New Teacher

Why is it so hard to get students’ attention?

December 5, 2017 By Personal thoughts and beliefs of E.B.Shrager - do not represent those of any past or current employer.

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

Thanks for Visiting For the Minute by Minute Spanish!

Regain Control of “THAT” Difficult Class!

September 12, 2015 By Personal thoughts and beliefs of E.B.Shrager - do not represent those of any past or current employer.

Emma asked an eternal question today on the FB group “Spanish Teachers in the US.” 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:

Call Home – find something genuinely positive to say as well as deliver the difficult message.
Talk to other teachers who have the same students and find out if anyone is successful with them and duplicate what they do.
Talk to you administration about them.
Talk to their coaches.
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.

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

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.

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 8^th graders hate when they are sent to a 7^th 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 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, read my book, The World Language Daily Tech Guide

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.

Speedy Speaking Assessments

September 10, 2015 By Personal thoughts and beliefs of E.B.Shrager - do not represent those of any past or current employer.

It’s that time of the year to assess 29 students’ speaking skills in two forty-five minute periods. My students need to produce eight sentences, comparing their actual schedule with a schedule from another country.

One common way to speed things up is to have groups of two come up and ask and answer questions. The only problem with this is that I use my speaking assessments as a minute to individually touch base with my students beyond the context of what they have to present, and to convey something personal and positive to them.

Therefore, I must speed up managing the transitions between students and here is how I do it:

1. When students come into the room, they see their names on the board, garnering curiosity. (I am able to export their first names from our grading program to Excel, and from there copy and paste on to my flipchart that I use every day. I can drag their names around using a pen at the board, or my cursor at my desk.)

Since my students are a blended class that will soon be sorted into Honors and College Prep for next year’s scheduling, I tell them that if they want to be considered for honors they need to present first and not hang back. I tell them to raise their hands and start lining up the names in order of presenting. Once they stop volunteering, I just line up the rest of their names.

2. The first person sits in the chair facing me, with their back to the class. The second and third students are hovering nearby to my left, filling out the rubric sheet with their names and numbers so that when they sit, I can start grading. (This saves me many minutes compared to when I would hand out the papers, the students would come up to my desk without their papers, go back to their desks, and waste a half minute . . . almost every student!) The two on deck are helping one another with last minute preparation.

3. When the first student is done, I glace at the board and call up the fourth person to join the third person as the second person slides into the chair. I found that with their names on the board, students were moving to the “on deck” slot on their own.

That’s it – try it and let me know how it works for you! If you want a few more ideas, continue reading . . .

I make notes on the rubric page and grade as I go, sharing the final grade and feedback with the students so that they know their grades immediately. I also freeze the slide with their names and open up the grading program on my computer so I can be putting in the grades as each student is done.

When students are painfully slow because they really aren’t prepared, I tell them their grade so far, “hmm with this you are at a 74” and usually they stop and say “great, that’s what I wanted!” This amazes me that so many just need a passing grade, but it save me the agony of the dead time while they search for the next two elusive words.

I give the students something to read and illustrate for points. If they do it in class, they won’t have homework. This rewards students who complete the assessment early and keeps them busy enough to not create behavior problems. Many students just use the time to keep honing their presentation.

My students need to mention two of their favorite classes and why they like them. This is the perfect segue where I fake emotional distress if they don’t mention our class. I ask them what they like about the class so far. I ask how long it took to prepare or how they prepared. I usually end with telling them how much I enjoy them in class and why, giving them the mental paradigm that they are enjoying class sets them up for the long winter months until Spring break.

New Spanish Teacher Landmines!

August 28, 2015 By Personal thoughts and beliefs of E.B.Shrager - do not represent those of any past or current employer.

New teachers need to infuse their classes with their latest innovation techniques while being respectful of the experience of their colleagues.

Too late, many new teachers overlook the importance of investing time with other members of their department and getting to know all of the support staff. It has become such a problem that I added a new chapter to my latest edition of Teacher Dialogues. New teachers come with fresh and innovative ideas and many tend to discount the value of experience and collegiality with everyone in the building, not just their texting buds.

Experienced teachers will prevent you from having endless meetings with unhappy parents, lend you their version of a video when yours is scratched, and use the photocopying machine well in advance of their classes so that as new teachers rush in with the day’s handouts they can use the machine without waiting in line. Balancing being a valued and respected member of your department with being an innovate teacher is a concern for this teacher:

Hola a todos. I need an advice! I will be starting my first job next year. It is Spanish 1A in a middle school where I substituted the last trimester of 2016-2017. I know the staff and school and I love it. I want to have an immersion class next year. However, most of the high school teachers follow the textbook and are grammar drive. They want me to teach ch.1-4 Avancemos. As a new teacher I do not know if I should follow them or what I think is the best for them, even if they disagree with me). Y es que no quiero los roces desde tan pronto, si saben a que me refiero.

Any advice about immersion classes, and staying in the target language at least 90% of the time. Where can I learn more about immersion languages programas for secondary education ?

My reply:

Welcome to the most rewarding profession! I have a really good sense that you are going to be one of those wonderful teachers students remembered fondly because you are wise enough to seek advice from veteran teachers! Over my 30 years, I have noticed that the best teachers honestly analyze what they do, seek advice from veterans, admit mistakes, and try new things.

I run my 7th grade classes as 90% target language classes and I think that is what you want to do as well! For me, immersion means bilingual and I have no expertise with that. The key to running a 90% target language class is to have everything be 100% compelling and engaging. The best way to do this is to create a daily tech guide and use direct instruction for Survival Phrases. Many people have their handouts and posters for these expressions – but my 50 are put to music that enters their brains like nothing else I have seen!

Every day I create a flipchart with our activities and musical transitions. You can, too! And you can teach what is expected of you so that you fit into your department. Be circumspect. Let your colleagues come to you about what you do rather than flouting it to them. Because not only are you paid to teach, but also to be a supportive colleague. Even when your students make comments about how much they love the transition videos and the music, and that other students are jealous they don’t have your, be circumspect. If you can teach what they require and quietly do it with your flipcharts, you will be successful and rehired.

You can download the first day’s flip chart and watch videos of the first week, here

If you feel that this fits your teaching style, let me know and I’ll be glad to help you. Welcome to the profession, I’m so delighted to be your colleague.