Case Book Four

Nelson Quiock is talking with his team. He wants to share a concern he has about student behavior, and get agreement from his colleagues on how a situation with a student will be handled.

MR. QUIOCK: I am very concerned about how my students are going to handle the regular high school next year. I may be alone, and I want you to tell me if I am, but I find that many of the students have behaviors that are disruptive to the learning process. It is as if they expect me to yell at them to keep them in line! It drives me nuts, I am not going to be pushed to be that rude to as to yell at students!

MS. DONAGHUE: You are not alone. I have at least half of every class that really are disruptive. You are right, they will be problematic in high school! They are problematic here.

MS. TAYLOR: Their behaviors are problematic, but I think they are learned. I talked with my classes last week about this very thing. Do you know that they have had teachers who rewarded them for being quiet, for staying in their seats, for getting their work done? The thing that really blew me away is that a lot of them came from Nelson Elementary, where the teachers routinely held popcorn or pizza parties on Friday afternoons, if the kids had a "good behavior" week. Can you imagine losing a whole half-day of instruction every week to a party? What message is that? How can those teachers expect students to work a full day later in their lives if they have learned to party at the end of the week?

MS. CORTEZ: I don't think they even think about what it means by the time students get to us. Some of our colleagues are guilty of the same things in their classes. It isn't just the elementary, the middle school teachers do it, too, although I know it is not as often. I think it is at the end of a unit, or the like.

MS. TAYLOR: Either way, students have all learned that, and if we aren't doing it, then they are likely to resort to old behaviors that are problematic, seeking attention, disruptive.

MR. QUIOCK: So, I look to you for answers, what should we do about this.

MS. DONAGHUE: We look to you. You are fresh from the university. You tell us, what did you learn that could help us with this problem.

MR. QUIOCK: Well, I seem to remember that although we don't use "behaviorism" quite as much as we used to, it is still part of what happens in a lot of rooms. Clearly our students have grown up with it being used. Seems to me that we have to consider context. Students have been getting rewards, though less frequent, for good behavior. Seems like we have to consider continuing to reward, and slowly backing off more and more. Maybe we could have them weaned off of extrinsic rewards and doing more things intrinsically by the end of the year.

MS. CORTEZ: How in the world could we do this? We would have to be consistent among us. What rewards could we provide, when, how?

MR. QUIOCK: If I remember this correctly, we could survey our students and find out what they like, using some checklist and open-ended questions. I think we could then use that info to develop some plan for rewards. Of course, we also have to identify the behavior we will all work on changing, and the new behavior we want instead.

MS. DONAGUE: I know what I want. I want basic respect. I want students to raise their hands and wait to be called upon. I want them to listen as each other and I speak. I want…

MR. QUIOCK: I hate to interrupt, but can we somehow define this as one behavior, or limit this to one behavior?

MS. DONAGHUE: That's okay. I get carried away on this. How about "respect?" Can we define that as a set of behaviors and then reward respect?

MS. CORTEZ: We already know that they are used to pizza and popcorn parties. It will be good to see what else they like. I will do the surveys, if you get me items you would like included. I think we should plan that at the end of units we have a party, and what is included in the party depends on how much respect they have shown over the unit. The more respect, the better the party!

MS. TAYLOR: Could we also set a big reward at the end. I would really like a class trip, something that is fun and educational. We dropped that a few years ago, and they get it in the earlier grades, but not here. In fact, the eighth grade trip is always a really big deal, and those students who go on to the high school then use it to really be a reward. Lots of our kids don't even go on the trip, or if they did, they have the let down that they did the trip, and then they are here, and there is no trip the following year.

MR. QUIOCK: I didn't know about that. That puts another angle on this. You mean that some of our kids didn't go on the eighth grade trip? Why not?

MS. TAYLOR: Because they couldn't behave. So, here we go again. If we do this, then they are likely to not behave, to avoid a trip, or to believe that they can't earn a trip. We have to be careful here. I would rather that the big reward not be tied to behavior so much as survival! I really think we have to be careful on this and find out what our students think about a big trip, how they look at it. Can we somehow add that to our survey?

MS. CORTEZ: Sure. We can even find out where they would really like to go, if they could go on a learning adventure. I like this. I'll get the survey done yet this week. Let's meet next week and decide on a common definition of respect and an action plan. How about if we all use email this week to try to talk about what we mean by respect?

Teacher Notes:

• Typically, teachers know that they should not use full-class rewards in which one student's behavior could cause loss of rewards. This leads to alienating students and causing within-class problems that can erode discipline. You should always be careful about what rewards are promised, choosing only things that can be delivered, and be clear for yourself and the students as to how these rewards can be earned.
• The school day and learning time need to be respected. Teachers that routinely use Friday afternoons for rewards are setting students up to expect that Friday is not a workday, or they can routinely slack off at that time. Students should get the clear message that the school day is learning time, and there should only be the occasional use of time off from learning as a reward. A better reward would be some added "fun learning", like a video that students are interested in watching that also fits with some aspect of their learning.