While I was substitute teaching I talked to several teachers questions about what they know now that they wished they knew during their first few years of teaching. Many of them talked about setting expectations and then not giving in. I agree with this advice. At the beginning of this school year I guess I wasn't sure exactly what expectations to set.
I have learned that I it is difficult to enforce an expectation when I don't start with the expectation and then enforce it every time. One of my assignments is lunch duty. I walk around during lunch and detour a lot of trouble with my presence. One thing that I try to do is prevent students from cutting in the lunch line, because I don't think it's fair that the other students have to wait for a student who has cut in line. I know this sounds like a grade school issue, but it is something that I try to enforce.
A few weeks ago I had a student who cut in line to be with his girlfriend. I called him out and asked up to go to the end of the line. He said it wasn't a big deal because he only cut in front of a few people. He also turned around and asked them if they cared. No surprisingly, they said they didn't care. I said that I cared and asked him to go to the end of the line. Again he refused. Looking back I know that I should have given him the choice of going to the end of the line or going to talk to the principal, but in the moment I decided that sending this student to the office for cutting in line wasn't worth it. I realize now that the reason I would send him to the office was not for cutting in line, but for defiance.
Anyway, yesterday I called out another student who cut in line, this time in front of several dozen students. He referred to the fact that I let the other student cut in line to be with his girlfriend. I tried to explain that this was because it was only a few people, and he repeated that it is no different. Again, I walked away defeated.
I know that whether I try to or not, I am creating expectations. I guess I would rather be proactive and set them from the beginning than dealing with them case by case and not making the best choices. Before the start of the next school year I will spend time thinking very critically about what expectations I am going to set and how I am going to deal with students who don't follow them.
This sounds a lot like much of the literature on Norms. You might like some of the work on both social and socio-mathematical norms. There are some great papers by Cobb, Yackel and Wood as well as others about this.
ReplyDeleteI also remember a thought from my adviser at BYU about how norms can change after a short period of time. You may not need to wait until the beginning of the school year in order to reestablish the norms. However, I know from experience that it is much, much easier to establish a norm from the outset than after the fact when some implicit and unintended norms are already in place.