How to Seat Students Strategically yet Secretly

On the first day of school or anytime you want to rearrange your clientele, greet them at the door with a smile and a playing card.

• Buy two decks of regular playing cards:  tape one set of cards on the desks and place the other matching set in a bowl.  
• As they enter your classroom, they pull a card and search for their match.  Once they find it, they have found their seat.  Once everyone is seated, walk through class checking their matches and collecting their “loose” card.  
• Place all loose cards back in the bowl and later in class when discussing school supplies, draw a card and raffle off a pencil, highlighter, or notebook.  The kids love it and you have seated them “by chance,” keeping them from clustering up with friends and isolating others.
• BONUS:  You now also have an easy way to “choose” students by chance.  Leave cards taped on desk and keep their partners in a can.  Pull a card throughout the year for a “volunteer” or a game.  The randomness of the cards ensures you will never be “picking on anyone.”

“Social isolation, which is especially risky for adolescents, can result from students being ignored, bullied, or teased and tends to flourish in environments predominated by social cliques” (Blum, 2005, p.3).  With this simple exercise, these “cliques” are covertly broken, and you have proven you are organized and creative within the first seconds of meeting them.

Class Energizer: Bear-Ninja-Cowboy

(REPOST)

What do you do when your classes will resemble a collective episode of the “Walking Dead.”  Yes, teenagers can resemble zombies, sleep deprived, hormonal zombies.

Unfortunately, I need my zombies to be productive.  We need to get workin’.

WIth that being said, I also needed to bridge the gap from a sloth-like class to an intellectual powerhouse of a classroom. What’s a girl to do?

Bear-Ninja-Cowboy.

This is a simple energizer that includes the entire class, takes no more than 10 minutes, and will wake everyone up with a little laughter while also reconnecting your kids to one another (need to build that classroom community back up, right?).  It is a take off on ROCK-PAPER-SCISSORS, but the kids use their entire body to portray one of the three characters.  It is an elimination game, so you may want to have a little candy treat for your final two kids.

Simple steps:

1. Have everyone stand up and cue some cheesy music of your choice (I used the original soundtrack from the TV show “Glee”).  

2. Kids mill around to the music and when the music stops, so do they.

3. Have them face the person closest to them, shake hands, and then turn so they are back to back.

4. You now countdown (3-2-1-DRAW!)

5. They take three steps away from one another and then flip around on the word “DRAW”!

6. This is where they have three options:

A. BEAR:  Raise hands over head like claws, stand on tip toes, and growl REALLY LOUD!

B. NINJA:  Crouch down, pull one knee up, place hands in front of chest, flat like in a karate chop position.  Make “Ninja sounds” (i.e. hayahhh!)

C. COWBOY:  Stand up straight and tall, have two guns pulled at waist level, make a gun shot shound (bam, bam!).

7. DEATH CODE:

A. Bear KILLS Ninja

B. Ninja KILLS Cowboy

C. Cowboy KILLS Bear

8. Dead person sits down.  If there is a TIE, both people stay alive and continue to mill about the room until they pair up again.

9. Keep going until you have your final two.  Have the whole class circle around them and cheer them on.  

10. Make sure to reward then both for a job well done.

This is silly, takes little to no prep, and can be used anytime your class needs a “pick-me-up” or even when you have the dreaded ten minutes left until the bell at the end of class.

Now we shall see if the bears, ninjas, and cowboys can kill the post summer zombies!  Wish me luck!

Remembering Mentors: Mr. Bright & Mrs. Reyes

Mr. Bright, Teacher/Director, Kaneohe, HI...one of my first true mentors...

Behind every human being is a team. It may be made up of family, friends, perhaps even their own children. But, what team is behind the person that decides to jump in to one of the craziest, most taxing, most fulfilling professions there is? Who creates “the teacher”?

Easy...other teachers. As a proud product of the public school education system, I’ve been lucky to have slew of mentors that have entered my life over the years and collectively inspired me to try my hand at teaching. As my 13th school year begins, I would like to honor two of them today.

Mr. Bright: Teacher/Theatre Director, Castle High School, Kaneohe, Hawaii.
Mr. Bright was the drama teacher and director at our local magnet school for the arts during the 1980’s and 90’s.  He passed away a month ago, and although I could not make it back to Hawaii for the funeral, this is my tribute to him.

When Mr. Bright came to my high school to talk about bussing across town to the “fancy theatre,” I thought “no way, I’m not worthy” but something about the sparkle in his eye, his infectious smile, and his bounce must have screamed love to me and my little punk rock self got on the bus and auditioned for my first main stage production: the funky Motown version of “The Wizard of Oz,” “The Wiz.  

One of the showstopping ballads in the musical was Auntie Em’s song to Dorothy, “If You Believe.” Mr. Bright decided to use it as a warm up song for the entire cast. Each night before curtain we would stand backstage holding hands and sing “If you believe,” trying desperately not to ruin our meticulous stage make-up. He would always end with hugging each one of us (a cast of 50!) and whispering in our ear, “I believe in you.”  It became his mantra.

Mr. Bright taught me how to take risks, he taught me how to accept all types of kids, and he taught me how to love with an open heart. He showed me that diverse groups of people can come together and create magic...literally, create magic.

He passed away earlier this month- 81 years old with his family and the almost the entire island of Oahu by his side. Mr. Bright spoke with words of love every day and affected generations of young people including my struggling teenage self.

All I know is there are some amazing productions going on in heaven right now.  Thank you for believing in me, Mr. B. - I love you.

Mrs. Reyes: 8th grade Language Arts, Kailua Intermediate School in Kailua, Hawaii.

The reason I’m an English teacher today can be credited to one of my earliest mentors- my 8th grade English teacher, Mrs. Reyes. Mrs. Reyes had a short helmet of tight curls, she wore thick glasses and bright colorful muu muus. The three words used to describe her most? SHE LOVES KIDS. She thought of every kid as her own. I remember her catching my friend Jimmy drinking alcohol behind her classroom after school one day - he poured some tiny bottles of vodka into a Big Gulp cup from 7-11. Her 1st response before she walked him up to the office was how creative he was to recreate a scene of William Shakespeare in the pub? I don’t remember all of her specific lessons, but I do remember how she made me feel: important, invincible...loved.

She took trips to England in the summer and brought back cool masks, snow globes of Big Ben, and tubes of dirt from Stratford-upon-avon.  The year I had her she decided that Romeo & Juliet was too elementary, so we were going to read Macbeth..in 8th grade. I can still recite the witches' scene today.

Ten years ago, when my son was two years old, I was living in Kailua and walking back from the beach. Before I knew it, I turned my jogger stroller to the right and was headed towards Kailua Intermediate. I wanted to see if Mrs. Reyes was still there...she WAS! The office directed me to her room...the same room in the back of the school. I started to get nervous...would she remember me? Is this weird? I popped my head in the door and saw a much different looking woman who I actually thought was a sub: Mrs. Reyes had undergone gastric bypass surgery, so there was actually much less of her! She greeted me with “Bush?” (My maiden name!) I said, “Yep!” We laughed and talked, she tickled Toby and I thanked her for helping me find my bliss. She had no idea I was an English teacher. She was stoked.

I don’t think people plan on becoming a mentor. I think it grows organically out of a genuine love and sincere yearning to make a difference. We don’t always know the kids we are affecting. What actions will you take today that a middle-aged adult will look back on decades from now and thank you for? Wouldn’t that make all the hard work worthwhile?

Post Play-doh Lesson Recap: How did it go?

Berry says we need to find what
 makes us feel like royalty.

Here in the Central Valley of California we go back to school EARLY, so August 6th was my first day with students: I met my 110 junior/senior combo Speech Communications students. They were very, very cute - in a tall, tired, teenager kind of way.

I took a chance on the Play-doh lesson (described two blog posts ago) and here is a recap, with photos.

1. Greeting the kids at door with color cards.

I played my Spotify Speech Communications playlist, opening with “Safe and Sound” by Capital Cities (With very little effort, music really sets a tone for you - blog post to come).

The color cards ended up being funny, because, of course, the macho dudes would get “sea-foam green” or “darkish coral” - their little perplexed faces made the whole thing worthwhile. Then I noticed something really cool: a couple of the kids picked up on their confusion and started to walk around the room and help them decipher play-doh colors. The bonding had begun.

I busted eight of my new rascals trying to “swap play-doh” so they could sit with their friends. I arrested them and they had to go to “play-doh prison” and become greeters with me at the door. We laughed about it. This was valuable information for me: these kids will need lots and lots of love and attention. They are used to manipulating situations and are pretty good at it, so I need to keep them close to soften their rough edges.

2. Getting kids settled

Once everyone found their “ohana pod” I had to do some feng shui to balance out groups-lots of changes the first few days, gotta stay flexible with class sizes and morphing rosters. Right now my class sizes are at 38, 36, 37...big and boisterous.

Name tents came first:

• piece of 8 ½ by 11 paper
• tri-fold to make table tent
• in dark marker - FIRST NAME LARGE (very important that it be the nickname or name they prefer - ie Nick for Nicholas)
• in 4 corners: favorite app, favorite candy, favorite food, favorite sport or music
• Give kids 10 minutes to complete
• Roundrobin-style have kids introduce themselves to their pods letting teams know they are to actively start memorizing names of their ohana.
• After introductions, ask if anyone wants to volunteer to say their team’s names while the team hides nametents.
• A few brave souls will usually volunteer and then it will probably catch on and a few more will try. (I try not to push kids on the 1st day in regards to performing...that comes later.)

3. Finally, on to the Play-doh…

See previous blog post (http://goo.gl/U1YfQ5) for full Play-doh instructions.

Once they started, I walked around the room with a clipboard and my seating chart to take notes. It was really a telling glimpse into their personalities. Wow. Here’s a snapshot of some of the actions I observed:

Eyan was going for a
bright, cheery design.

1. Some jumped right in and knew exactly what they wanted to make.
2. Others didn’t want to ask for the three other colors from their teammates.
3. Some just sat and kneaded the play-doh like bread or made perfect orbs that they rolled around the table.
4. Some talked the whole time, others were mute.
5. Some found “tools” around the classroom to imprint, cut, measure, and sculpt while others just “wanted to be done” and laid out a cursory flat blob.

This sort of info is like nuggets of gold for a teacher. Most importantly, I’m making notes as to who my extroverts are compared to my introverts. These two subsets need to be taught very, very differently yet honored equally (blogpost to come on this one!).

4. The Works of Art

Once most kids were done, the pods shared Round Robin style once again with their own pods. Since we were running short on time, I then asked for a volunteer from each group with one stipulation: they must WANT to present. I don’t like to push on the first day. There is plenty of time for that...but not on the first day. You may lose your introverts that way if you push too hard, too soon.

Miriam said she feels "weighed down"
by life.

A hero emerged from each pod for each class. They came up to the front and put their creation under the document camera and shared what inspired them. Photos show a sampling of some we heard from.

Edith focuses on positive.

It was a beautiful, enjoyable day. The kids were a mix, some didn’t do much yet were able to observe and watch the more boisterous kids; others committed fully and shared openly, enjoying their time in the spotlight. I was able to see what kind of attention each student is craving/needing this school year and to see who interacted naturally with many  and who squirmed just talking to one other person. We played music, my Spotify Speech Warm up playlist as they created and laughed and talked and, most importantly, enjoyed our first day of school. 

I repeat, we enjoyed our first day of school.  

Impacting our Students Through the Thoughts, Words, and Actions of LOVE

On Friday, July 31st 2015 I had the honor of presenting one of the Ed talks at the Better Together California Teachers Summit at Brandman University in Visalia, California.

Below are the transcripts and Google Slides from my talk. As a Speech and Debate teacher, I am constantly talking my students down before they speak, telling them to relax and enjoy the adrenaline rush. I sure enjoyed some of that on Friday. I was nervous speaking to the people I respect the most: teachers! 

Please feel free to share your stories of love in the classroom in the comment section below or email me at litcoachlaurie@gmail.com. Love is not just the best part of our jobs, in many ways, it's the only part.

EDTALK: BETTER TOGETHER TEACHERS SUMMIT JULY 31, 2015

Impacting our students with thoughts, words, and actions of LOVE

Today I want to talk about something timeless, something that applies to all grade levels, all personality types, and all content areas, and any California standard or curriculum they could possibly throw at us:  I want to talk about LOVE - the concept of LOVE and how it relates to the classroom.

The year was 2003 and I'm 32 with my 1st teaching job at Gahr HS in Cerritos. A tough schedule: 10th and 12th grade remediated English who had just been through a parade of subs. I got the job in November on emergency credential- my interview was basically the principal checking to see if I had a pulse due to the massive teacher shortage at the time.

I started out naively enough with my students wanting to “get to know them” & was met with my first very realistic interaction with a boy named Evan. Evan, a tall, handsome sophomore on the Varsity basketball team, slumped in his seat shouted out "you ain't never gonna know me."

All 36 sets of eyes fell on me: “Well, I'd like to,” I said sheepishly.

He replied with, "You ever have a lady hide her purse because you walkin on the same side of the street?" “You ever have a security guard follow you around at Rite Aid cuz you went into get a soda?”

I had to reply no. He stuck his earbuds in and went silent.

I greeted Evan at the door every day, asked him about his basketball games and even clipped a newspaper article of him shooting a 3 pointer. I picked short stories with defiant strong young men as protagonists in hopes of hooking him. I thanked him for being so opinionated and told him that his strong convictions would be an asset in life. I gave him loads of attention-sometimes well received, sometimes not, but I knew I was on to the love thing when he came back next year to visit my classroom mumbling as he looked at the floor that he wished his teachers “wanted to get to know him.”

I knew I was not a BETTER TEACHER than these veterans he compared me to, by any means, but I did three things during my rookie year: I thought of the kids with love, I communicated with words of love, and I my actions portrayed love. I learned names fast and used them often and made eye contact with every kid at least three times a day. I knew the color of their eyes.

FEISTY EVAN was my first lesson on love in the classroom - I was his student, ironically. And for the past 12 years and 4 schools later it has been my overarching pedagogy, my greatest lesson plan, and my most effective classroom mgmt tool: LOVE.

With such a broad topic it’s difficult to streamline the most important aspects we can explore in the classroom, but I’ve attempted to break it down into the three vital sections: THOUGHTS OF LOVE, WORDS OF LOVE, and ACTIONS OF LOVE.

1.)THOUGHTS OF LOVE

When you think of your toughest student...what thoughts come to mind? Over the past 12 years, I’ve had some rough ones, as I’m sure you all have, and thinking about these kids through a lens of love is DIFFICULT.

One of my students that really challenged thoughts of love for me was Savanna. She was a girl that filled the room from down the hall. I could hear her...Mrs. JOOOONNNESSS...She was really quite regal, the queen of the 200 building with 8-10 underlings surrounding her hoping for a scrap of attention. Savanna’s thirst for attention continued into my 1st period English 1 class. She was always on volume 20. I’ll never forget Act 2 of Midsummer NIght’s Dream when she shouted from our make shift stage, “Mrs. Jones, what if I by accident I say Puck’s name wrong and pronounce it ______? THANK YOU, SAVANNA!

Thinking of Savanna with love was really tough but that changed one day during our student study team meeting after school when I met...her mother. Her mother was Savanna times 1,000.  She cussed, she berated all of us for “giving Savanna Fs,” and she actually threatened to hit Savanna in the middle of the meeting. Our AP stopped her.

Savanna needed me to love her. I would get nothing “playing hard ball” with this girl. She was living in hell and school was her escape-it was obvious. Love was my only chance. She didn’t care about grades or threats. Love was my only chance.

So, everyday before Period 1, I would take 3 minutes to think about Savanna lovingly, to picture her home life, to visualize how I would greet her with a warm smile, and thank her for coming to class that day and being my “Morning coffee.” Better than morning coffee!

I had a complete turn around with this girl. The funny thing is she didn’t change that much, I did. And because I viewed her through a lens of love, I was more patient, I could anticipate her misbehaviors and circumvent them like casting her in a bigger role, or having her play music for our writing sessions. She passed my class, and I now smile when I think of her...instead of cry.

I want parents to smile when they see my name on their kids’ school schedule because they know I will love them and take care of them. I want to honor this important trusted position as TEACHER. It's big- that's why I'm so proud to respond to people when they ask what I do. I'm a teacher and I love kids. It’s pretty huge.

2.)WORDS OF LOVE

The way a teacher talks changes how students perform, think, and feel. The words that leave our lips create the classroom world we live in: we control it.

Reframing how we communicate everything into worlds of love will transform your classroom into a place everyone wants to be - you included. There is a fabulous book dedicated to this entitled: Choice Words by Peter Johnston. In Choice Words, Johnston says, “the children in our classrooms are becoming literate. They are not simply learning the skills of literacy. They are developing personal and social identities-uniqueness and affiliations that define the people they see themselves becoming.”

He gives the simple example in the book of a teacher reprimanding a student instead of a punitive statement like “Stop doing that or you are staying in at recess” the teacher says in a lower voice, “That’s not like you.” The teacher’s words, though simple, confirm that this “bad behavior” is atypical and it assumes that the student is a good person.

I had to do lots of reframing last year with a student who challenged me Stephan - the chronic pencil sharpener: up/down, up/down, up/down. You know the guy. It started to drive me a little crazy-I would brace for it. This problem could have been solved easily:  SIT DOWN. I could have banned him from the sharpener.  OR, I reframe the request with WORDS OF LOVE.

The next day in class, I squatted down beside him and said “Thank you, Stephen for being such an avid pencil sharpener - a man after my own heart -because I too cannot stand a dull pencil. My thank you present to you is 5 lethally sharp pencils. Use them all and when they dull out, take the first or last 5 minutes of class to sharpen because I want you to take your time and perfect that lead point and you can’t really give it the time it needs in the middle of class - you’ll be rushed.”  

I never had another problem again. I showed him love instead of hate even though I hated the behavior. That’s important, the behaviors are not going away but the power of our words can get them headed in the right direction.

3.)ACTIONS OF LOVE

Here’s where we really start working. This is the tough part.

The actions we take to show students love can take on many, many forms.

I want to share a specific story about an action of love I took with a boy named Jaime: Jaime was an angry 14 year old from Pixley.

He didn't crack a smile for the first month of freshmen English: It was as if he was daring me to try and make him do it. It was a little game we played. I greeted him everyday at the door, complimenting him on the artwork on his t-shirt: a scantily clad girl straddling a rocket or Marilyn Monroe sporting a rotting skull face. He looked up at me stone faced, and walked on to his seat, never carrying a book or a backpack or a pencil...just Jaime.

One day, Jaime proudly donned a new t-shirt with a very familiar face: Tupac Shakur.

"Did you wear one of my favorite poets to class just for me, Jaime?" I smiled as I patted him on the shoulder.

"No, it's Tupac," he rolled his eyes, "He's a rapper."

"I know...he's one of my favorites-what a genius."

THIS IS WHEN I TOOK AN ACTION OF LOVE.  I grabbed The Rose that Grew from Concrete from my shelf and tossed it under the elmo projector.

We conducted an impromptu Socratic Seminar and deconstructed three of Tupac's poems with Jaime leading the way. He knew everything about him and gladly became the expert in "cool." He compared Tupac to his father, imprisoned near by at the Corcoran prison: at night Jaime explained he can see the security flood lights faintly in the distance. He said it made him feel close to him.

Everyone modeled their own poem using one of Tupac's for inspiration. Jaime’s was beautiful. So beautiful that I grabbed it and told him I was going to submit it to the Fresno State Young Writers' Conference contest.

I explained to Jaime that “It’s a writing competition and if your piece gets chosen, you get to ride up with me to Fresno State and spend the day with me. Does that sound fun to you?”

“I don’t care.” That was my yes.

Jaime did win a spot that year to Fresno state and spent the day in breakout writing sessions with graduate students, eating Panda’s orange chicken! and enjoying the “hot college chicks” (his words, not mine).

He is happy now, living an honest life in a simple town. Want to know how I know this? Because he came back to visit me last month after 7 years.  He came back to visit me.

I know the crazy dichotomy of our profession : it’s a brainy business but we work with young people which absolutely requires us to use our heart.

So, I leave all of you with one more item for your to do list as we open our classrooms: How will you think about your students with love, communicate with love, and show them love this year?

Thank you.

I would love to hear all of your stories of love this year.

You can reach me at:

Mission Oak High School

laurie.jones@tulare.k12.ca.us

twitter @litcoachlaurie