Phenomenon Revealed A Lesson Learned by a Montessori Teacher

I have been working towards this dream/goal of having my own classroom for sixteen years! I have been a co-teacher in a Montessori 3-6 classroom, a paraprofessional in each grade K-6, a long term sub third grade teacher, and a lunch waitress for 5 of those years. I have also been a mom for 27 years. I have learned a lot, yet know there is just as much that I have not yet learned. I realize I have dated myself however my history is critical to demonstrate that learning is an ongoing, forever process.

I have worked with the most academically and behaviorally challenged students for the last eight years. I have witnessed the daily drudgeries of kindergarteners who struggle to sit still, of fourth graders at first grade math level that didn’t understand the concept of making ten, and of sixth graders who couldn’t read beyond the second grade level. I have witnessed their depression, their temper tantrums, violent outbursts, thrown clip boards, chairs, and desks. I have felt their frustrations and despair as they struggled every day to learn and “fit” in. I could easily tell what it was they hadn’t learned and what it was they needed to learn, but I don’t think I ever considered the totality of what they had learned.

Now I find myself with a class of six three years olds, six four year olds, and ten Kindergarteners. Dr. Maria Montessori referred to these ages as the stage of the Absorbent Mind.  The fours and fives spent last year together as threes and fours in a classroom in which chaos was the rule of order.  The circumstances were most unfortunate for everyone involved and the consequences are very real. Chaos was absorbed, chaos was learned. I had heard “bits and pieces” about last year, but truly understood on the day I met my Kindergarteners!

 As a whole class with mixed ages and experiences we have spent fifteen days together. The multitude of inappropriate behaviors are not really that dramatic; however exasperating they seem, compared to what my peers in the upper elementary, middle, and high school grades are experiencing. I am also not that concerned because they are only 3, 4, & 5 and I have all year to teach and re-teach. The lesson in this story has been revealing itself to me as I tried to get a handle on the chaos that kept asserting itself into each “perfect” day over the past three weeks.  I have realized a phenomenon as “the answer”!  I have realized what they have learned and now understand what they have not yet learned! And so, I must teach accordingly.

            All behavior choices are made based on what an individual has and has not yet learned. This may not seem earth shattering to you at first, but I ask you to slow down, back up a bit. Think of a student in your class who is struggling with behavior choices, think of a grown up in your present life that also struggles with their “behavior choices”. Then consider that these less than appropriate choices are simply a result of what they have and what they have not yet learned.

            The next challenge for us as grownups and teachers is to decide what our responsive choice is going to be. Should we react in a way that scolds, punishes, isolates, demeans, belittles, or embarrasses? Or as grownups and teachers do we think before we react? Do we pause to consider the function of the behavior, it is something that has been learned, and it is something that has not yet been learned. If it is a learned behavior that needs to be modified, then as teachers we must teach the appropriate alternative. If it is a behavior that comes from not knowing the appropriate choice, then once again as teachers we must teach the appropriate choice. 

            This must shake you to your core! You must take the time to consider; learned and not yet learned, then teach accordingly.

            I felt compelled to share this phenomenon revealed because I know the truth of the day in the life of an educator and I know the truth of the day in the life as a single mother. I know it is much easier to react when burdened with all of the stresses, pressures, and burdens of the job and everyday life. Reacting is a lot easier than thinking! Punishing is quicker than teaching.

Stop, take the time to think about the individual child who is struggling with making appropriate behavior choices. It doesn’t matter whether they are 3, 6, 9, 12, 15, 18, 21, or even 24. Their brains are only 3, 6, 9, 12 … 24 years old. Think of what they have learned and not yet learned.

We, as teachers, as parents, as spouses, as siblings, and as children ourselves have expectations of how the other people in our lives should behave. Just because we expect something of someone, doesn’t mean they have properly learned it yet. When the students in our class, co-workers, members of our families, etc. make inappropriate behavior choices the natural inclination is to react. Most often our own choice is to react negatively with consequences that scold, punish, isolate, demean, belittle, or embarrass. Stop, take the time to consider; this is because it is what we have learned and because of what we have not yet learned.

No child or adult, no student or teacher is ever too old to learn. Stop, take the time to consider; learned and not yet learned, then teach accordingly.

A Whole New World

Teaching at its core comes from a place of compassion. We all have it. There is a wellspring of love and compassion in all of us, especially us teachers,  but it often gets covered up by our ideas about the world, our egos and identities that we construct, the stories we assemble in order to make sense and survive in an ideal world that we want it to be. Our fabricated ideas about the world that we want it to be often come into conflict with the world as it really is, and this can result in an uncomfortable and uneasy feeling as we combat this experience.  Those moments of unfamiliarity bring about an insecurity that force us to bunker down and entrench ourselves even stronger so that our world view and our ideas about reality do not get upset. We overcompensate to fortify our old ideas and thus become less flexible and adaptable to new situations that we have never encountered. And so, we lose our ability to be compassionate and tap into our empathy. My first couple of weeks teaching at Westinghouse 6-12, in Homewood, brought me to this awakening. I say awakening because it hits at the heart of what great instructing can be and the essence of where it comes from.

There is a particular student that I teach, let’s call her Rachel… She was one of those students that did not engage, stayed to herself and made it clear she did not wish to be bothered. She was frequently late, and when I would address any situation with her to try and reach her, get her to participate or get information to better assist and assess the situation, she would become aggressive, vulgar, disrespectful and defiant. When trying to address the inappropriate and volatile behavior, she became more enraged and would swear directly at me and leave the room time after time. Being the conscientious and respectable teacher that I thought I was, I would try to engage the situation in order for everyone to know that I would not tolerate that type of behavior. I was being driven by fear… Fear that if I did not seem strong and punitive that others in the class would appropriate that same type of behavior because I did not earn their respect. I was also driven by ego that someone was insulting me and that I was looking bad in front of the class as she didn’t acknowledge my redirections or my comments about her behavior. I started to engage in a deleterious battle that made me look even worse.

I was in a conundrum. How could I let her just get away with the insults and defiance knowing full well that her behavior was destructive and detrimental to her wellbeing? If I let her run over me and do what she wanted without listening to my instruction how would I be perceived and how would my reputation get stained? It was a blow to my ego, and this ego made the problem more about me than Rachel. My self-centeredness covered up my compassion so that I was not able to channel my intuition and empathy in order to be of help and assistance. I was transmitting my own anger and frustration and imposing my ideas of how I thought she should be regardless of the circumstances that were most certainly influencing her behavior.  My world view of how I wanted the world to be was not corresponding to this new world as it was.

As a result, I was forced to remove myself from the equation and make it all about Rachel. I made adjustments to her. I didn’t combat her. I put up a mirror to her to allow her to see more of herself. I accepted…. When that acceptance was felt between the two of us, something miraculous transpired. We communicated and smiled. A trust was formed. Rachel slowly began to come out of her shell and participate without my assistance or urging; it came from her own volition.  She literally had made a 180 degree turn. There were still some outbursts of great frustration that were coming from a deep place, but they were not about me. My narcissistic point of view had let me convince myself that it was all about me, which made me respond to an illusory force and problem that I had invented. This fabricated idea was all driven by my ego. Her disdain and attitude had to be about me because then I could control that and make it better since the issue was within me.

We so often get in our own way with our illusory set of perspectives and faulty point of views built on our old ideas and stories that we devise ourselves. It is incumbent that we let go of those preconceived notions to allow for the world as it really is to reveal itself so that we can tap into our compassion and intuition that will lead us to doing the right thing and making right choices in our teaching and methodologies.  It is then that we will show the way and reach our full potential as teachers and guiders.  

I had difficulty reaching Rachel’s mother in the beginning of our failing relationship. There was a reason. When I finally made contact with her to relate the transformation that her daughter was going through and how proud of her I was at her progress, she informed me that she had just gotten released from a federal penitentiary. My old world did not correspond to this new one. Rachel has taught me a great deal.

Teachscape- Cassi Musta

I chose to view the Teachscape video about Cooperative Learning Strategies, because that is a teaching method I utilize a lot in my classroom and is built into the curriculum in many areas. However, I feel that cooperative learning in my classes is not always as successful as it could be in my class due to issues such as students not wanting to work with other students in particular or preferring to work independently, too much socializing (not about the lesson topic), or one or two students end up doing a majority of the work and critical thinking, while the other students are not engaged or off-task. I think the checklist provided with questions for teachers to ask themselves before planning a cooperative learning lesson is useful, because this strategy may not work for certain lessons or in certain environments. Also, the video states the 5 elements of cooperative learning: Positive Interdependence, Face to Face Interaction, Individual/Group Accountability, Interpersonal and Small Group Skills, and Group Processing, and that all 5 elements should be included. The woman in the video also talks about how the grouping of students should change at different times, such as grouping at random or assigning groups. I often have trouble deciding how to group students, and have been surprised when the groups work out better than expected or worse than expected. One of my problems of practice was managing student behavior, and one of the ways I’ve been dealing with that is through assigned seats/groups. There are some students who will continually talk to whoever is around them and others that won’t socialize with students they don’t know. I do like to vary the groups and change every few weeks, but the problem I have is there is only so many tables in my room and so many ways to arrange the groups so that some students remain separated, because otherwise it will lead to off-task behavior. The video also talks about how students need to reflect on how they functioned as a group. My students complete a foods lab evaluation after the completion of each lab, and there is a self-assessment section where the students rate themselves and their group. Many students are honest, but there are still some who either just complain about their group and don’t explain how they could improve cooperation, or they just say everything is fine all the time (when I know they are not cooperating through observation). So, I’m continuing to think about ways to not only improve the cooperation of students within the groups, but also how I can have students reflect more on their cooperation and why something might not be working and also how to improve for next time.

Teachscape Learn Pohland

I feel like something that is really important to me and many teachers, is to develop good questions. That being said, I reviewed the course on asking effective questions. I feel like it can really help students better understand what they are learning if they are asked good questions. I think we have all struggled with developing good questions for discussion, within our classrooms. It is a skill that takes practice to develop, so I felt this class would help me better my questioning skills. When looking at the training the first thing that it addresses, is looking at the purpose for the question and the form of the question. It is important for us as teachers, to plan with the end in mind. As I went through the training, it showed many different types of questions to use. For example you have clarifying questions, these are used to help student better understand something they recently learned. Another example is cueing, this lets the students reflect on their answers and helps them discover the right answer on their own instead being handed the answer. Lastly another effective questioning technique is conceptual facilitation; this allows you to correct a student by asking questions instead of telling them they are wrong. I try to implement some of these techniques already but it is nice to see these in action by veteran teachers. I feeling good questioning techniques can help students discover answers on their own. Students discovering answers on their own in my opinion could help them develop confidence as a student and push them to strive for more. This training also helps you to better understand which types of questions to use in which situation. It also shows good ways to measure the effectiveness of your questions based on student responses. Lastly, the video stresses that teachers use highly cognitive questions. I agree with that, simple recall questions will not help you build students academic strength. I think this video was very helpful for me. I want to work on the discussions in my classroom; this is a very important part of any Social Studies classroom. I really like how the training had tips to implement these questioning techniques into your lesson planning and understanding what you want to get from the questions you ask. Brian Pohland

Nicole Ricci- Time on Task

Time management seems to be a HUGE, MASSIVE issue that I have been encountering all year. There seems to be never enough time in the day to cover everything that needs covered. I even make daily agendas that my students receive each day as a guide for how the class will go. Some days (very few), we will finish everything on our agenda in 1 day. Other days, it will take 2 days to complete 1 lesson. It all depends on the lesson that is being taught.

When it comes to my classroom, I feel that the reason we get behind certain days is that the skill that is being taught is a hard concept for them to grasp and they lack background knowledge to understand it immediately. If I feel that they aren't comprehending what is being taught, I use outside sources that aren't in the curriculum to further push their understanding. I teach 5th grade reading to 45 students. On the PSSA last year, only 13% of them were proficient. So most times I need to do more than just the curriculum to help my students. In knowing my students, I know that the more practice they get, the better they become and the more confident they are when taking their test.

When it comes to the school and district, I am finding that I am always frantically trying to get the Unit tests done on time. The problem with setting a time limit on the Unit tests is that if I need to spend more time on a particular lesson or module, the district and school don't account for that. Also, in doing the 4sights, that too has pushed me further behind in terms of teaching the curriculum.

I feel that a way to solve these issues is to not set time limits on when unit tests are due. Every class/student learns differently so I believe its unrealistic to say that every school needs to be done with a unit at the SAME time. It not only puts stress on the teacher, but then we place our stress on the students which in turn back fires on us!!

Interactive Direct Instruction- Stanley

Providing specific feedback to students has been a struggle for me along with time management. I teach 6th, 7th, and 8th grade math to ESL students so it's been a stretch just feeling prepared to teach the content let alone having to adapt it for beginning ESL students. We move slow in class which means there is some time management issues (pacing...etc), but there is student growth. I use warm-ups and homework to ensure students' understanding of the content. I would like to use exit tickets, but it's just another element of planning that I'm not quite ready for at this point teaching this curriculum. As students complete their warm-ups I check their homework and give feedback. I often am able to clear up misconceptions at this point. The warm-up is also designed as a review of recently taught skills so if students are struggling with that I know that they are having difficulty with the content. This tells me I need to work with them in a small group. When students are working in small groups I try to give them roles to make sure that they all participate. I keep these on popsicle sticks and either assign roles or let them choose them randomly. The roles include: reader, look for examples, Ask questions, keep pace. I like to assign as many students as possible to look for examples, this is a huge skill aligned with CC that many students struggle with. If they can reference their own work and apply it to other situations they will be more successful as they move forward in their education.