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How Does High Stakes School Testing Affect Sad, Traumatized, Withdrawn, Vulnerable Students?
One of the hottest topics in our Problem Student Problem Solver workshop staff development sessions has gotten to be participants' upset at the damage they see being caused by overzealous state-wide assessment testing. As you may know, some states...
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Getting Your Online Degree
All of your life you have wanted a college degree but circumstances prevented you from going to college right after high school. Maybe you decided to go to work for a while and just ended up staying there because you got married and focused on...
Resume Software – Advantages Revealed
The various resume software offered, particularly on the internet, can seem very attractive to job seekers; especially to those not comfortable writing resumes. At first glance resume writing software can provide a number of perks and can appear to...
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Quo Vadis, New Graduate?
According to a recent survey by Job Outlook, for the third year
now there is a positive increase in hiring fresh college
graduates for 2006. Business owners plan on hiring more from the
class of 2005-06 than they did from the 2004-05 class as...
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Teach Students Teacher Interaction Skills For Better Classroom Management And Control
At our popular Breakthrough Strategies to Teach and Counsel Troubled Youth Workshops (http://www.youthchg.com), we always let the course participants name the problem areas they want to cover during the inservice workshop. We can always count on teachers asking for ideas for classroom management and control. Nearly every teacher has had moments when maintaining control over the class was difficult or impossible. Some teachers tell us that there class has actually gotten out of control. Here's help.
So many students believe that they should be in charge of the classroom and that they know more than the teacher. It can be tough to teach hard-to-manage students who think they should be in charge. Since few schools have a written game plan to formally train their kids to be students, you may see a lot of younger and older youth who do not look, act or sound like students.
Until trained to be students, some youngsters may continue to be unmanageable. Here is a small sampling from our arsenal of strategies to effectively teach kids to be successful students. The strategies offered here will focus on just one of the many skill areas you need to cover: how to interact properly with teachers. Don't forget to cover those other areas too-- how often to talk in class, what to say or not say, how to be on task, how to arrive on time, how to interact with other students and so on. Our books and classes cover all these areas in depth, but here's a peek at some of our best!
** Who Is Qualified to Be in Charge?
For students who believe that they should run the class, have your kids list out all the qualifications that teachers must have. Write their responses on the board and elicit answers like "have a college degree" and "have a license to teach." Next, ask the class to determine who has these qualifications, the teacher or students? This intervention can very effectively squelch your "know-it-all" students' attempts to be the boss of the class.
** Just Say "Yes"
So often, "NO!" is the first word from a student's mouth in response to a teacher's direction. Understandably, that response can become a problem quite quickly. Teach the students that a "trick" to more often get your teacher to do what you want is to say "Yes." Drill the students to use sentences such as "Yes, I will do the math but can you show me how" and "Yes, but I don't really want to do it." Teach students that "Yes" is the magic word to use with teachers to have a better chance to get what they want. Also, discuss what bad
things can happen to employees who say "NO" to bosses, and note that school is the place to prepare for employment to avoid "practicing on the job."
** Help Me Faster
When the teacher doesn't immediately respond to a request for help, some students become upset or misbehave, sometimes believing that the teacher hates them-- that's why they don't respond faster. To quickly show students why the teacher doesn't always immediately provide aid every time, have a student assume the role of teacher then have all the other students request help at once. The role-play teacher will quickly understand why the teacher is unable to always provide instant aid. Ask the students to recommend how the teacher should allocate aid. The class will suggest that the teacher respond to the person who requests help first, which should prove to be an easy-to-do answer for the teacher to follow.
** Teachers Are Lousy Mind Readers
To show students that teachers are unable to decipher what that their tantrum or sulking means, teach students that teachers are lousy mind readers. Have students think of numbers, and have the teacher attempt to guess the numbers. Keep score on the board. Assess the score and discuss that teachers can't read minds very well. Discuss when students sometimes expect teachers to read minds, and what students could do that would work much better.
** Top 10 Ways Your Teacher Can't Tell You Need Help To further teach students that teachers are unable to magically determine when students need help, have the class make a Top 10 List. Title this list "The Top 10 Ways Your Teacher Can't Tell You Need Help." Elicit answers such as "you glare." Post the completed list on the wall and discuss what might work better.
About the Author: Get much more information on this topic at http://www.youthchg.com. Author Ruth Herman Wells MS is the director of Youth Change, (http://www.youthchg.com.) Sign up for her free Problem-Kid Problem-Solver magazine at the site and see hundreds more of her innovative methods. Ruth is the author of dozens of books and provides workshops and training.
Want more dynamic ideas for classroom management? Be sure to visit our web site, http://www.youthchg.com where you will find hundreds more.
Source: www.isnare.com
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