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5 Messages You Must Convey to Parents at “Back-To-School Night” or “Open House”

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5 Messages Teachers Must Give Parents at Open House or Back-to-School night.www.minutebyminutespanish

Back-to-School Nights can fly by in a blur. At our school, on Back-to-School Night, teachers have 10 minutes per class with parents. Use this time wisely. Don’t squander these minutes on technical information easily conveyed in a brochure, or by teaching a lesson in the target language — you have five more important messages to convey that will improve your relationship with parents for the rest of the year.

  1. You want to convey you are personable, friendly, human, and that they can trust you. Later on in the year, if there is an issue, you have laid the ground work that they approach you first with a problem or a complaint, not your boss.

After a brief sketch of my background and the advantages of learning Spanish, I mention my personal experience. I tell them about scholarships I have won, and how their child can also win scholarships, based on language skills. I share when I have made more money because of my language skills. Money catches their interest! I tell them how much I love teaching seventh grade right up until February when these twelve-year-olds turn into teenagers. I wink, we have a good laugh, I ask if the teenage alien has already entered their home, I have over 200 a day!  See, I’m personable!

  1. You must convey to them that you are the expert on this age group, compared to them. Even if you are a second year teacher throw out your statistic.

I spend a few minutes educating parents about adolescents and I assert my expertise with this age group. I tell them that in my experience of teaching more than 3,000 students in this age group, (here I pause and joke that I have the gray hair to prove it but you want it to sink in. Yah, they have two kids but you’ve had X amount in this age group.) I’ve seen some seventh graders try out some new—and undesirable—behaviors: lying and cheating.

Many parents are relieved when I depersonalize this shocking behavior. I reap many benefits throughout the year from this, as parents are more likely to admit their children’s mistakes to a teacher who doesn’t perceive these behaviors as a reflection of their parenting.

One unexpected behavior may be lying about homework, so I explain how I daily input grades into the grading program. I can help them put the app on their phones if that would help them to track their child’s actual homework turned in versus what they are told. Another lie may be that I haven’t handed back their make-up tests. My policy is to update grades and return them every Tuesday. (This slows down the compulsive parents who check grades online several times a day.)

As for cheating, many students use Google translate for their work and then flunk the assessments.  Excuses are made about being test phobic, but the reality is that post pandemic many students just want the grade and the assignment checked off so that their parents will let them be on their devices more than they actually want to learn.

I wrote 12 pages in my book about what teachers of other grades want parents to know. See below if you need more information.

  1. You must convey to parents to talk with you privately if something feels odd.

I tell them this, “If your child is trying to convince you of something that sounds unbelievable, email me to give you a call and we can figure out what is going on. Your child doesn’t have to know that you and I talked about the story that Mrs. Shrager is so old that every day she forgets to give me credit for my homework.”

      4.You must educate parents that their high school teachers will be writing college recommendations about the soft issues, including honesty.  (Update 2022 – you might want to swap this out for a few observations about cell phone addiction last year compared to pre-pandemic and lack of sleep.)

If your parents are like my parents, the thought of their child having good grades but lousy recommendations terrifies them. You can learn how to talk to parents about the Common App letter of recommendation below. Teachers love having this information to help parents see the importance of correcting behavior issues in their class.

5. You must convey that languages are learned not just taught, and you have practice available whenever their child needs help, at their time convenience.

I tell them that I have Quizizz and Blooket  games every week for practice that can be played on their child’s phone while on the bus to a sporting event. I also tell them that my job is to give them a love of learning Spanish which I do through music, current events, and by preparing 100 slides a day with my daily tech guide for visual support so that we can conduct the lesson in Spanish.  I ask how many have heard their children singing one of our songs already?  If time, I show a minute video of the class singing a song.  Parents love it and we end on a high loving note.

What do you want parents to hear first as a general observation so that they don’t take it personally when their student does it?  (This minimizes personal attacks on you for saying horrible things about their child.)  Prepare your presentation, use your time wisely to reap benefits all year long from it and enjoy Back-to-School night.

This post is a condensed version of one of the  sections from my book, Teacher Dialogues. Available  at Amazon.

Perfect gift for new teacher or any teacher refining his or her "teacher voice.
Perfect gift for new teacher or any teacher refining his or her “teacher voice.”

 

 

Thanks for Visiting For the Minute by Minute Spanish!
Thanks for Visiting For the Minute by Minute Spanish!

Unintentional Consequences of Social Media Clash with Appropriate Classroom Behavior

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Don’t blame the parents or the students! Blame social media surrounding our middle school students with the belief that every opinion is important and demanding of immediate attention.  The village needs to directly teach children and their parents to stop this or else the students will not deserve an excellent Teacher Evaluation when applying to colleges.

In case the parents don’t know, over 700 universities accept the Common Application. Its Teacher Evaluation will be important and students really don’t know who in their senior year they will be asking to complete it.  Acting like  jerks in ninth grade study hall may prevent students from getting the kind of recommendation they need. I described this in detail in books for parents and a book for teachers.  If you want the whole explanation and create a paradigm shift with your community, consider using these books: Seventh Grade Guide  Sixth Grade Guide  Teacher Dialogues

But if you just want the 10 minute explanation it goes like this.  Pick a time to have a heart-to-heart talk with your class.  Explain that their speaking out, whining, and interrupting, is becoming a habit that must now be broken in middle school because their high school teachers will be judging them and evaluating them.  Even if they think they will grow up when they are juniors – their senior teachers may have had them in a study hall or lunch room duty when they were freshmen.  Even if they are marked as being good – they are in column 5 of 7 – and not the best candidates.  The margin is very slender.  Show them the four areas indicated with the arrows that concern you.  Tell them that they have a great future, but not if they don’t have the social skills desired by adults writing and reading the college applications.

This usually stops students and parents.  I tell them that I will do my job by reminding them with the words, “social skills alert” meaning their lack of appropriate social skills is a problem.  I call their parents and tell them that I am doing this to help them and ask for their help.  I assure the students and their parents that this is so important that I am willing to assign detentions and work with their parents to get them back on track.

As for Spanish class, I have created three musical videos to demonstrate these skills.  The first is how to treat a new student in class.  The second is how to write an email to a teacher, and the third is the most important, asking if now is a good time before just talking at the teacher with different requests.

As

As I write these words in March, I see many teachers writing about classroom management beginning to unravel. Point systems are all about external validation that quickly loses its attraction and the external rewards need to be upped as time goes on. There is no magic bullet that will last the year. External rewards only last so long.

But internal validation is something else.  It’s about catching their vision of who they want to be and showing how developing self-discipline will get them there.  Connect with your students by sharing this information with them and their parents and relating their behavior choices to their future ability to have the things they want and the lifestyle they deserve.

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Why is it so hard to get students’ attention?

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Even if you stand on your head or spit coins they won’t listen. Why are there so many responses to this new teacher’s question about getting students’ attention?

A new Spanish teacher posted recently, “What are your best classroom attention getters. Particularly for High School. My freshman still have not learned that talking when I am isn’t acceptable. Nothing I have tried has really worked.”

My first response is to take charge and when you start an activity, explicitly tell students that the “fast finishers” will do X and not talk to one another.  Give them the options that they can do and be explicit up front so that it is impersonal.  If you start redirecting them at the end – it makes it personal and open to negotiation.  This is smart classroom management that comes with experience.  But what if that isn’t enough?

There were close to 100 responses to the above query,  featuring hand claps, sayings, call-and-answer responses, whistles, teen buzz, points-off-behavior-grade and the silent treatment.

What is going on here?  Clearly there is a bigger problem here encompassing two issues:

1.You must eliminate that part of you that gives them permission to talk over you.

2. Rather than trying to get them to be quiet, pique their interest with highly engaging transitions that vary from activity to activity.

 

Step One: Get Your Head in the Game

No teacher wants to admit this but it is true. When a class acts this way, the students are actually bullying the teacher.

I have learned a lot from my dogs. There is always an alpha dog. When we try to interfere and not let the alpha dog take charge, the other dogs are not grateful; rather they are confused and act worse until the alpha dog returns and re-establishes the pecking order.

Be the alpha in your classroom!
Like my beloved pets, students need the alpha to take charge, else they will all jockey to be the one talking the most and in charge. They need you to assert your alpha position.

Children need to know who is in charge and will act out if the teacher does not lead.

In my most still, reflective moments, I have to admit that when a student has more power in my classroom than I do, it is because a little part of my psyche agrees with the student that I don’t have to be respected.

I can blame that on my family legacy of beating us as kids, and most times I have vanquished it.

Sometimes it crops up when:

  • I am stressed with a life event.
  • When there is a really bad combination of students who should never be scheduled together, and I am powerless to make changes because Spanish just isn’t perceived to be that important.
  • When for whatever reason I will have unwanted consequences if my admin finds I am struggling.

I have a friend who let students talk over and walk over her because she is a French teacher and needs her enrollment. Turns out, only when she took charge did she retain her enrollment. You need to fearlessly address what part of you gives them permission to have more power in the classroom and deal with it.

You need to talk to yourself and tell yourself: “I am the adult in charge.

I will be obeyed.

I will not let children take away from those who are here to learn.

When students whine, it is not a moral judgment about me, but more about their own teenage angst. I will not feed their whining and let it grow by responding to it.

I deserve respect and if I don’t get it, that child will be removed for the rest of the period. My other students deserve respect.

There is zero tolerance for talking over me; it undermines my authority and I DO NOT DESERVE IT AND WILL NOT TOLERATE IT.”

Believe this and walk into that room with the steel eye and erect posture that demands respect. period.  Oh and every time you ask for their attention you must be 100% prepared with the next task. No looking for the handouts, or realizing that you have to fumble on the computer to find the video, nada.  You must get their attention and move on – otherwise you will loose them.  I use a daily tech guide and a clicker so that from any part of the room we move on to the next activity with seamless transitions.

Here is a video of what my lesson looks like as I teach weather.

 

Step Two: Vary your transitions and take them to the next level with musical videos.

Rather than trying to get them to be quiet, capture their interest with transitional videos that pique their interest and make them tell the others to shush so they can figure out what is next.  At this point, with three months under our belts, my students catch a hint of a video and they start to do the task it requires or else they listen to the airhorn or the vamos a jugar video to see which one applies to the class.  Rather than telling them to be quiet so that they can write down the homework, they hear the song and start pulling out their agendas and looking for the handouts while singing the song.

Here is a previous blog showing how they work.

Beyond Chants in the World Language Classroom: 3 Steps to Move from Advanced to Master Teacher

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Thanks for Visiting For the Minute by Minute Spanish!

Regain Control of “THAT” Difficult Class!

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Emma  asked an eternal question today on a teacher  FB group. She wrote, “I have one class that REALLY is difficult . . . any tips for dealing with “THAT” class, the one that never stops talking, doesn’t follow directions, and moving students doesn’t help because they will talk to everyone? It’s really discouraging.

Emma, you need more than a few tips — you need a five point action plan, and here it is!

But first, the usual suggestions/tips should be followed, and if they work, then you don’t need the action plan. The usual suggestions are:

  1. Call Home – find something genuinely positive to say as well as deliver the difficult message.
  2. Talk to other teachers who have the same students and find out if anyone is successful with them and duplicate what they do.
  3. Talk to you administration about them.
  4. Talk to their coaches.
  5. Use Class Dojo to track class behavior and offer a preferred reward activity for X amount of time of good behavior.

If none of these work, then it is time to start the five point action plan. This will be a lot of work at first, but it will work, and thus be worth the time invested.

 

Step One: Get Your Head in the Game

No teacher wants to admit this but it is true. When a class acts this way, the students are actually bullying the teacher.

I have learned a lot from my dogs. There is always an alpha dog. When we try to interfere and not let the alpha dog take charge, the other dogs are not grateful; rather they are confused and act worse until the alpha dog returns and re-establishes the pecking order.

Be the alpha in your classroom!
Like my beloved pets, students need the alpha to take charge, else they will all jockey to be the one talking the most and in charge. They need you to assert your alpha position.

Children need to know who is in charge and will act out if the teacher does not lead.

In my most still, reflective moments, I have to admit that when a student has more power in my classroom than I do, it is because a little part of my psyche agrees with the student that I don’t have to be respected.

I can blame that on my family legacy of beating us as kids, and most times I have vanquished it.

Sometimes it crops up when:

  • I am stressed with a life event.
  • When there is a really bad combination of students who should never be scheduled together, and I am powerless to make changes because Spanish just isn’t perceived to be that important.

I have a friend who let students talk over and walk over her because she is a French teacher and needs her enrollment. Turns out, only when she took charge did she retain her enrollment. You need to fearlessly address what part of you gives them permission to have more power in the classroom and deal with it.

You need to talk to yourself and tell yourself: I am the adult in charge.

I will be obeyed.

I will not let children take away from those who are here to learn.

When students whine, it is not a moral judgment about me, but more about their own teenage angst. I will not feed their whining and let it grow by responding to it.

I deserve respect and if I don’t get it, that child will be removed for the rest of the period. My other students deserve respect.

There is zero tolerance for talking over me; it undermines my authority and I DO NOT DESERVE IT AND WILL NOT TOLERATE IT.”

You deserve better!
Practice this pep talk in the mirror, in the shower, in the car, everywhere until you exude it!

Scream it to yourself on your way to school. Buy into it. Believe and live it.  (Every teacher has to find his or her own teaching voice. Take my suggestions and change them to reflect your teaching voice, or if you are unhappy with your current teaching voice, borrow mine until you are on firmer ground.)

 

Step Two: Enlist Your Tribe to Help You

Line up a few other teachers willing to help you. Explain to them that you need them to let the offending student sit in the back of their class and work on their packet. My 8th graders hate when they are sent to a 7th grade class as it makes them look bad. Awww.

No fumbling when calling!
Put those extensions right next to the phone.

Have their phone numbers on a post-it by your phone. If they can be the cool teachers or the respected coaches, even better.  You must have worksheet packets lined up for offending students.

Yes, this means 4 or 5 packets each day that relate to the class material so you can’t be accused of giving unrelated busy work.

Step Three: Prepare, Prepare, Prepare

You are about to make a big change and you must have your homework done.

You must plan the next week’s lessons minute by minute so that there are minimal transitions.

You must have an extra ten minutes of activities to make sure there is no down time. I would avoid any competitive games as when this kind of class competes it opens the door for trash talk and over-the-top talking.

I suggest you make a Daily Tech Guide (“DTG”) in either PowerPoint, Google Slides or your interactive board’s software.   You need to vary the activities, embed the videos, embed the songs, insert pictures of the pages in the text, insert worksheet with the answers, everything so that there are no transitions.

This remote will change lives!
This remote will free you to walk around the room and stand strategically behind challenging students. It changes lives!

Invest in a remote presentation device or wireless mouse so you can walk around the room and stand next to the trouble-makers as you click through the lesson. If you are pressed for time, these lessons are available from my store. If you want to learn more about making DTGs, you can get a free template  without musical videos on the first day when you join my challenge  or read my blog on Just Prep During Your Prep

Here are my first 20 lessons.

If you are still doing paired practices they are not to choose their friends, You choose their partners because you are in control.

Develop signals – my DTGs are sprinkled with “¿listos?” — ready? I say it and they all answer. If some are off task I walk over to them and repeat it and the whole class answers. Then zip into the next activity. Getting their attention is easier than having them be quiet. So train them to do this.

 

Step Four: Give Your Best Heart-to-Heart talk (or steal mine, changing “father” to “grandfather” or ‘great-grandfather” if it fits better.)

Teaching from the heart is good for you!
When everything is in place to make the change, use your most sincerest tone for your heart-to-heart talk with students. It is more effective than any lecture.

Tell your students, “You need to hear my story.”

In 1921, on my father’s 6th birthday he chased a ball into the street and was run over by a truck. No one stopped to helped him because cars were still so new that only the rich had them and they didn’t want to dirty their cars up. The town drunk found him and brought him to the hospital. They stitched his face up for his wake, in order to lessen his mother’s sorrow, never believing he would awaken from his coma.

His father kept vigil for seven days and did not shed one tear. My father never saw his father cry until he was 15.  He found his father weeping that he had been a horrible father. My father asked him why and my grandfather told him “A guy at work was walking with his son past a construction site and realized some bricks were falling right in front of his son and he yelled ‘halt’ and his son halted immediately and the bricks just grazed his toes. If I had yelled halt, you would have argued with me and be dead. I didn’t raise you well enough to keep you safe.”

I have been reading the book on Columbine High school and have been impressed that many students were lead to safety because they listened to a teacher or principal.

I am upset with myself because you don’t listen to me and if anything were to happen, I couldn’t protect you.

I was talking to my brother who hires students to work in his business, and he said if a high school student isn’t trained to show interest, he won’t hire him – and he pays the highest wages.

So by giving you permission to talk over me, I am also neglecting to help you learn how to behave around authority figures and it might cause you to not get a good job or to have the police misunderstand your attitude.

I learned that teachers who train their students with SLANT find that their students do not have this problem. So going forward, to keep you safe, you must not talk when I am talking and you must stop talking when I tell you to do so. Also when I say “slant”, you need to

  • Sit up
  • Lean forward
  • Ask questions about the topic
  • Nod your head
  • Track the teacher with your eyes (move around the room when practicing this)

If you practice this, you will get a better job, and be surprised that adults believe you are really paying attention, even if you aren’t. We are going to practice this and you should try this elsewhere and let us know the results.”

Then, start practicing it with the students and start your lesson with the most engaging activity. Remind them to slant when you sense they are fading.

Practice the signal to be quiet. If someone doesn’t comply and is blatantly disrespectful, go to step five.  

Step Five: Show You Mean It.

When someone disobeys, you call the teacher on the list but don’t say the teacher’s name. “Hi this is Ellen Shrager, I am sending X to you. Thanks.” Go out into the hall and signal the student to join you. (Out in the hall is better and the class will quiet down to hear what you are saying.)

Packets are a go!
Your packets are ready and handy for you to give to student who needs to leave the room.

Give the packet to the student and neutrally send him to the other teacher for him to complete the work. “Today isn’t working for you, so you need to finish the class work with Coach Nopardons. I hope tomorrow is better for you.”

No threats, no discussion, the kid is gone for today. Continue with class. Do not let them talk over you. Repeat with a different teacher if necessary.    After a week they will know you mean business.

You do not deserve that kind of treatment. Emma, your genuine angst motivated me to write my first blog.

Let us know what you decide to do and if it works for you.

Thanks for Visiting For the Minute by Minute Spanish!
Thanks for Visiting For the Minute by Minute Spanish!

Stopping Student Swearing and Being Disrespectful for Attention

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Advice for Stopping Student Swearing and Being Disrespectful in Class
Advice for Stopping Student Swearing and Being Disrespectful in Class

Recently on FLTEACH, a teacher, Joe, asked advice for dealing with a sophomore who swears and is disrespectful in order to get attention. Bill Heller responded with different books including my “Teacher Dialogues.” Joe still isn’t sure how to create a dialogue with this student because of their strained relationship and feared that it would be awkward to probe into the student’s life to figure out what was going on with the student.

Here is my advice:

Joe, we are constantly refining “our teaching voices” because they change with our own life experiences that we bring to the classroom.

As I approach 60, my teaching voice is blended with grandmotherly concern, so my dialogue would most likely be like this:

“I am concerned for you. I’ve taught thousands of students and some of them are now 40 and I keep up with them. Through them. I’ve learned the importance of keeping all options open for a great life.

One way to do this is to be hired for interesting jobs and the folks hiring are the older folks who usually offer jobs to people who know how to be appropriate. This habit of swearing is obviously serving the 16 year old version of (kid’s name) but will it serve the 25 year old version of yourself?

Probably not.

It’s easy to let swearing slip at the wrong moment, especially if you are anxious during a job interview.

As one of the adults in your life, I feel responsible for helping you to be the best version of yourself and to help you to eliminate swearing in my class as an exercise in self-discipline and as a commitment to the vision of the great man you can be.

Maybe if you help me to understand how swearing and being disrespectful in my class helps you now to get through my class, we can brainstorm other ways to meet your needs.”

I would have this conversation privately and I would make sure that I flushed from my attitude   any residual resentment towards this student before starting the dialogue.  I would make sure I was full of sincere concern so that my tone reflects my words.

Joe, I hope you can use this as a springboard for crafting your own dialogue.  Good luck!

[Read more…]

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