Every semester and every class, I wonder what the classroom culture is going to be. I often have very positive classroom cultures, and I often attribute that largely to my approach to teaching [pats own back]. However, every once in a while I have a class where everything falls apart, and the class feels like poison to walk into. The class is grumpy and doesn't want to work or think, and I turn from prompting participation to requesting it, or even begging. Usually I am unable to turn such a class around to a positive and supportive culture. I know that my students hate it every bit as much as I do, and we all just wish the semester would end. This might manifest as a class that is just non-participatory and sluggish, or worse as a class that is actively vocalizing bad attitudes. When the latter happens, I can usually point to 1 or 2 students who were vocal about their bad attitudes in just the right way to infect the entire class.
Wait.
This is also true of the great classes. The classes that I love to walk into, where everyone has become friends, and they are texting on weekends to talk about math, and they all go "wow" whenever we settle another concept. Those classes, too, I can usually point to 1 or 2 students who were vocal about their positive attitudes in just the right way to infect the entire class. So maybe it's not about my approach to teaching [hold off on that self-back-pat].
I mean, I know that I do some good things as a teacher, and I firmly believe that I generally influence my classroom cultures toward the positive side of the spectrum. But I want to find ways to be far more intentional about the specific classroom culture I engineer, so that it is less dependent on the particular group of students that make up the class.
This semester, I have to observe a colleague in a class that has turned to poison. He's looking for help, and I honestly don't know what to say to help him. So I'm turning to the internet: what resources can you suggest, say reading materials or specific tools to try, to help us recover from unproductive/uncomfortable classroom culture? And what resources do you have to help us get better at engineering a more intentional classroom culture from the beginning?
I feel like it's relevant to mention that I teach at a community college, where students are adults who are in our classrooms for 150–250 minutes per week, and the classrooms are almost all built to cram exactly 45 students sitting side-by-side and facing the front of the room. None of these outright barriers, but definitely large hurdles for a lot of the group-work goals I aspire to. Also, I still think I'd have this issue even if I had better group-work habits in the classroom.
I find this to be a ridiculously good post. I hope you get some possible answers! I too have had this happen. Not usually "poisonous" precisely, as much as "not fun" and "so much lethargy and quietness" that I don't enjoy being in the room and the kids are definitely not enjoying themselves. I had one class like that last year and I asked for help from a colleague too... but the truth is I couldn't do much. I figured out a way for the kids to learn, but not talk productively with each other and not have fun together. I suppose this isn't very helpful in terms of your colleague looking for solutions. But I just wanted to empathize and say that even with ten years under the belt, this still happens. And this coming from someone who tries to be super intentional about classroom culture, and make my values explicit through my actions.
ReplyDeleteI'm so curious what successful experiences people have had turning classes which have already turned poisonous around!
I've had this happen on occasion, and only once got to the unrecoverable part of it. I could just not get them to believe in their own ability to do what we were trying to do (college algebra). Some of it actually stemmed from the first day when they couldn't solve the problem to introduce problem solving. They truly believed they could not do it unless I told them how.
ReplyDeleteMotivated, Lani Horn's new book is the place to start for me now. Talking Points from Elizabeth Statmore (Cheesemonkey) is the go to structure for changing culture and jumpstarting collaboration. Being willing to change yourself instead of just asking the students to change goes a long way. Present the current state as a problem to be solved.
Thanks for these, John. I can't believe I haven't immersed myself in Elizabeth's blog yet... I see my next summer slipping away already.
DeleteI received my copy of Motivated in the mail last week. I am saving it for holiday read, but I read the intro upon opening it and nearly cried for joy about how relevant it was. I can't wait to read it. Talking Points is also going on my holiday list.
DeleteTry an activity where they are forced to participate with each other, like a sage and scribe activity, preferably with whiteboards. Partner A writes and says nothing, Partner B tells A what to write. Then they switch and see if Partner A would do it differently.
ReplyDelete