist of the targets and student-selected evidence along with a metacognitive reflection for each piece.  Reflections should indicate why the student feels that the evidence supports learning and how his/her learning style/intelligences fit into the equation.  Why not have students check off a list of the CRISS P&P and allow them to make connections with that as well?

Whew!  Talk about knowing oneself!

Time for reflection - May 17 Crumble

The year is ending, and classrooms are beginning to look empty.  This last week I had a group of five eighth grade girls ransack my office and pack up books, photographs, and supplies.  They just showed up one day at lunch, and, like a band of hungry vultures, pecked my office clean.  Then they had the nerve to show up the next day and complain because I had unpacked some of my boxes so that I could do my job for the next two weeks!  I have some nerve, I know.  I love middle schoolers.  Sincerely. 

This week I've felt a little revitalized, and I thought I'd give the area of metacognition a good shake down as we all prepare to take off our educator hats for at least a few weeks and rest.  As many of us know, reflection is such a key component in becoming a better anything, and there is no better way to know oneself as an educator than to reflect upon oneself as a learner and a person.

One of the foundations of Project CRISS is a skill called metacognition, which many of you know means thinking about one's own thinking.  How do I, as a learner, learn?  I almost think that this reflection is more important for teachers than it is for students because, cognitively, these kiddos are still in stages where they haven't got a clue how they learn and are looking for us to supply them with those answers.  If we can't show them our confidence in our ability to detect our own learning styles, then how can we show them how to explore theirs?

Several years ago I conducted a refresher geared toward learning styles, and it's been a while since I preached that sermon, but I recall one revelation that many of us had after we all took the VARK learning styles assessment together and a multiple intelligences assessment.  It was like light bulbs went on all over the library as we started sharing our learning strengths with each other!  After I took those tests, I realized why I get frustrated when I sit in lectures or when somebody tries to tell me how to play a game.  My auditory listening skills stink, and I tune out after the first few instructions. 

But something even more amazing happened that day.  My ability to connect to my colleagues expanded because I was able to identify each person by his/her learning style.  I also began to notice that we bring those styles into our interactions with others.  Anybody ever notice me staring at your hair or interrupting a lengthy conversation with a completely new one?  Yep.  It's because my ears have shut down.  I don't mean to do it.  I am a better emailer and texter than I am a face-to-face conversationalist - and it's not because I like to hide behind my computer and my phone.  It's because I can't focus on my ears for too long.  Knowing this about my colleagues made it easier for me to communicate because if I knew I was working with a person who was kinesthetic - I showed them how to do something rather than type them out an email with directions. 

It even made a difference in my relationship with my husband - who is completely kinesthetic.  My strengths are my read/write ability and my musical/rhythmic ability.  Instead of frustrating him with lengthy instructions about things, I try to show him.  This is a challenge for me, as I produce better with my words, but to improve our (already amazing) relationship this is what I do.  With my daughter (the technology and visual girl) it is even more of a challenge, but I am learning.

My point is, friends, if we are willing to put forth the effort in creating engaging and meaningful lessons geared toward the highly-rigorous Common Core Standards, we have to be willing to go all the way.  Our kids will meet us with what they have to offer, but if their brains aren't wired for what we're giving them - good luck!  You can rebuttle this with the idea that as they get older learning isn't going to be geared toward their intelligences, and that they need to learn how to adapt - if you want, but the fact remains - we have these kiddos now.  Our job is to pack them with confidence, skill, and the ability to learn without being directed.  What better way to do this than to empower them with the idea that their way of learning may be different than others and by giving them ideas to adapt that way to today's education.