In-Class Assignment 1

Jeremiah Lee 260587356

EDES 350
Professor Neerusha Baurhoo
McGill University
14 October 2017

The first recommendation I have for Mr. Smith is related to how he operates the beginning of his
classes. The way a class starts often has a large impact on the rest of the lessons progress.
Firstly, I will give an idea of where this idea is coming from; psychologist Fred Jones, through
the analysis of class proceedings in many different schools, noted that there are some repeated
patterns in a functional and less-than-functional classroom. As Jones mentions as a primary
source of disarray in the class, massive time-wasting is clearly a prevalent issue for our teacher
in question. The overarching disinterest in the class needs to be addressed by having the students
engage with something relating to class material in a productive manner. This is going to take
some work. Firstly, Mr. Smith will need to find out what will interest students given the material
at hand and thus motivate them. He needs to relate it to student experience and make it a need for
students curiosity to engage in. Once he has done this investigating, to have students put into the
mindset of classroom thinking, I strongly recommend he gives bell work for all the students as
they trickle in, based on puzzles or questions related to the tie between what they are learning
and what is relevant to them. This work is going to give Mr. Smith the first few minutes of class
time to prepare to hook the students for the lesson. Unfortunately, an issue in this approach that I
have had is the generalizing of what will interest the class. When it comes down to it, and
fortunately, all students are unique and to find something that is universally appealing in terms of
is very difficult, and sometimes impossible. This means that regardless of the work they are
expected to do as they come in, some students will still misbehave and change the atmosphere
for the whole class. My perspective on this theory, although I am still adapting my view, is that it
requires previous student involvement in the class and their general participation before you can
ask them to sit down every class and do work for you. I think that I would, in my future use of
this concept, poll the students from day 1 for their general interests in an About Me handout.
After seeing an overview of what the class cares about, I would inform my students, to the best
of my planning ability, how I was going to tie what they got excited about into their learning,
hopefully allowing for those who might not be interested in the current subject to be patient as
their subject is coming up later.

The next recommendation I have for Mr. Smith is derived from the psychiatrist William Glasser.
As mentioned about, students will not necessarily respond to the bell work concept. Glassers
perspective is one of student-centered learning. He embodies a teachers role as the facilitator of
student learning. By emphasizing student learning of relevant concept, he brings up a classroom
management style based on Choice Theory. The idea is that in every situation, students have a
choice, and they make those choices based on what their Quality World looks like, what they see
as a good way to live. In this ideology, all class misbehaviors are simply are simply students
trying to get to their Quality World in a given classroom. The recommendation I would give to
Mr. Smith is to start managing this misguided striving for a Quality World in a non-coercive
way. Coercive classroom management techniques create a divide between the students and the
teacher. If learning is to be student-centered, and teachers the facilitators, the demand is for both
students and teachers to be on the same team, or to be working in tandem towards the same
goals. Instead of creating the two sides of the argument, in Mr. Smiths case, students wanting to
be disruptive and Mr. Smith wanting them to stop, he could instead address the more flagrant
individuals or the group as a whole and ask, in a way similar to the above personal interest
handout, ask the class how he could work with the class in order to get them involved in their
learning. By putting in the effort to create the personal link and care of what matters to the
students, Mr. Smith may have an easier time communicating the knowledge of the curriculum to
them in a way that makes a difference in the students lives. Regrettably, an issue with this
methodology revolves around the idea that some adolescents have variable empathetic capacities,
and may not be able to identify the respect in what you are doing in order to make connections,
bring them into the learning, despite how determined and perseverant you are in attempting to
help. In this case, this approach may put a teacher in a position of weakness as they are trying to
bring students forward socially as well as academically. My personal; issues with this theory is
that firstly, especially when I was a beginning teacher, I had trouble tying my lessons to their
interests. It can be very hard to do, especially when one does not yet know foolproof methods of
elucidating concepts for students. Further, when faced with the disrespect of the students,
although they are not bad people or trying to disrespect you personally, it can be very hard to
take that energy and attempt to make it a positive interaction. Many teachers, including myself in
some cases, see this kind of noisy and off-task class and feel discouraged from putting more time
into it. My current attempts involve redirecting students who are disrupting the class to others
who are involved and having them come to solutions, with my input, on how to share each
others time and space in my class.

Rudolf Dreikurs, the developer of the theory on which my final recommendation is based, would
have agreed with Glassers choice theory. He strongly believed that students had to make choices
with regards to their goal. In general, according to Dreikurs, students wants were to be valued
and accepted in the classroom. They may misbehave if they feel like they havent achieved that,
they would through the following mistaken goals: gaining attention, exercising power, exacting
revenge and displaying inadequacy. These goals, which progress in that order, are tools for
students to get their position in the class cemented, even if it has to be in a negative framing. The
solution Dreikurs has, which enables student choice while involving them in how the class is
handled, is through logical consequences. Having a conversation about rules and how to act in
the class appeals to a students sense of reason. If I, the teacher, am supposed to teach a class and
you, the students, are supposed to learn, how can we become organized to do that? If someone is
preventing the class from doing that, what is the consequence that follows that behavior? This is
a technique that scaffolds the life-skill of recognizing cause and effect; students become self-
monitoring because they recognize that actions have reactions that are not necessarily what they
prefer. Although this method is more coercive than Glassers, it appeals nonetheless to student
choice and to a democratic, student-centered involvement in what the appropriate behaviors in
the class are, and what the consequences should be when those behaviors are not exacted. This
technique does force negative experience on students in the case that they misbehave, which in
the larger picture is still contributes to universal karmic deconstruction. Another issue is that
despite logical consequences hopefully tying action to consequence, some students will only see
punishment in the moment and the teachable moment is lost. I see logical consequences as being
hard to enact in the moment on the teacher side of the equation, as it requires empathy and
patience to see past the students behavior in order to understand and address their motive, to
provide not just a consequence but a rectifying strategy to follow in order to not run into the
same problem again. An important note that Mr. Smith should remember, teenagers are
imperfect like the rest of humanity. They will make mistakes and they will test boundaries. It
will take mental fortitude to gauge when to instruct and model better behavior and when to enact
consequences in order to, hopefully, develop more empathetic young people.