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Helping students engage in reading by building community

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Helping students engage in reading by building community

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This article talks about reading conversation journals. Essentially it gives students opportunity to share what they understand as well as what they don't understand from their reading. The teachers can reply or add to what they write to help the student understand further. This sounds like a great way to help students get the fullest understanding they can out of their reading. It doesn't have to be formal writing. It can be very casual to help the communication and comprehension happen more quickly.

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A shared reading journal strategy encourages rich conversations that support differentiated instruction and social and emotional learning.

These days, many of us are struggling to stay on top of our reading, both personal and professional. Our workloads are often overwhelming, and precious time with books and articles is often a casualty.

But educators aren't the only ones struggling to adapt to new literacy norms-many kids are, too. Some don't have a quiet place to read, others are unengaged and unmotivated, and still others are just plain tired or depressed.

In the face of this crisis in reading, teachers need reliable methods that attend to social and emotional learning and cultural sensitivity while being flexible enough to work in multiple modes of instruction-synchronous or asynchronous, in person or remote.

It's worth exploring a versatile approach called the reading conversation journal (RCJ) that engages students in reading in a thoughtful, personal way that works well in a virtual environment.

What a Reading Conversation Journal Is and How It Works

Reading conversation journals are rooted in the notion that literacy growth and development are energized and amplified through carefully crafted, deliberate talk between student and teacher that unfolds-sometimes over the course of an entire academic year-ideally in an online document. Teacher and student write back and forth to each other, but the student leads the conversation, while the teacher coaches with deliberate, calculated comments and questions, providing literacy instruction based on the student's individual interests, needs, and developing skill.

The RCJ model adapts the usual side-by-side approach by shifting individual conferences online and takes it up a notch because resources from the internet can become part of the conversation. Within an RCJ, teachers can spontaneously recommend books; suggest articles and infographics related to student interests; share YA novel and movie trailers; post music videos, commercials, how-to tutorials, and read-alouds; relay author interviews and related book and genre lists; offer multilingual novels and book translations; and steer readers toward online libraries and book clubs, fan fiction, reviews, and Amazon previews.

An RCJ is a powerful literacy tool, but it can also double as a check-and-connect SEL mechanism. I've found that over time, students often reveal social, emotional, and mental health struggles in their RCJ, as well as things that are affecting their learning success or focus in school (e.g., bus, cafeteria, or hallway problems; name or pronoun changes; parental or sibling concerns; or frustrations with other classes).

The Instructional Benefits of the RCJ

RCJs create opportunities for one-on-one conversations with students, even if those conversations are asynchronous. Students can share what they think about what book they're reading and how those books make them feel, directly with their teacher. That deep thinking helps make them comfortable with the very act of talking about books, which is of course crucial to literacy.

There are other benefits, too.

Equity: Any given class can be populated with a combination of ELLs, students with special needs, and students with different literacy skill levels. RCJs allow all students the opportunity to grow and develop academically, socially, and emotionally, at a pace that works for them.

Differentiated instruction: With digital conversation journals, teachers can read students' work any time, but the data they get from the journal can inform more formal one-on-one conferences, resulting in conferences that are more focused and characterized by more deliberate teaching tactics.

Easy record keeping: Digital reading journals can function as a running record for each student in any classroom. Information from them can document how specific readers are progressing toward IEP or 504 learning objectives; be shared with parents who are curious about what their children are reading and how their writing is progressing; and be folded into responsive teaching practices.

Authentic reading and writing instruction: When literacy teachers feel limited in the classroom, often citing state and district testing mandates and curricular guides, student writing and reading assignments tend to follow suit, resulting in assembly-line assignments culminating in bland five-paragraph response essays. RCJs counter that by encouraging choice and creative commentary, which increases motivation. An RCJ can even operate as a yearlong reading response essay with multiple thesis statements, multiple texts, multiple genres, and hundreds of chances for precise, differentiated reading and writing instruction.

Getting Started

Teachers can ask students to write in the journal daily, every other day, or once a week. If the writing is happening in the Google Classroom, teachers can view live writing, quickly scroll through an entire classroom full of journals, and even watch volume increase and revisions happen in real time. (Be sure to have students write their newest entry at the top of the document so you don't have to scroll to find it.) Hold virtual writers accountable by saying things like, "Kamal, I don't see you in your journal" or "Alina, you have only written one sentence. Can you look over the questions I asked and see if you can elaborate a bit?"

Here are some things to remember as you start your digital reading conversation journals in your class.

Respond regularly: Regular writing is key, and so is regular teacher response. Don't let too many days go by without responding to what students are writing. This is ultimately a conversation, so treat it like one.

Ask questions to promote thought and exploration: Questions allow students to think more deeply about what they are reading and promote more writing volume. Asking questions about how readers are feeling, what they are learning, and where they are headed is an important part of the RCJ process. Questions can be chosen depending on the skill level of the reader.

Share your own stories: Share stories about yourself in the digital exchanges you have with your students so that your human, personal side emerges and reveals itself. This builds deeper, more meaningful relationships and trust in any kind of classroom.

De-emphasize grading: The response writing should have the feel of a conversation-casual, continuous, intimate, organic. If students are thinking about earning a grade (or the criteria on a 10-point rubric), they are less apt to talk freely, and they are much less likely to say or realize anything interesting.

Allow the conversation to wander: Reading conversation journals give students space to talk to a caring adult about the things that excite them, the things that get them out of bed each day, and their passions, beliefs, and struggles. Let the conversation veer into the realm of movies, video games, sports stars, or fan fiction. Also, in these tangents, students might reveal information that could help you better differentiate instruction or understand their learning style and classroom goals. Moreover, tangents might be where students reveal details about their home life, language needs, physical disabilities, classroom seating preference, reading or writing limitations and history, and emerging beliefs and philosophies about culture and lifestyle choices.

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Combining Literacy Skills and Community Building

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A shared reading journal strategy encourages rich conversations that support differentiated instruction and social and emotional learning. These days, many of us are struggling to stay on top of our reading, both personal and professional. Our workloads are often overwhelming, and precious time with books and articles is often a casualty.

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One tip that stood out to me was to encourage students to make connections between the different languages they speak. This will hopefully help bridge the gap a bit and help the student feel more comfortable. Helping a student kind anchor words is another way to help multilingual students. That means teaching students key words that will be easy for them to recognize. Incorporating visuals is another way to make every student feel comfortable since visuals are universal to every language and culture. Lastly, putting an emphasis on sentence stems such as "I liked" or "I learned" can be very helpful.

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Early Childhood Education

Five ways teachers can celebrate and extend the linguistic expertise of young students who speak two or more languages.

Many children in the U.S. live their lives in two or more languages: A child of Guatemalan descent may read bedtime stories in Spanish with their parents and learn in English at school-and perhaps speak K'iche' with their grandparents. Research has shown that these multilingual children may have strong math skills, conflict resolution skills, and executive function skills.

By welcoming the whole multilingual child, including their linguistic practices, we send a powerful message that children from diverse linguistic and cultural backgrounds contribute to the vibrancy of our early childhood programs.

Multilingualism is an asset to be nurtured in our classrooms, and the following five strategies can help teachers strategically and intentionally celebrate and extend multilingual children's existing linguistic expertise as well as their participation in learning activities both in person and virtually.

Incorporate Children's Home Languages

All multilingual children are experts in their home language practices and come with a wealth of knowledge that should be respected. Provide space and time for multilingual children to use all of their languages to think and express themselves.

For example, during partner work, invite children to use their home languages to share what they know. All multilingual learners, whether they're new to English or completely fluent, will benefit from talking with a partner who speaks the same home language. Thinking and sharing in both of their languages solidifies their learning.

In addition, encouraging multilingual learners to make connections between new English terms and words or concepts they already know will support language acquisition. You can invite children to share their linguistic expertise by sharing how to say a new word in their home language. If your class is studying nourishing foods, you might show a pineapple and invite children to share the words they know for it in their home languages, if they feel comfortable doing so.

Teach Anchor Words

Keep in mind that anxiety and self-doubt greatly interfere with the process of acquiring a second language. These negative feelings become a barrier between the speaker and the listener that reduces the amount of language the listener is able to understand. This is called the "affective filter." It's important to keep the affective filter low so that language learners can be successful.

One way to reduce anxiety for multilingual learners is to preview some foundational concepts so that, at a minimum, they have an idea of what is being discussed and, at best, they are confident about what is being taught. Anchor words are vocabulary words such as "farm" or "eat" that activate children's background knowledge from their home language and give them a context for learning a new language.

Most children who speak English at home will not need direct instruction to learn these terms, but for children who are very new to the English language, these words will be absolutely essential. Make a list of relevant thematic words and preteach them to your multilingual learners.

Provide Sentence Stems

"I like..." and "I learned..." are two examples of sentence stems or sentence starters that expand new English learners' comprehension skills as well as oral language development. They provide a framework for children's oral responses when listening to stories or having group discussions.

Sentence stems provide an effective language model and help children to respond in the form of a complete sentence. Stems also provide scaffolding for children to focus on what they want to say rather than thinking about how to formulate their response. Teach a few stems and use them consistently.

Because of the other barriers that exist in the virtual classroom (e.g., kids needing to unmute themselves, feeling nervous sharing with the whole group, being camera shy), this strategy is particularly useful during the pandemic.

Incorporate Visuals

New English learners find themselves in a sea of language that can be tough to navigate. Visuals are a terrific tool for supporting comprehension. Use realia (concrete objects) if you are teaching in person or pictures if teaching virtually so children can "see" the terms you are using.

Try acting out new vocabulary words. If you're teaching children the difference between "washing" and "scrubbing," dramatize it by modeling the actions and then invite children to join you. Another way to incorporate visuals is to point or gesture at what you are referring to: If you're reading a book and referring to an illustration of a horse, point to the horse; when you're describing your thinking, point to your temple.

Use Layered Questioning

When you interact with children, how can you ensure that they all understand and participate, regardless of their stage of language development? One way is to use a strategy called "layered questioning," which means varying the type of questions you ask children based on their language proficiency.

You can ask a question that requires children to gesture in response ("Will you point to the pineapple?"). You can ask a question that requires a child to respond with either a "yes" or a "no" (Do you like to eat pineapples?"). You can ask a question that gives children an either/or choice ("Do you like to eat pineapples for breakfast or for lunch?"). You can also ask open-ended questions so children can share their thinking ("How would you describe this pineapple?").

When you vary your questions based on what you know about your children, it empowers them to express their thinking, extend their content knowledge, and be active members of the classroom community.

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Supporting Multilingual Students in the Early Grades

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Five ways teachers can celebrate and extend the linguistic expertise of young students who speak two or more languages.

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Advocating for ones' self in distance learning

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Advocating for ones' self in distance learning

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I am glad that there is a current article about this topic since I have anxiety about teaching virtually in the future. The article goes into how to teach students to think about their own thinking and comprehension. Sometimes a student will think they understand something until they are doing their homework and they find they are very confused. We can teach students to recognize the physical signs of being confused or overwhelmed. Some students are unsure of how to ask for help so it is important for us to remind them of how to ask for help. Some students are uncomfortable asking questions so if you model how to ask a question it may help them.

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Moving our learning experiences from the school building to our homes involved more than packing up our books and devices-the very context and demands of learning shifted. While there are incredible examples of innovative and determined teachers overcoming the struggles of distance learning, there remain some lasting hurdles, the most pressing of which is teachers' limited ability to gauge understanding.

When we teach in physical settings, we scan our students' faces, body language, and on- and off-task behavior to gauge how well our students are engaging and understanding. We're able to pivot, reteach, or speed up, depending on our read of the class and students' answers to quick, formative questions. In online learning, however, our ability to see students' faces and hear or read student feedback efficiently is impaired or lost.

Teachers have found fun ways to gather student feedback, like Kahoot or placing a waterfall in the chat, but there's also a second half to the equation. We can empower all students, including those with learning differences, with strategies to ask for, use, and follow up on help, by teaching them to self-advocate.

Teaching Self-Awareness

The phrase "you don't know what you don't know" applies particularly well to online learning. Some students are using so much of their cognitive effort on remaining focused, despite having busy home environments, that they are not keeping an awareness of their comprehension. Other students may feel like they're understanding a lesson, only to uncover misunderstandings during their independent work. The first step to teaching self-advocacy is to increase students' metacognition, or thinking about their own thinking.

You can teach metacognition through activities like think-aloud, stop-and-jot, or pair sharing. When doing so, focus your questions on the thought process, not the content. For example, instead of "What do you predict the character will do next?" you can ask, "What clues is your brain finding that would help you make a prediction?" You can ask students to visualize and explain the steps they will take for their independent work rather than using the pat, "Do you have any questions?" closing.

Another component of self-awareness empowerment is teaching students to recognize physical manifestations of confusion that may register in their bodies before they realize consciously that they are not understanding. You can show students an outline of a person and walk them through some of the typical indications of frustration or confusion (faster heart rate, sweat, tension in the hands or arms). Next, you can empower them to recognize these physical feelings and take a quick break to reflect on what in their minds could be causing the feelings. This level of self-awareness can often help them recognize that they need help before they become overwhelmed.

Promoting Self-Advocacy

Students need to know how to ask for help now that we often can't as easily recognize their needs. When we teach them to self-advocate, we often alleviate the cognitive load and anxiety that plague the use of new or developing skills. Here are some tips to teach and empower students to ask for help.
In live sessions:

Give verbal frames for students to get their questions started ("Excuse me, Ms. Smith. I don't understand").

Make clear when it's OK and not OK to interrupt with a question-if it's always OK, remind students periodically.

Through email and after class:

Give students a set of sentence frames for asking for help.

Teach them how to address an email and how to use the subject line.

Emphasize specificity by teaching students to name the exact problem or spot they found difficult or to include a video, screenshot, or link to the confusing work.

Using Student Questions as a Gift

As with in-person teaching, when you notice a pattern in students' needs-nearly everyone asks for help on the same math question, for example-you know it's time to reteach. This may feel like another to-do, but challenge yourself to reframe it: Your students just told you how to help them improve before any assessment.

A second way to utilize the gift of student questions is to distinguish between content and process questions. If students are asking for clarity on a text, they need more support with content. If they are asking how to submit their text responses on a platform, that's a process need. Understanding layers of student need can help you address the current assignment, through a quick reteach or clarifying email, and it can help you adjust your plans for future lessons.

If you've lost kids at the directions level or the process side of an assignment, you may never get to see that they are indeed understanding content. The best approach may be to teach the tool again or teach some strategies for approaching multistep directions.

Encouraging Students When They Ask for Help

Let's say you have a student brave and self-aware enough to ask for help. Hooray! Beyond serving their immediate need, you can use your response to also encourage the help-seeking behaviors. Begin every response email with, "Thanks for asking such a great question" or end with, "Great job speaking up for yourself." Students will do more of what pays off, and your kind words will increase the likelihood that they will reach out again.

Another way to reinforce students' self-advocacy is to give live praise and surprise bonus points. After seeing a peer's positive experience asking for help, the kids who are just on the edge of being brave enough to speak up during your live class will be lured into self-advocacy with the prospect of bonus points.

The flipside of this is the potential to shut off self-advocacy, which is unfortunately easy to do. When a student asks a question that you just answered or asks at the wrong time, it's easy to be dismissive or frustrated. Avoid the temptation to respond with annoyance, and instead, start with "thanks for asking." You will notice right away that your tone and approach will feel more positive, which will likely mean more students self-advocating next session.

Our students are learning resilience and creative problem-solving this year, and some self-advocacy will serve them well long after we are through these challenging times.

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Teaching Students to Self-Advocate During Distance Learning

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Moving our learning experiences from the school building to our homes involved more than packing up our books and devices-the very context and demands of learning shifted. While there are incredible examples of innovative and determined teachers overcoming the struggles of distance learning, there remain some lasting hurdles, the most pressing of which is teachers' limited ability to gauge understanding.

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This article features a list of technology teaching tools that are well received by teachers. Pear Deck was one of the tools listed. I was really interested to learn about GimKit, which was created by a high school student. Gimkit is much like Kahoot where students can compete to answer questions for their class. Mural also stood out to me. Mural is very similar to Jamboard.

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Teachers and administrators from pre-K through 12th grade named these tools their top picks for this year and beyond.

If there was ever a year for teachers to beg, borrow, and steal good ideas, this is it. All good teachers know this is how we get better, and this is a curated list of tech tools that I have begged and borrowed from others-and I didn't have to steal any of these as there has never been a year when teachers were more generous.

Based on my own teaching of college students as well as the responses of 1,461 virtual learning academy participants-pre-K to 12 teachers and administrators-to survey questions on impactful tools that I conducted from May to December 2020, and over 70 webinars and virtual learning sessions I've conducted in that time, these are the top teacher-tested tech tools I have identified. My learning has happened with my own students and through my own mistakes, and I received great ideas from educators across the U.S. and around the world.

I will continue to use these tools and recommend their use regardless of student level or how we deliver education moving forward.

Top Tech Tools for Educators

10. Parlay: For those of us who like to discuss rich texts with students, Parlay lets us connect with students remotely, facilitate discussion, and track how the dialogue builds. As students respond, Parlay shows who is contributing and where the conversation is moving as the software visually tracks student responses in a discussion web. Teachers can use built-in tools to assess the frequency of students' answers in real time even when students are not in the same room. Teachers can then spend their time on deeper level assessment of the depth of student responses, which can also be recorded.

9. Flip: One of the most popular tech tools in schools, Flip won praise from teachers across the country because of the flexibility it gives students to submit digital projects and how it effectively supports peer and teacher feedback.

8. Edpuzzle: I've used Edpuzzle for a while, but it became much more vital as more of my content shifted online. Teachers use Edpuzzle to make video clips interactive by requiring student responses, which are easy to collect and assess.

7. Pear Deck: Pear Deck does to Google Slides what Edpuzzle does to videos. Slides become interactive, and teachers are able to collect feedback immediately.

6. Prezi: I've used the virtual presentation software Prezi for years, and I appreciate a recent update that allows me to be on the same screen with the graphics, creating a more engaging presentation. Prezi offers teachers another tool to capture short lectures, explanations, or other content in a more visually appealing and personal way than as a disembodied voice or thumbnail in the bottom corner of a screen.

5. Screencastify: Every student can be Sal Khan working out problems with explanations. This tool was first recommended to me by a teacher in Kenya, who explained how Screencastify transformed her math assessments by allowing students to show what they're thinking from wherever they happen to be working. Screencastify is also valuable for reducing cheating as teachers can observe students working and explaining problems instead of just recording answers.

This has been a lifesaver for virtual collaboration. Mural allows teachers, students, and other contributors to write on virtual sticky notes and then organize and reorganize them in real time. The best in-person meetings are always the ones where the collective expertise of the room can be captured visually, and if we can't be in the same room with students-or colleagues-Mural is the next best thing. Even better, there's no need to go back and summarize or clean up evidence from the meeting. The Mural is the artifact. Many teachers are now using Jamboard in a similar way.

Created by a high school student who thought he could improve upon Kahoot!, Gimkit allows teachers to create question sets that students can answer over and over again while competing against each other, which is great for surface learning and review. Because Gimkit allows for repetition of answers and has a variety of ways for students to earn points, students remain engaged as they work at their own pace.

2. Mentimeter and Slido: These are both excellent for collecting feedback from groups, so I've ranked them together. I use these almost weekly for professional learning and in my classes. Slido allows participants to ask questions and then upvote others. There are many similar tools, but Slido is easy and free. Mentimeter allows students and teachers to collect real-time data on questions they have, in the form of word clouds, rankings, and various scales. These are great discussion starters that allow everyone to contribute to the collective wisdom of the group.

1. Learning management system: A good LMS is key to reducing stress for teachers, students, and parents. A list like this one would be counterproductive if it left your educational delivery fragmented among disparate tools, and a good LMS helps you organize everything into a one-stop shop.

I personally love Canvas and Schoology, but I know many teachers have worked miracles with Google Classroom, which is "free." I use those quotes for a reason: Google Classroom is only truly free if it is not requiring significantly more human capital in the form of time and energy than a fee-for-service platform like Canvas or Schoology. The most significant asset for managing learning in the chaos of this school year has been staying organized, and Canvas has been a lifesaver for me.

I have taught virtually, led professional learning across many time zones, delivered content asynchronously, and taught students in masks with others Zooming in due to quarantine, Covid, or personal preference. For me, nothing will ever replace in-person teaching and learning, but like many other teachers and administrators, I now know how to effectively facilitate learning in a previously unimaginable set of circumstances. This school year's desperation has driven us to explore a wide range of tools, and we can be better because of the firehose learning we have done this year. We just need a few tools to create some space for us to breathe.

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Teachers and administrators from pre-K through 12th grade named these tools their top picks for this year and beyond.

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Recognizing signs of learning disabilities

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Recognizing signs of learning disabilities

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This article is about recognizing signs of potential learning disabilities in preschool specifically. I appreciate how current this article is as it brings up teaching in a remote classroom and the challenges with understanding our students remotely. There are ways to recognize potential learning disabilities without the help of seeing how a student does in specific subjects such as reading or math. A lot of the signs can be recognized verbally. It can also be recognized in how a child engages in conversation.

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Early intervention services can make a big difference for students who are at risk for learning disabilities. What should teachers look for?

Max was 5 when he was diagnosed with a language-based learning disability. But his mother says the signs were visible earlier. She says Max had a hard time learning how to talk.

At 5, Max was identified much earlier than most students. According to a report by the National Center for Learning Disabilities, 38 percent of public-school students who receive special education services do so under the category of specific learning disability (SLD). But just a little over 6 percent of those students have the SLD identification by age 6; that increases to 40 percent by age 10.

Yet research shows that when students who are at risk for learning disabilities receive early intervention services, they're less likely to need specialized instruction as they get older.

Learning disabilities are neurologically based. The brain structure and function of students who have learning disabilities differ from those of peers who don't have the same challenges. One study found that those structural differences exist even before children begin to read.

So why is it that so few students who show early signs-like Max-are identified as having learning disabilities?

Recognizing Struggling Learners

Most preschool teachers know that some students take more time to develop and learn skills. However, while early signs of learning disabilities include delays in developmental milestones, teachers may be hesitant to jump to conclusions, thinking they need to give students adequate time to improve their skills.

Being in remote learning environments can rightfully reinforce this cautious instinct: When all students are struggling to navigate modes of learning that aren't intuitive to preschoolers, it's much harder to discern who is finding the act of learning challenging from those for whom learning itself is a challenge.

It's also true that some learning challenges are much more noticeable than others. Brittney Newcomer, a nationally certified school psychologist and the associate director of learning experiences at Understood, a nonprofit organization centered on helping those with learning and thinking differences-where I also work-told me that preschool teachers are more likely to notice speech issues because delays in language development or difficulty pronouncing words are often the most prominent challenges in young children.

"Because academic skills are just emerging in preschool, it is more difficult to identify patterns with specific academic areas, such as reading and math," Newcomer said.

This may account for why many students who receive special education support in preschool are identified as having a speech-language impairment. But Newcomer notes there is an overlap with language delays and learning disabilities.

"Difficulties with reading can be related to language deficits. Teachers should pay close attention to language-based tasks. For example, if students are showing difficulty grasping the concept of rhyming, this could demonstrate challenges with the phonological processing that is related to dyslexia," Newcomer said.

Identifying the Signs

Not all students have difficulty with the same skills, and not all students who have difficulties have learning disabilities. Newcomer suggests that teachers pay attention to clusters of signs, such as when a student has a heightened difficulty in learning numbers, days, colors, the alphabet, and/or shapes.

Pay attention to additional early signs of language-based learning disabilities, including:

Consistent difficulty naming familiar and everyday objects;

Using vague words like thing;

Struggling to come up with the right word;

Trouble following or remembering multistep directions;

Difficulty reciting things in the right order (like the alphabet or nursery rhymes); and

Mixing up the sounds in multisyllabic words ("mazagine" instead of "magazine" or "cimmanom" instead of "cinnamon").

Some students don't have trouble with language-based tasks, but struggle with math-based skills, like numeracy. Look for these common, noticeable signs in math:

Trouble counting out loud (skipping over numbers or reciting them out of order);

Trouble recognizing, creating, or replicating patterns;

Trouble connecting number symbols to number words, such as knowing that the numeral 5 goes with the word five;

Difficulty generalizing a number to more than one group of objects, such as understanding that six can be six crayons, six books, or six children; and

Difficulty understanding one-to-one correspondence.

Supporting Struggling Learners

Teachers aren't (and shouldn't be) diagnosticians, but they're often the first to notice signs of possible learning disabilities in their students. Noting when, where, and how students are encountering problems with learning and pinpointing specific areas of struggle are the first steps to supporting learners.

Using an observation tracker ( like this one) can help identify trends and patterns, such as particular times of day when students struggle or how they respond to intervention or small group instruction. Teachers can also put into place supportive practices that help all students but are especially helpful for those with learning disabilities. For example:

Using clear language to explain and teach a new skill;

Narrating or doing a "think-aloud" when demonstrating classroom routines;

Making classroom expectations explicitly clear and displaying them;

Providing directions in both written and picture form;

Teaching, practicing, and reteaching expected behaviors and routines; and

Providing immediate feedback so students can correct behavior or skills in real time.

Going the Extra Mile

For some students, supportive practices may not be enough. Helping students with potential learning disabilities also relies on early evaluation and targeted intervention, which requires knowing your school's referral for evaluation process.

Once teachers know what the steps for referral are, it's time to reach out to the student's family. Here are some tips to navigate conversations successfully:

Be direct about why you're reaching out, but remember that families have their own perspectives and interactions with their child that may not match what you're seeing.

Share specific concerns by describing what you're seeing, providing context, sharing examples, and explaining why this is something you'd like to explore more.

Ask for input and thoughts in an open-ended way that doesn't impose your viewpoint. That may sound like, "What are your thoughts?" or "Have you noticed anything similar at home?"

Share resources to help increase understanding of learning disabilities and developmental delays. Students who have learning disabilities tend to have signs and symptoms outside of school, too, so families may want to use an observation tracker.

Discuss clear next steps. If referral for evaluation seems like the next reasonable step, loop in the appropriate support staff to explain and walk the family through the process.

Keep the focus on finding solutions to support the student. That support can make a world of difference. Remember Max? He's now a successful teenage entrepreneur, something which he and his family credit, in part, to the support of the teachers who recognized his challenges and understood how to encourage his strengths.

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Recognizing Signs of Potential Learning Disabilities in Preschool

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Early intervention services can make a big difference for students who are at risk for learning disabilities. What should teachers look for? Max was 5 when he was diagnosed with a language-based learning disability. But his mother says the signs were visible earlier. She says Max had a hard time learning how to talk.

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This article is about how to get students motivated as well as how to understand student motivation. The suggestion that stood out to me off the bat was to find a way to relate topics and activities to your student and their interests. It is important to not blame the student for not being motivated and instead try to think outside the box for solutions to engage them. It is also important to check in with yourself to see if you are doing everything you can to engage your students. Self reflection is important.

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Listen to this post as a podcast:

When I ask teachers what their biggest struggles are, one issue comes up on a regular basis: student motivation. You are able to reach many of your students, but others are unreachable. No matter what you try, they have no interest in learning, no interest in doing quality work, and you are out of ideas.

For a long time, I had no solutions; the problem was too complex. I have had my own unmotivated students, and I never had any magic bullets for them. Still, the issue kept coming up from my readers.

So I decided to do some research, to try to find what the most current studies say about what motivates students. This is what I found:

1. Students are more motivated academically when they have a positive relationship with their teacher.

2. Choice is a powerful motivator in most educational contexts.

3. For complex tasks that require creativity and persistence, extrinsic rewards and consequences actually hamper motivation.

4. To stay motivated to persist at any task, students must believe they can improve in that task.

Stopping the Buck: The Teacher's Role in Student Motivation

The research on motivation wasn't hard to find; it seems as if any teacher with an Internet connection and an hour or two should be able to learn everything they need to know about the topic.

So where's the disconnect? If we as a collective group of educators already know what works to motivate students, why are so many students still unmotivated? When I talk with teachers about the problem, I don't hear much about the research.

Instead, we blame technology: "Students are so distracted by their phones."

Or we blame the parents: "Parents just don't want to be bothered" or "They don't want their kids to fail/experience setbacks/take responsibility."

Or we make sweeping generalizations: "Kids today just aren't like they used to be. They act so entitled."

Are we passing the buck? Maybe. It's certainly easier to blame outside forces than it is to make big changes in the way we teach. Unfortunately, even if ALL of the above statements are true, we can't do anything about those things. The only piece we really have control over is what goes on in our own classrooms.

So let's look at our own practice. When we set aside all the outside factors and just focus in on our time with students, how are we doing? How much alignment is there between our own instructional moves and the research on student motivation?

I have put together a list of five questions we can ask ourselves to see if we really are doing everything we could to boost student motivation. To keep me from getting too preachy, I'll do the exercise with you, reflecting on the years when I was a classroom teacher with middle school students.

Okay, let's go.

The Questions

1. How is your relationship with your students, really?

Multiple studies have shown a significant connection between student motivation and the quality of the teacher-student relationship. A good teacher-student relationship provides students with a sense of stability and safety, which sets the stage for more academic risk-taking. So what kind of relationship do you have with your least motivated students? How well do you really know them? Do you have conversations with them about the things they care about? Or have you more or less given up on them?

My response:
At first, I'm thinking I did pretty well in this area. I taught English language arts and my students kept journals, so I got to know them well. But when I think about my less-motivated kids, I'm not so sure I can say the same. The connection I had to Andre, one of my seventh-graders, consisted entirely of me getting him to make up missed work. It was all we talked about: the missing work, why he wasn't turning it in, how important this stuff was for his future. When Andre saw me coming, he probably just saw a looming cloud of nag. We never really talked about the stuff that mattered to him.

How we can do better:
Just becoming more aware of the value of relationships is the most important step. From there, consider one of these resources:

Jim Sturtevant's book, You've Gotta Connect, is full of specific strategies for building stronger bonds with your students. (Episode 9)

Smokey and Elaine Daniels' The Best-Kept Teaching Secret describes how dialogue journals can help us get to know our students better personally and academically.

If you want something faster, take a look at the 2 x 10 strategy, shared by Angela Watson, which has teachers spend two minutes a day for ten days casually chatting with underperforming students.

Remember that relationships between students matter, too. A well-chosen classroom icebreaker can begin building a sense of community in your room.

2. How much choice do your students actually have?

Study after study points to choice as a major factor in motivation. Most of us have probably heard this, but we may not have fully embraced it. After all, providing choice can be messy, with students completing different tasks at different rates, making it hard to be consistent with grading. It can also mean a lot more prep work: If you're going to give students three different options for an assignment, that means you have to prepare all three options ahead of time. Or do you? Isn't that kind of prep work more in line with worksheet-oriented teaching, where students are doing low-level work that was largely prepared by the teacher? If students are engaged in more long-term, authentic, creative projects, it's much easier to provide them with choices, because we aren't constantly trying to provide them with new busywork every day.

My response:
I was pretty good about letting students choose topics for writing assignments, but I also required a lot of seat work as well. I wanted students to do their work at about the same pace, and I knew next to nothing about differentiation. Now I'm thinking about Matt, another one of my unmotivated seventh graders, who was incredibly smart. He sat way low in his chair in the back of the Gifted & Talented language arts class he'd been assigned to, way cooler than all the others, and he gave minimal effort. I used the same nagging approach I'd used with Andre, with minimal success. Now that I know more about differentiation and choice, I realize I could have had a conversation with Matt about letting him work ahead on some things. I could have allowed him, and his classmates, more input on the larger assignments I gave them. If I had given Matt a more active role in his own learning, he might have been more engaged.

How we can do better:
There are lots of ways you can allow more choice in your classroom without having to completely overhaul your way of doing things. Even adding a small amount of choice to what students already have is an improvement. Consider letting them choose:

seating: Could students do some assignments on the floor? In the hall? Or just in different seats?

work groups: Some students thrive in groups, while others do better on their own.

intake mode: If you want a student to read a particular book, and an audio version is available, you could occasionally make that an option.

output mode: For some assignments, it may be possible to have students deliver their response in an audio or video recording, rather than in writing.

timing: If students don't absolutely have to do the same thing at the same time, why not let them choose the order of activities they do?

3. Are you relying heavily on carrots and sticks...or Jolly Ranchers?

Many, many teachers count on rewards ("carrots") and punishments ("sticks") to motivate students. And those who study motivation tell us that extrinsic reinforcement can be motivating if the task is something easy: If you're trying to get students to clean up the classroom quickly, for example, offering class points toward a party can get them to speed up. But for tasks that require creativity and complex thought, extrinsic rewards actually reduce motivation. In your class, how much of your motivational approach is extrinsic? How often do you use grades, treats, privileges or punishments to prod students into doing something they don't really want to do, something they have no real interest in? If extrinsic reinforcement is your primary approach, you may actually be killing off any natural motivation students might have otherwise had.

My response:
I score myself pretty low here. As a teacher, my classroom management was a mess until I learned how to control students with names on the board, extra credit, whole-class rewards for good behavior, and the ever-reliable bag of Jolly Ranchers. I did those things because they worked. But there's a difference between getting kids to do what you want and truly, deeply motivating them.

How we can do better:
Try to catch yourself the next time you're about to tie a challenging activity to a reward or consequence. When introducing a task, try focusing on its inherent interest or value, or how much students are going to learn, rather than on a separate reward or grade. Consider the difference in these two statements:

I'm going to give you a sheet of math problems. The first ten are required, the last two are for extra credit.

I'm going to give you a sheet of math problems. The first ten should be fairly easy, but I want to see how many of you can do the last two-those are the challenge problems. You guys have learned enough that I think you can solve at least one of them, maybe both.

If you have a tendency to go for the first option, you are going for the easy win, the extrinsic reinforcement. If you find that this doesn't do much to motivate your underperforming students, try moving more toward the second option and see if anything changes.

4. Do your words contribute to a growth mindset or a fixed mindset?

What could be wrong with saying "You're so smart"? It's nice, right? It boosts their confidence, no? Well, it's more complicated than that. Students are motivated to persist at a challenging task when they believe they can get better at it. That requires them to have a growth mindset, a belief that their intelligence and abilities can be developed with effort. Teachers can have an impact on this mindset with the things we say to students. So when we say "You're so smart," "You have natural math ability," or "You're a great writer," we are telling the student it's their natural ability that got them where they are. We're contributing to a fixed mindset. And that's not motivating.

My response:
When I was in the classroom, I knew nothing about growth mindset. I thought kids would feel great if I told them they were smart or talented. I can remember a conversation with Janae, a student who commanded the attention of her peers with ease but got into trouble a lot and did poorly in school. I remember pulling her aside and telling her that I thought she had strong leadership qualities, and that if she could just get her grades up, she had a bright future ahead of her. Yeah, that didn't work. If I wanted her to "get her grades up," I would have been better off noticing a well-constructed sentence or complimenting the way she got her group back on track during a cooperative learning activity, showing her exactly what kind of choices she should keep making to be successful.
How we can do better:

Instead of praising something innate and fixed about a student, focus on specific things students can actually control. So instead of telling a student she's a great student, notice the level of detail in her lab report. Marvel at the level of difficulty she was able to handle on that challenging math problem. Point out how much preparation she must have done for the presentation she gave. It's faster and easier to just tell them they're awesome, but taking the time to be specific and focus on effort will pay much larger dividends.

When you have constructive feedback to give, follow the same principle and make it specific. Rather than telling a student she "needs to work harder" on her assignments, tell her what to work on. Is neatness an issue? Does she need to read the questions more slowly? Is she doing the advanced math right, but messing up with the basic addition and subtraction? If a student knows what to work on, she will be far more motivated to do that work.

5. What are you doing to make your content relevant to students' lives?

I think this is another one of those principles that's been around for so long, we assume we're doing it more than we actually are. But showing students how the content relates to their lives really does make a difference. When students believe they are doing something authentic, something that will improve their lives or have some kind of impact, they are naturally motivated. So how are you doing in this area? Do you regularly provide opportunities for students to connect what they're learning to the world they currently live in?

My response:
I got pretty lazy about this. Just like crafting a good opening and closing for each day's learning, I often cut corners on making my material relevant. I was often much more focused on getting through content and tasks than I was on making it meaningful. I was pretty good about giving writing assignments on topics that mattered to them, but I don't know how clearly I connected what they were doing to how it could help them. For example, with something like argumentative writing-I was probably more focused on "this is how you get a good grade on this" rather than on "this is how you change someone's mind."
How we can do better:

Plan it, then say it: Making material more relevant can be as simple as occasionally stopping an activity to explain its relevance. When students are studying the Lincoln-Douglas debates, show parallels with the current presidential election. When you're studying bacteria, talk about all the places bacteria hang out in students' daily lives. Making these kinds of connections is a natural practice for many teachers, but if you're like me, you might forget to add these connections into a lesson. So just add them into your lesson plan; literally write down a few connections you plan to make some time during a class period, then check your plans before class is over to make sure you did it.

More reflection: Even asking students to think about how course material connects to their lives can make a difference. One study (see the Motivation Matters document in the collection) had teachers ask students to write weekly reflections on how the material they were learning related to their lives; lower-performing students in these classes did better compared to those where teachers didn't use this intervention. Researchers referred to these as "value interventions."

Design tasks that end with a public product: In one of the videos in the collection below, educator Kathleen Cushman describes the highly engaging work students do at High Tech High, a school whose curriculum focuses on project-based learning. Student projects have an authentic, public end product-a video, a live presentation, a community service project, a website-something that will ultimately be consumed by people outside of their own classroom. This naturally motivates students to work harder on a task. So look at your curriculum and see if you can find more ways to build assignments around real, public products.

Where to Go from Here

The purpose of this exercise is not to beat ourselves up. It's just a way of deeply diagnosing a problem most teachers struggle with. There's a very good chance that the technology, the parents, or the entitlement are playing a role in what we perceive to be reduced student motivation. But there's a very good chance that our instructional decisions play a role as well.

So pick one area and start there. Make a small adjustment this week and see what happens. Share in the comments where you think you could improve, then come back and tell us what changes made a difference. To solve a problem as complicated as student motivation, there is no magic bullet; instead we'll need a set of tools that we blend and refine over time. This is a process that will definitely be slower and more frustrating than a single, easy solution, but we're professionals. This is our craft. We can do this. ♦

Keep in touch.
Join my mailing list and get weekly tips, tools, and inspiration-in quick, bite-sized packages-all geared toward making your teaching more effective and fun. You'll get access to my members-only library of free downloadable resources, including my e-booklet, 20 Ways to Cut Your Grading Time in Half, which has helped thousands of teachers spend less time grading!

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5 Questions to Ask Yourself About Your Unmotivated Students

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If we know what works to motivate students, why are so many students still unmotivated? These five questions will help you determine if your practice is really in line with research.

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Firstly, it is important to understand what causes the student to work at the speed that they do. Do they have a learning disability? It is important to consider whether the student is being held back due to anxiety. I like a lot of suggestions in this article such a breaking large tasks into smaller ones. This will help the students not feel overwhelmed. Also some students feel a pressure to make their work come out perfect. I think it is important to remind students that they don't have to worry about those pressures of perfection, that their attempt to do their best is good enough. I especially like the suggestion about modeling your own process. This means showing your students what your own thought process is when solving problems. This can be very helpful to them.

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Strategies to Help Slow-Working Students | Cult of Pedagogy

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We want students to work at their own pace, but when one student is significantly slower than his peers, it can cause problems for him and for his teachers.

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Something that I saw as a student that I hated

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Something that I saw as a student that I hated

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This article goes into something that I heard and saw as a student that I hated. Teachers would talk about how other classes or groups of children were better behaved. I can see why they would think doing that is a good idea, They think it is inspiring students to behave better but it is a problem because it makes students feel bad. It is wrong to label students and set a standard for what their potential is. A student should be viewed as an individual and a class shouldn't be labeled as a bad class. By labeling a class as a bad class we are choosing to make the issue insolvable. We should never give up on our students. We should let students know that the mistakes they make yesterday do not have to label who they are today. There is always a chance to grow, learn and improve.

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Listen to this post as a podcast:
Sponsored by mysimpleshow and Peergrade
"This is the worst group we've ever had."
When I hear a teacher say this, I know those students are in trouble: The person in charge of their well-being, the tone of their classroom, and their opportunities to grow has decided they are beyond saving.

They never look up from their phones, we say. They have this attitude of entitlement. They have no respect for authority. No respect for themselves.

We warn our colleagues: "Just wait till next year when you get this group."

Over lunch, we share anecdotes. The shocking thing that one kid said. The outfit this one showed up in.

And as we ruminate on the many ways our students fall short, we can't help but settle into nostalgia: It wasn't like this before.

...at my other school.

...with last year's group.

...when I was a student.

These conclusions don't come from nowhere. They start when something goes wrong: a missed assignment, a lesson gone bad, a hostile email, an act of aggression. Hurdles appear that were never there before. Teaching gets harder, and we try to figure out why. We notice things, we start to see patterns, and we construct generalizations to help us make sense of it all. The first step toward fixing any problem is to diagnose it.

But when we settle for a "kids today" diagnosis, romanticizing the past and blaming our teaching problems on the collective inferiority of a generation, we only make things worse.

What's Wrong with a Little Nostalgia?

It sounds so innocuous, doesn't it? Nostalgia. I think of those Country Time Lemonade commercials, with grandpa on the porch reminiscing about his boyhood, the late afternoon sun playing across his face. It's just looking back on the good times. How could that be a bad thing?

It depends entirely on the impact: Nostalgia for the past is toxic when it makes us feel contempt toward the present. And that toxicity works itself into our classrooms in some pretty destructive ways.

It Feeds on Itself

The problem with comparing the current batch of kids to an earlier group is that it puts a negative lens in front of our eyes. Through that lens, we start to view even ordinary, age-appropriate behavior as bad. We will treat the whole group as if they are always up to no good, or all lack motivation, or are all narcissistic, entitled little farts.

Then, through the magic of confirmation bias, we start to find more and more evidence to support that conclusion, which in turn is likely to generate a self-fulfilling prophecy whereby students actually start behaving more like narcissistic, entitled little farts. If several teachers regularly report these incidents to each other, the lens just grows thicker, thereby assuring that few students in this group stand a chance of ever being seen as individuals.

It Blocks Relationships

Building strong relationships with students is arguably the most important factor in student and teacher success. And when we decide that "this group" has some kind of undesirable trait compared with "that group," we prevent ourselves from really getting to know this group as individuals. It's kind of a done deal.

In his book, You've Gotta Connect: Building Relationships that Lead to Engaged Students, Productive Classrooms, and Higher Achievement, high school teacher Jim Sturtevant* warns teachers about the impact nostalgia can have on their ability to connect with students. "When nostalgia takes you away from the students that you have been blessed with the power to influence, it is far from harmless. This moment is all we ever have with each student. Nostalgia can absolutely detour efforts to accept a student for what she or he is in this moment."

It Lets Us Shirk Responsibility

If we stamp an entire batch of students with a problematic label, we get a pass. It's not me, it's them. It's the parents. It's society! This country! The world today!

Taking this stance is convenient, because it means we don't have to try. We don't have to look at our own practices and find the spots that need improvement. It means we don't have to fail. Sadly, it also means that whatever problem we're experiencing will never actually improve. And even if it does, it certainly won't be due to anything we did.

Here's the thing: A whole lot of our nostalgia might be true. Kids today might actually be more challenging. Teaching is undoubtedly harder than it used to be. But so what? If we stop there, throw up our hands and start counting the days to retirement, we lose. And so do our students. We can do better than that.

How to Get Over Nostalgia and Work in Reality

Tap Into Mindfulness

One big key to overcoming this kind of damaging nostalgia is to practice nonjudgmental mindfulness, to pay close attention to exactly what's in front of you and just take it in without judging it as good or bad; simply notice and accept things as they are.

Does that mean letting students do whatever they want? Ignoring harmful or destructive behavior? No. Maintain your expectations, deliver appropriate consequences, just work on how you feel about these exchanges. Instead of interpreting a student's behavior as more evidence of his inferiority or poor character, just deal with the behavior. You're still doing your job, but with a change in how you look at it, you no longer have that harmful added layer of judgment. In How to Practice Nonjudgmental Mindfulness, counselor Laura Schenck explains, "Releasing judgment does not mean that you "approve" of things that violate your true values. It means allowing yourself to move into a place of emotional stillness, peace, and acceptance of what is."

Another benefit to practicing mindfulness is that it helps you more clearly see the things that are working, to notice the students who are behaving, caring for each other, respecting your guidelines, and trying their best. On days when my classroom started to feel out of control, I would sometimes stop teaching, sit down, and write in a notebook, often recording the names of students who were behaving, rather than listing the ones I wanted to punish. This helped me shift my focus away from the problems and give some energy to the things that were going right.

Look Back with Accuracy

Sometimes, rather than compare students to previous groups, we compare them to ourselves. Maybe you were a great student. Plenty of teachers were; we loved school so much we became teachers. But a lot of students in your peer group were not like you; because you were a kid, you didn't know about all the problems that were being handled while you were out at recess or sitting on the carpet for story time. You didn't know about all the homework that didn't get turned in or the other kids' low quiz scores. And if you were the kind of kid who turned work in on time and never talked back, if your handwriting was neat and your clothes completely free of rips or questionable slogans, you're in a perfect position to be incredibly judgmental of every student who isn't just like you were. And that's a whole heck of a lot of kids.

So if that's the case, instead of thinking about how you were as a student, try widening that lens a bit and remember some of the other kids you went to school with. Not everyone was an excellent student. Not everyone behaved. And now that you're the one in charge, they are all yours.

Love the Ones You're With

The only real cure for a bad case of nostalgia is to focus entirely on the students right in front of you, to set aside whatever visions you might have of past students and fall in love with these people.

And that can only happen if you make a real effort to get to know them. Ask questions about their lives and record that information somewhere (I have a chart that can help you here). And get to know their "stuff." Instead of judging their music, have them play their favorite songs for you and tell you why they like them so much. Watch some of their movies, then talk about them with your students. Play around with the apps they use. Have them give you a lesson on all those abbreviations they use, then let them quiz you.

Where will you find the time for this? You have content to cover and assessments to give. But it doesn't have to be all that time-consuming: We're just talking about five minutes at the end of class every now and then. I promise you, it will be worth it. It might even turn what could have been the worst group you ever had into a collection of real people you actually kind of like. ♥

* Thank you to Jim Sturtevant for introducing me to the concept of nostalgia as a teacher problem. This idea resonated so much with me when I read his book a few years ago that I wanted to devote a whole post to it!

Keep in touch.
Join the Cult of Pedagogy mailing list and get weekly tips, tools, and inspiration-in quick, bite-sized packages-all geared toward making your teaching more effective and fun. You'll get access to my members-only library of free downloadable resources, including my e-booklet, 20 Ways to Cut Your Grading Time in Half, which has helped thousands of teachers spend less time grading!

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Listen to this post as a podcast: Sponsored by mysimpleshow and Peergrade "This is the worst group we've ever had." When I hear a teacher say this, I know those students are in trouble: The person in charge of their well-being, the tone of their classroom, and their opportunities to grow has decided they are beyond saving.

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This article has a very interesting perspective on what the effectiveness is of our discipline with our students. Their is an emphasis on knowing our students and having a good relationship withe the students in our classes. This article gives a fresh perspective on the zero tolerance policy that has been used in most schools for years. We need to not group all of the kids together and assume that we know why they are acting the way they are or that there is no motivation behind their misbehavior. The child may have interpreted your behavior as threatening or it is possible that something is going on at home that we don't know about. It is important that we listen to our students and make sure they feel safe enough to ask for help if they need it. The article also went into healing circles and how they can be used to help students open up. It is important that as teachers we are good listeners. We need to listen to our students.

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Listen to my interview with Victor Small (transcript):
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A student threw a chair at a teacher.
That's the story I heard. It was a story meant to illustrate how bad a particular group of kids was, and now I can't even remember who the teacher was or where the school was located, or even the gender of the teacher or the student. In fact, I'm pretty sure I've heard two or three different stories about students throwing things at teachers, each one told with the intent of showing just how bad those kids were.

But every time I've heard a story like that, my first thought has always been, Holy crap. What kind of a relationship did that teacher have with those students? What was going on in the minutes, days, and weeks leading up to that chair being thrown?

And I know how that sounds. It sounds like I'm blaming the teacher. Or that I don't think a student should be held responsible for doing something as awful as throwing a piece of furniture at another human being.

I don't think that. But here's what I think probably happened in all of those schools: The student was removed from class and promptly suspended, maybe even expelled. And if and when that student returned to school, nothing much was done to repair that student's relationship with the teacher. Or to really address the other issues that may have been going on leading up to that chair being thrown. And if that kind of work isn't done, if we focus only on making our punishments stricter, then things like chair throwing will keep happening. And nobody wants that.

Getting students to behave in a way that is conducive to learning is a perennial challenge for teachers. On this site I have dealt with the topic a number of times. And every piece of advice-the tips and hacks and bits of wisdom-they are all useful.

But one approach to addressing problematic behavior-restorative justice-really stands on its own, because it focuses on building relationships and repairing harm, rather than simply punishing students for misbehavior.

I have wanted to share more about restorative justice on my site for years, but every time I started, I found that the topic was just too big, too complex to handle all at once. Usually, I try to share things that teachers can understand and apply right away, and the concept of restorative justice just wasn't letting me package and deliver it in a tidy little bundle.

So rather than try to do that, I'm going to just start with an overview. This will not be a comprehensive study of restorative practices, but an introduction designed for teachers who are just starting to get interested in this approach.

Helping me do that is Victor Small, Jr., a middle school administrator in Oakland, California. He has been using restorative practices for several years and supports other teachers through a Twitter chat-using the hashtag #RJLeagueChat -and a Voxer group called the Restorative Justice League, where educators talk about the challenges they're facing in implementing restorative practices and help each other work through tough situations.

In our interview, Small walks me through some of the basics of restorative justice-called RJ by many of its practitioners-and talks about how teachers can get started. You can listen to the interview in the player above, read a full transcript, or review the key takeaways here.

What is Restorative Justice?

The philosophy of restorative justice has its roots in the criminal justice system. When a crime is committed in a modern society, the typical response is to punish the offender, and that's about it. But societies all over the world have started to recognize that this approach doesn't repair the harm that was done; it also does nothing to address underlying problems that may have led to the offense in the first place. So they are starting to replace-or at least supplement-the standard approach with restorative justice practices, which focus on repairing harm for all parties involved. This process may include some form of punishment for the offender, but the lens is much wider than that.

"Say you stole a car," Small says. "Instead of you necessarily doing jail time, really what you would have to first do is make sure that you restore the situation to the person who you actually harmed, which would be the person whose car you stole, right? So you would have to restore that in some way. Either you'd have to get them their car back or get them a new car and apologize or something like that. Basically, the debt that you owe to society is to that person that you harmed."

This shift toward restorative justice has led to reduced recidivism (repeat offenses), greater satisfaction with the outcomes from all stakeholders, and reduced post-traumatic stress caused by the crime. (These results are summarized in this overview from the University of Wisconsin.)

Encouraged by these successes, educators in some schools have started using restorative practices to address disruptive or harmful behavior. With this shift, schools hope to see improved behavior and to reverse a disturbing trend: The zero-tolerance discipline policies of the past few decades have dramatically increased suspension rates in many districts, which can in turn lower graduation rates and ultimately push more students into the juvenile justice system. And again, those suspensions do nothing to repair harm.

Common Restorative Practices

The thing about restorative justice is that unlike a typical discipline program, it is not a cut-and-dried system with prescribed steps to follow in every situation. If done correctly, schools that shift to restorative justice will approach it holistically, looking at preventing wrongdoing as much as-if not more than-how to address it when it occurs.

"What we're essentially teaching students is your behavior affects people," Small explains, "and so in order to pay it forward or to deal with the consequences of that, you're going to have to figure out how to make things right. When we talk about restorative justice practices, we're talking about the things you're doing to ensure that students are recognizing when they're doing something wrong and finding a way to make it right."

Although restorative justice models vary somewhat from school to school, Small says schools that are doing it right have the following practices at their core.

Building Relationships

Schools that get interested in restorative justice may be tempted to jump right to the alternative punishments, but a true RJ program puts heavy emphasis on relationships. These relationships go in all directions: teacher to student, student to student, teacher to teacher, and between the school and the larger community.

These bonds are not forged overnight. Daily conversations, team-building exercises, telling our own stories and making time and space for students to tell theirs helps build relationships over time. "You've got to give them time to grow with one another," Small says.

And if you do, it pays off. "If you've got everybody in the school liking and getting along with one another, well when they do something wrong, it's a lot easier for that kid to apologize. The reason I'm really a very big proponent of RJ is if you're doing it right, you're going to prevent a whole lot of issues from occurring."

A Mindset Shift

To be effective with restorative justice, teachers need to adopt a restorative mindset, a way of looking at wrongdoing and punishment through a different lens.

"Everything that a kid does shouldn't have to have a consequence," Small says. "I mean if a kid gets angry and says something to another kid, and that kid gets mad, do they need detention for that, or do they need to just fix the problem and not be mad at each other? Probably just fix the problem, not be mad at each other, and go on about their lives. If they didn't do anything wrong to the class or the community and they just did something messed-up to another student, they can handle that between the two students. You could facilitate that. It teaches them, hey, you have to be accountable for your actions, because your actions do have impact on other students, without having them sit in detention, right?"

Circles

Pulling groups of people together into circles for conversation is one of the most recognizable features of schools that have adopted restorative practices. These circles can take many forms: mediation circles when a problem needs to be addressed, healing circles when group members are hurting or grieving, or circles that form just for dialogue and storytelling. When circles are a regular part of the school culture, they give students a vehicle for communicating when problems arise, rather than handling them in less constructive ways.

Where to Start

Small offers this advice for educators who want to get started with restorative justice:

Read about RJ

A lot of excellent books have been written about restorative practices. To make sure you and your colleagues are working from a solid foundation, read up on the history and philosophy before attempting to implement an RJ program. I have listed a few good starter books at the end of this post, and a lot more can be found online that detail specific practices.

Identify Your Biases and Triggers

A big part of addressing student misbehavior and building strong relationships with students is uncovering our own built-in biases. And the first step toward doing that is getting comfortable with the idea that we all have them.

"It's really painful for us to consider this," Small says, "but if we walk into our classrooms and we really try to believe that an approach to colorblindness is one that's effective, we're really shortchanging our kids' lives, because if we're just constantly telling them, 'Hey, I don't see color,' when they leave your classroom, someone's going to see their color. And someone's going to act possibly on the fact that they see their color, so we're setting them up for failure if we don't do our own investigation of, 'Do I have any biases against any particular type of culture, any particular type of culture activity, any of my students? Do I have any things that trigger certain behavior or fears or anger that they do that they do naturally? Taking a step back and wondering, is it me or is it them?'"

Build Culture and Community

If you have a school culture where students feel known, where they feel at home, behavior on the whole will be better and efforts to address wrongdoing will be more productive. Getting to that point will happen if you approach culture-building from a lot of different angles.

"Work on finding ways to include kids in what's going on," Small says, "like allowing more student voice, allowing more student opportunities for them to display their culture, act on their culture, be a part of their culture."

Having caring adults in the building who look like the student body is also more important than many people realize. "You need to give (students) opportunities to learn about people that look like them, that are from their culture, that represent them. If 99 percent of your staff is white and 99 percent of your student body is black and Latino, you're going to need to figure out a way to get more black and Latino staff members in your school." ( This conversation with former teacher of the year Nate Bowling dives more deeply into this topic.)

Finally, schools can work to make the school more integrated into the larger community. "If you can find ways to learn about the neighborhoods, the communities and find ways to bring people from the community and in the neighborhoods into your school, you're creating a school culture that the students can feel more at home in." And when students feel at home, when they know each other, there's less of a need to address misbehavior.

"They just get along better, so they fight less," Small says of his students. "There's less reason for them to fight, because everyone knows everyone else."

Okay, but what about the discipline?

Having finished this overview, I realize I never quite got to the question of How does restorative justice actually deal with the misbehavior?

The answer to this is complicated, because it's not as simple as detention-suspension-expulsion. There are conferences and circles, a lot of discussion about the harm that was done and how it can be repaired. Individual decisions are made on an individual basis. There's more to it than I can cover in one post, but I plan to do more posts later to dig more deeply into the details. I really do believe that restorative justice is the direction we need to be heading to create safer, healthier school communities.

I hope you'll take a step in that direction. ♦

To Learn More

These books offer a great starting point for learning more about restorative practices:

Better than Carrots or Sticks:
Restorative Practices for Positive Classroom Management
Dominique Smith, Douglas Fisher, Nancy Frey

The Little Book of Restorative Justice
Howard Zehr

The Little Book of Restorative Discipline for Schools:
Teaching Responsibility; Creating Caring Climates
Lorraine Stutzman Amstutz, Judy H. Mullet

Touching Spirit Bear
(Reader Recommended)
Ben Mikaelsen

You can find Victor Small, Jr., on Twitter at @MrSmall215, and join him every Sunday night at 8pm EST for the #RJLeagueChat.

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Restorative Justice in School: An Overview

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Instead of looking for ways to make punishments stricter, restorative justice seeks to build relationships and repair harm. Learn more about how this holistic approach works and how you can get started.

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Ways to make my classroom more comfortable and learner friendly

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Ways to make my classroom more comfortable and learner friendly

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This article is so interesting and I learned a lot from it. I don't necessarily agree with all of the tips or understand all of them but I really like this article. It is all about creating an environment that is best for the students' learning. I appreciate that the article creator keeps in mind the fact that many teachers have financial barriers that prevent them from making certain design choices for their classrooms. This article talks about how you can arrange the furniture and make certain changes, without breaking the bank. The article also goes into how everything in the classroom should have a purpose and not be too distracting. It was really eye opening to read about asking for student feedback about the room layout. I think that students feedback so important so I have no idea why it never occurred to me that we could ask students about their feelings on the physical learning environment.

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12 Ways to Upgrade Your Classroom Design | Cult of Pedagogy

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Money and space are not prerequisites for learning-friendly design. Try any one of these ideas to make your classroom a better place for students to learn.