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August 24, 2017 - February 3, 2019
Look for the small moments to acknowledge the basic human needs you share with all students.
Share a time you have taken the risk of being extremely honest with a student in a way that allowed the student to be more successful.
Assume the students will and can do the work, despite past work history.
Do not personally respond to a student's indifference or rejection.
"Have I done something that bothered you?"
Identify whatever absolute boundaries the school wants all staff to maintain in their relationships with students
Dedicate times for faculty to speak with school counselors and psychologists
Highlight goals of the school's mission statement that do not pertain only to academic achievement and catalogue efforts toward those goals as a way to underscore the need for teachers to be more than purveyors of required curriculum.
Diversify your access to information about student life.
nonverbal learning disability (NVLD),
executive functioning disorder,
minimal ability to prioritize, estimate time needed, break down tasks into a sequence of steps, tolerate partial completion of a task and switch gears to the next task that will also be partially completed, keep all the necessary books and papers where they can be reliably found, and check his work against a rubric for excellence before he handed it in.
Challenging students threaten staff unity. They expose our differences, often cultural and familial, in the areas of discipline and respect for institutions and traditional authority.
Countertransference is a term from the world of therapy—it basically means you are getting too personally caught up in a situation. Something about your own life and needs is clouding your ability to see the student for who he or she really is, and to do what needs to be done for the student. Countertransference is inevitable.
When you notice that a student has taken on an unusual amount of significance for you—triggering more than typical positive or negative feelings—take a step back from the situation.
Figure 5.1 Signs of Countertransference When half the adult team is outraged at the student's behavior and the other half wants to protect the student. When you are sure that you alone can make the difference for the student and you are willing to do the work solo. When you are lecturing the student well beyond what the student can fully comprehend and make use of for personal growth. When you want to make an example of a student. When you want to make more than one significant exception for the student, especially when you may not want to tell the rest of the team about it. When your feelings
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In complex and emotional decision-making situations, it is important to step away from the table, to separate the airing of ideas and opinions from the building of decisions. This process can be activated in four critical steps: Bring the critical stakeholders and decision makers together. Share all pertinent information, concerns, and perspectives, without the imperative to come to a conclusive plan. Separate for quiet contemplation and reflection. Reconvene to consider solutions.
Something had shifted. The conflict was no longer between Paul and the adults, but between Paul and himself. The relationship he had with his team was becoming an ally in his struggle to succeed against his own worst habits. That is what can happen when we hang in.
Students with nonverbal learning disabilities often develop dysfunctional habits as they struggle with the details of life. They have trouble processing visual information: maps, schedules, outlines, team sports, metaphors.
For some challenging students, the expectation to write across the curriculum is overwhelming, not so much an invitation to share as a minefield to cross. The expectation to write and write and write provokes shutdowns and conflicts. For these students, we offered a writing plan with two significant goals: 1) allowing the student to continue to receive direct instruction to improve written output, and 2) allowing the student to demonstrate understanding across the curriculum in ways other than writing.
Except in English class and with his tutor, he would be offered alternatives to written output in order to demonstrate his understanding—because he couldn't do it in extended prose.
Paul handed in those occasional well-written assignments with as much dread as excitement.
Give students the opportunity to hear the often complex reasoning behind decisions.
We lose nothing from our authority when we ask, "Would you like to hear the reasons behind our decision?"
Offer alternatives to writing for a select few students.
Appreciate verbal play.
Decrease visual overload for students with NVLD.
Watch out for metaphors and flowery language (to use a metaphor).
Show interest in student interests and ideas;
Help students understand their learning styles.
Use a student's emerging ability to make plans, agreements, and informal contracts.
Make a writing plan for any student who needs accommodation for writing (Figure 5.2 provides a template).
Make sure there is someone who is working to connect with every challenging student.
Reflect after sharing perspectives and before decision making about a student.
Watch for adhering to rules for their own sake.
Separate deliberation from decision making at meetings.
Offer the confidential services of counselors for teachers who wish to explore the intense feelings a particular student can trigger.
Make clear to teams the process for making changes.
Administrators are the guardians of process.
Let teams know that they can reduce writing assignments
Convene meetings with parents when a reduction in writing is recommended. Share
in Cedric's own view, he had figured out the right answer. Later the teacher said to me, "This new kid Cedric is great to have in class. I wish the rest of the students worked as hard as he does."
I'm surprised teacher encouraged this and responded positively.
All I ever saw Cedric do when answering questions was guess. Occasionally, he guessed correctly (his guessing was invariably betrayed by the question in his tone: "Is it 4?"), and then he would say with delight, "I knew that one right away!" When he wasn't immediately correct, he maintained the teacher's attention until he was led to the right answer.
I've seen exactly the same behavior so many times.
feedback should "foster the belief that that achievement is related to specific strategies, specific kinds of effort" (Brookhart, 2008, p. 21).
The responses we receive from students give us a strong sense of who we are as professionals (Nakkula & Toshalis, 2006).
Many students struggle to understand concepts in isolation, to learn parts without seeing wholes, to make connections where they only see disparity, and to accept as reality what their perceptions question. For a good many students, success in school has very little to do with true understanding, and much to do with coverage of the curriculum.
"He is performing, but he isn't learning."
the path to understanding is paved with uncertainty, or as David B. Hawkins puts it, "All of us must cross the line between ignorance and insight many times before we truly understand."
realize that helping him be right all the time was a charade of helping him.
Being told that he had to give a reason for his answer decreased his participation, but did not kill it.
