What’s Inside?
Classroom Discipline: Start As You Mean To Go On
Developing Better Thinkers Through Writing
Poetry
Start as You Mean to Go On
I remember as a new teacher working in a Christian school outside of Washington, D.C., a few days into my first full-time job as a high school history teacher, trembling inside while trying to keep my composure because my teenage students were misbehaving in class and wondering if I was going to do anything about it. I turned my back to the class and wrote something on the board in order to hide my distress. Inside I was praying desperately, “Oh God, help me! Help me! Help me know what to do!” The Lord, always faithful, gave me wisdom, and I decided to keep my mouth shut until I had time to pray and to seek counsel. They were going to act up again, thinking they had gotten away with it this time, but by then, I would be prepared to meet their challenge. How quickly things changed from a few days before, when everything was working out in my mind so beautifully.
Every new school year excites teachers, first years or veterans, as we ponder the possibilities of new beginnings. We dream of all the things we want to teach our students and the wonderful conversations we will have with them inside and outside of class, the ball games, the plays, the teacher appreciation week notes and gifts, Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Spring breaks;) As we join our colleagues for in-service meetings and we all prepare to enter bravely into the trenches again with renewed spirits and the vigor that summer break generates, as we meet the parents and students in casual meet and greets days before school officially commences, swept up in a rush of anticipation and excitement, we cannot image anything that could possibly spoil such an enchanting atmosphere. The first two days of classes go smashingly, and we think how wonderful and delightful it is to be a teacher!
Then . . . on the third day . . . things take a demonstrable turn towards darkness.
We feel the ebullient spirit of the new school year start to drift away, because the young people sitting in our classrooms do not quite share our joy. They are tired from having to wake up earlier than they did all summer. They cannot wear their favorite t-shirt and flip flops, because they have to wear a uniform with specified socks and shoes and ties and shirts. On the first day of class, they heard their teachers speak of self-government, respecting all class members, being responsible by having their supplies for class, but they were really imagining getting home and trying to eke out the last vestiges of summer before the real schoolwork began. So as the students begin to feel comfortable with their new teachers, and because they did not pay attention to most of the information conveyed the first day of class except when lunch and recess occurred, on the third day of school, without fail in all my years of teaching, the benign students of yesterday begin to act as though they are back home during summer break. They start acting relaxed and free to behave any way they want. As they drift back into old habits, there is a point where they do realize they are not following expectations for classroom behavior, and at this point of realization, some students make the decision to see how much they can get away with. How far can they go with their shenanigans before their new teacher, maybe brand new to teaching or a veteran, but new to them, is going to stop their barely disobedient, barely distracting, and only just a little out of line behavior? They wonder how many looks and/or verbal warnings they will receive before they are asked to stay after class or given a demerit. They then deliberately push the boundaries to find out exactly how far they can push their teacher before any real consequences develop. Some students will literally count how many times they can misbehave before they get into any kind of trouble from the teacher and purposefully misbehave that many times in each class. Lest anyone doubt me, I have many a confession from many a student on this score.
Once the disobedience, disrespect, or general shenanigans begin, the teacher’s next decision determines how the rest of the year will progress. The ebullient spirit that emanated from everyone during in-service, meet and greets, and the first two days of class cannot be captured in its entirety again, after all, it is no longer summer break, but a teacher who thinks wisely and purposefully about classroom discipline can contain a reasonable portion of that cheerfulness for the class and all can enjoy a delightful school year. All he/she has to decide is this: “What will the next two months look like for me and my classes? Am I going to drop the hammer deliberately and stop the shenanigans, knowing that I will endure the wrath of disgruntled youth who must learn to govern themselves and to respect the boundaries I have set for them, or am I going to fear my students’ wrath and choose to appease them for the sake of classroom harmony?”
The teacher may have read articles and books using ambiguous language listing ways to create a positive classroom environment, possibly not noticing that these books tend to avoid writing in clear language what really needs to be done to accomplish such a goal, so the correct answer must be to get along with the students as best as possible while avoiding anything that might cause controversy, correct? Only if you want to live, and allow your students to live, in chaos for the next nine months . . . If you want to have classroom harmony for the entire school year, the next two months are crucial; they might be unpleasant and in some schools, downright hard, but if you persevere, you will have a harmonious classroom where students feel free to inquire and wonder, where respectful discussions are held, and where the students learn academic knowledge and develop virtue.
For the next two months, you need to firmly, calmly, and kindly, stop the disobedience, the disrespectful actions, and the shenanigans of children still trying to act out summer break if you are going to create a classroom atmosphere that is calm, ordered, and safe for inquiry. The first two months is when the fiercest testing occurs. Once you think you have one situation handled, other students emerge who try their own hands at being ungoverned in order to take the place of those who just learned to govern themselves. Sometimes, it feels like you are playing a game of Whack-a Mole – one problem gets sorted and another comes up. You feel conflicted inside, because you want to have a good relationship with all of your students, but for a little while, you have to have talks with students and their parents and dole out punishments. You endure the uncomfortable period, because you know that classroom harmony can only come when your students govern themselves and respect the boundaries you have set for them.
In my experience of working with large numbers of students in private Christian and Classical charter schools, it usually takes two months for all of the students in the class to learn to govern themselves and respect the boundaries set for them. Once the two months’ siege is lifted, that’s often how it feels while angry students are learning to work hard and to behave and overanxious parents are pressing you to relieve their babies’ uncomfortable circumstances, then the rest of the school year is a joyful experience for teacher and students alike. Keep in mind that the students who want to learn are extremely appreciative of the teacher’s actions to create an ordered classroom, but they do not usually let you know this at the time. By January, a look, a point, a reminder that those who govern themselves do not have to be governed by others is all that is needed to keep the class humming along peacefully. Once the testing period is over, the most wonderful teacher-student relationships develop, students learn to love learning, and coming to school each day is a pleasure.
A teacher who does not choose the first two months to establish boundaries and insist that students learn to be self-governing will create a classroom atmosphere of uncertainty, disorder, and frustration. The class will have many students who want to learn, but they are prevented by the misbehavior of students who are not under self-control and a teacher who will not establish strong boundaries. I taught outdoor education where we had fifteen fifth-graders for three hour classes held outside. A few times of year, we got a group of students in, usually from Christian schools, who behaved and followed directions immediately. We always finished those classes an hour early even though we did everything the same as in the other classes that lasted three hours. We realized that we spent an hour out of the regular three hour classes redirecting students who were not following directions, misbehaving, etc. Can you imagine the time lost to instruction in a chaotic classroom over the course of a school year? Back to my point, by the spring, even the teachers who tried to get along and be friends with their students are fed up with the shenanigans. They often begin to yell at the students to behave and dole out their punishments in anger. Some give up trying to maintain order and teaching in their classes becomes almost non-existent.
During the spring of my first year teaching high school at the Christian school in Maryland that I mentioned earlier, the admissions director started coming into my room frequently with parents and prospective students taking a peek at what classes looked like in the school. I did not think anything about it and figured that was commonplace for all the other teachers as well. At the end of the year, the admissions director came up to me and thanked me for letting her open my door so much. I was surprised at her gratitude and it showed on my face, because she responded, “Yours was the only classroom where I knew if I opened the door, you and your students would be working calmly and orderly.” I had not beaten my students into submission, that would have been impossible. I had set my boundaries, figured out how to enforce them – through after class conversations, conversations with parents, handing out lunch detentions and after school detentions, asking coaches for their support, who gave it gladly for tutoring in return – and I had been consistent. It was hard work and it took a lot of my time at first. One day during the testing period, my principal told me that my students had complained about me. They said that I made them work and behave, but that I was fair. I took that as a compliment;)
It is natural for a new teacher to wonder, “Won’t my students hate me if I make them work and behave so early in the school year. Shouldn’t I ease my students into working hard and self-governance?” Hate is a strong word, but dislike is appropriate, and my answer is “Yes, initially, they will dislike you. Secondly, there is no easing in where there is a conflict of wills. The conflict has to happen at some point, so why not sooner than later?” You will get a lot more done and have a much better time as a teacher when you nip things in the bud.
The interesting thing about children is that they recognize love in its different forms and they learn to recognize the love their teacher has for them when he/she establishes strong boundaries and firm discipline and shows compassion and grace when the situation calls for it. I had one student who used to smile at me while I was actually speaking to her correcting her. It was unsettling. I realized later that she was saying, “Thank you” in her funny way. I would speak plainly and truthfully to her and she told me that when she told her mother what I had said, her mother wholeheartedly agreed. When she had a detention with me, which occurred a few times that first year, she would smile sincerely as she left and wish me a good day. That strange phenomenon still goes on today. When I correct students for cheating on homework and make them clean chairs and desks for an hour in addition to getting a 0 on the assignment, without fail, as they leave, they thank me for correcting them and promise they will never cheat again. The only thing I can think of to account for students thanking me for after school detention where they spent an hour cleaning or writing sentences is that they know, deep down, that I love them. If I did not care about them, I would leave them to do whatever they thought was right in their own eyes. I imagine this scenario plays out all over the country with students who know their teachers love them with Christ’s love. It is difficult to love someone you do not know, unless you love them with the love God gives you. Ask the Lord for that love everyday!
Remember that Webster’s 1828 Dictionary definition of discipline, “education; instruction; comprehending instruction in arts, sciences, correct sentiments, morals and manners, to prepare by instructing in correct principles, habits, and due subordination to authority,” requires a Classical and Christian teacher to lead their students in developing correct sentiments, morals, manners, habits, principles, and due subordination to authority. How do you do this if you do not purposely engage the flawed human nature of your students with the love that God gives us for His children? Have a plan in place before that third day comes, knowing that by following the Lord’s framework for disciplining children, the other work you have to complete, the work of instruction in arts and sciences, will be as successful in training your students academically as your discipline is in training your students in virtue.
Start as you mean to go on.
**What direction does the Lord give us in disciplining children? Read my next newsletter.
Developing Better Thinkers Through Writing
Prudence is an attitude that keeps life safe, but does not often make it happy.
Samuel Johnson
A. Define the key terms using Webster’s 1828 Online Dictionary
PRUDENCE, noun Wisdom applied to practice.
Prudence implies caution in deliberating and consulting on the most suitable means to accomplish valuable purposes, and the exercise of sagacity in discerning and selecting them. Prudence differs from wisdom in this, that prudence implies more caution and reserve than wisdom, or is exercised more in foreseeing and avoiding evil, than in devising and executing that which is good. It is sometimes mere caution or circumspection.
Prudence is principally in reference to actions to be done, and due means, order, season and method of doing or not doing.
ATTITUDE, noun
Such a disposition of the parts as serves to express the action and sentiments of the person represented.
ADVENTUROUS, adjective
1. Inclined or willing to incur hazard; bold to encounter danger; daring; courageous; enterprising; applied to persons.
2. Full of hazard; attended with risk; exposing to danger; requiring courage' applied to things; as, an adventurous undertaking.
And followed freedom on the adventurous tide.
B. Answer the following questions using the definitions above:
Does it follow then that an adventurous attitude does not keep one safe, but does make one happy?
Write a good, realistic argument for and against being prudent in life AND for and against being adventurous in life.
Decide if it is better to be adventurous or prudent in life OR if the two can at all be combined in one person at one time. Write with persuasive language a thorough explanation of your decision.
Be prepared to share your answers with the class.
*Consider this quote in context of the questions:
Prudence operates on life in the same manner as rule of composition; it produces vigilance rather than elevation; rather prevents loss than procures advantage; and often miscarriages, but seldom reaches either power or honor. Samuel Johnson
A wonderful poem to read for a new school year — start as you mean to go on.
Ulysses
By Alfred, Lord Tennyson
It little profits that an idle king,
By this still hearth, among these barren crags,
Match'd with an aged wife, I mete and dole
Unequal laws unto a savage race,
That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me.
I cannot rest from travel: I will drink
Life to the lees: All times I have enjoy'd
Greatly, have suffer'd greatly, both with those
That loved me, and alone, on shore, and when
Thro' scudding drifts the rainy Hyades
Vext the dim sea: I am become a name;
For always roaming with a hungry heart
Much have I seen and known; cities of men
And manners, climates, councils, governments,
Myself not least, but honour'd of them all;
And drunk delight of battle with my peers,
Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy.
I am a part of all that I have met;
Yet all experience is an arch wherethro'
Gleams that untravell'd world whose margin fades
For ever and forever when I move.
How dull it is to pause, to make an end,
To rust unburnish'd, not to shine in use!
As tho' to breathe were life! Life piled on life
Were all too little, and of one to me
Little remains: but every hour is saved
From that eternal silence, something more,
A bringer of new things; and vile it were
For some three suns to store and hoard myself,
And this gray spirit yearning in desire
To follow knowledge like a sinking star,
Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.
This is my son, mine own Telemachus,
To whom I leave the sceptre and the isle,—
Well-loved of me, discerning to fulfil
This labour, by slow prudence to make mild
A rugged people, and thro' soft degrees
Subdue them to the useful and the good.
Most blameless is he, centred in the sphere
Of common duties, decent not to fail
In offices of tenderness, and pay
Meet adoration to my household gods,
When I am gone. He works his work, I mine.
There lies the port; the vessel puffs her sail:
There gloom the dark, broad seas. My mariners,
Souls that have toil'd, and wrought, and thought with me—
That ever with a frolic welcome took
The thunder and the sunshine, and opposed
Free hearts, free foreheads—you and I are old;
Old age hath yet his honour and his toil;
Death closes all: but something ere the end,
Some work of noble note, may yet be done,
Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods.
The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks:
The long day wanes: the slow moon climbs: the deep
Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends,
'T is not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down:
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.
Tho' much is taken, much abides; and tho'
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.