“Great Teachers are Equal Opportunists” Chapter 3: Schmidt

In this chapter, I thought that Laurel gave great insight and suggested useful techniques to control behaviors to help increase students success and performance. I was able to reflect on the students that I have in my class that may be camouflaging their insecurities. I was able to jot down few new strategies that I could use to help students become an active part of the class participation. 

From this reading, I now look at behavior in a new way. Before reading this chapter, I automatically thought it was going to be more focused on students that misbehave and what teachers can do to eliminate those behaviors in the classroom. Reading this chapter on behaviors became more meaningful to me when I learned that often time’s students behave differently when they have insecurity about a certain area that you may be teaching. I really like how Laurel gave examples and named the behaviors of different kinds of students that tend to be the ones that struggle with confidence.

Currently, I have a few students that seem like they do not care about participating in P.E. My cooperating teacher informed students that their grade would suffer because of the lack of participation. Like Laurel said, the Teflon Tyke will just sit and wait for you to be finished with the explanation, while my cooperating teacher became increasingly frustrated with the student. From the reading, I thought giving a students like this options. I believe that the students would be more open to participating if they had a choice in choosing what they would like to do rather then simply choosing sitting out. For example, we are ending a basketball unit, rather than having the student sloppily throw a ball underhand to show the understanding of the proper form and skills of shooting, I could give that student the option to write a short paragraph to show evidence that they understand what the form rather then forcing them to get up and stand in front of the class for the skill when deep down they are embarrassed or may be uncomfortable. I learned form this that it is more important to assess what the student actually knows about the single skill rather than performance. In this case this student will be more likely to attempt the skills of basketball when the situation is less threating rather than always feeling a sense of self-doubt.  I have learned more and more each time I read an article or book on behaviors, in all cases it is about student success not who is more powerful in that instant.

One of the strategies suggested for the ringmaster is to Defer to the Experts. I really like this idea of having a students be in charge of a certain task. Typically, in my class I always have my students help clean up the equipment. Many of my students really enjoy putting the equipment away, but I rarely choose the students that misbehave because the students see it as a privilege to help with the equipment. After reading this section, I learned that it would be more beneficial to my class to choose a student that is restless during instruction. Choosing this student to simply grab a piece of equipment for a demonstration will give that student a job which will lessen the amount of times I have to ask the student to sit still.  Another strategy that I found to be helpful is Supporting Redirection. At this time, I try to privately address a student’s behavior and informing them whey I asked them to move their spot or switch groups. Along with justification, I feel that it would be beneficial to also inform the student of the concern more direct rather then asking them to move.  It seems that students think I am picking on them or signaling them out, but really I am creating an environment that will better assist the students learning. This was insightful for me to redirect the way I ask a student to move to another group.

There are other suggestions from the reading that I found equally as helpful to create an environment for students to feel less anxious and uncertainty. I am looking forward to the upcoming week to use some of these new strategies in my lessons.