Monday Motivator #22 2022-23

Individualized Positive Reinforcement Menu

Details
This intervention uses a tool – known as the forced-choice reinforcement survey – to identify possible classroom reinforcers.
Goal
The goal of this intervention is to help uncover what motivates students' behaviors and what kinds of experiences are reinforcing for that individual.
Action
This intervention entails working with a student to answer a set of controlled choice survey questions about their individual reinforcement preferences. This can help in working with them to identify potential classroom reinforcers as their answers can provide valuable insight into the types of rewards and incentives they desire.
Preparation
Click here to access the controlled choice survey.

Instructions
(1) Schedule time to meet briefly with the student and explain to them that you would like them to answer a few short questions on a survey.
(2) Share that the purpose of this is to help you learn about some of different rewards that matter to them so that, together, you can help adjust the types of incentives they have available throughout the day
(3) Read the prompt at the top of the survey and then allow the student to respond to the questions. You can help talk through some of the questions if necessary.
(4) After the student completes the survey, score it by tallying the results in the scoring key section on the last page.

·      The scoring key includes five different types of motivators: adult approval (e.g.,      verbal praise, non-verbal recognition of positive behaviors), competitive approval (e.g., individual attention), peer approval (e.g., leadership roles, group activities), independent rewards (e.g., time alone in calming corner, student choice), and consumable rewards (e.g., tangible objects, snacks).

(5) Review the results with the student and use the insights from the scoring key to suggest new reinforcers, rewards, or incentives to integrate into existing intervention plans or their daily schedule.

Implementation Tips

• Consider using the student's responses to inform behavior plans or to alter existing incentive systems that might be a part of other interventions they are receiving.
• This intervention is recommended for use when students are not motivated by rewards or incentives or showing disinterest in school work.

Consider using the survey results to create a new reward menu for the student.

Why this works

Research indicates that the use of forced-choice reinforcement menus can lead to positive student outcomes across behavior and academics. Moreover, the tool generates direct feedback from the student's perspective, increasing their agency in the process and setting the foundation for improvements in terms of the teacher-student relationship.

Supporting Evidence
Gable, R. A. (1991) from: Cartwright, C. A., & Cartwright, G. P. (1970). Determining the motivational systems of individual children. TEACHING Exceptional Children, 2:3, 143-149. Forced-Choice Reinforcement Survey.

Monday Motivator #21 2022-23

 

Literacy and Trauma 

https://choiceliteracy.com/article/trauma-and-literacy/

When I was between the ages of 8 and 10, two things happened. First, it stopped raining. There was a two-year drought that dried up the entire state of Ohio. My father’s hay crop withered and died. With no hay to sell, there was no money. With no money, there was no food. We were a family of six. I was very hungry for quite some time.
The second thing was the beginning of the slow implosion of my parents’ marriage. My father grew sullen and silent, my mother sad and defiant. Though it would be many painful years before they would finally divorce, those years were the worst because the farmhouse seemed to be waiting for something—thunder, lightning, heavy rain, a big fight, some sort of resolution.
As kids do, I soldiered on, not having words or systems to manage any of it. My sisters reacted similarly. We did not discuss it. At the dinner table, we gulped my mother’s home-canned green beans and frozen corn, supplemented with discount-store cans of fruit cocktail. We dipped saltines in water, the better to swallow them with our choked throats. We waited for something to happen.
I didn’t feel seen. I was an outsider to a larger crisis I’d need years to understand.
Then someone saw me.
Miss Troutman pulled me aside before lunch. She gave me two gifts. The first was a ham sandwich. The second was a journal.
I don’t know how she knew. When we talk about it now, my sister tells me the school intervened, perhaps even making a social service call to report our bone-thin legs and dirty, ill-fitting clothing. I don’t know that I believe her; it seems I would remember that sort of thing. I prefer to believe Miss Troutman sensed my loneliness and saw my hunger, and figured out a way to address it without humiliating me or making me talk about my breaking heart.
These days, we are discussing children and trauma more openly and honestly. We are legitimizing how it can feel to be a very young person who is scared, sad, sorry, and ashamed, but still has to get up and wash her face and get on the school bus. We recognize that trauma takes many forms—there is hunger, abandonment, physical pain, loneliness, fear, racism, and all sorts of other horrible, painful things—and kids all feel it differently. They all react differently. Trauma is not, and should not be, a lonely and secretive thing. People—kids—often want to deal with it alone, but that’s not what they need. They need someone to notice, and teachers are often the ones to see it first.
Miss Troutman did it for me with dignity and kindness that still makes me swoon with gratitude: She fed me, and she encouraged me to write. “I made an extra sandwich this morning,” she said simply. She made an extra sandwich every day, apparently, stuffed with chipped ham and slathered with delicious, oily mayonnaise. “And I have something you can have for your very own.” The journal was beautiful, bound in black leather holding scores of unlined white paper. “You don’t need to show it to me as you write. It can be private. Unless you’d like to share, of course. It doesn’t matter to me; you can just use it to write down what you’re thinking.”
It was more than an invitation; it was an escape. I’d long wanted to journal, but didn’t have a special place to do it. If there is no money for ground beef, there is certainly no money for journals. I took the journal home and began experimenting as a poet, a writer, an artist, a dreamer—a little person who could imagine a better ending to the story.
Literacy and Trauma Today
I see teachers helping students through trauma all the time, and many times it’s through reading and writing. Sometimes teachers don’t even know their instructional decisions are guiding students through trauma, but they are. It’s there. Especially when their classrooms always have four important routines.
Freewriting time. In my new journal, I didn’t write specifically about being hungry or about the silence bursting through our farmhouse. I wrote about other things. It was the process itself that helped—the flow of thoughts, the soothing act of pencil to paper, the place to be still. Providing time to freewrite and journal, with no expectations beyond the act of writing, is a safe and gentle way to move students through trauma.
Reading stories. It’s rare that students can’t find a piece of themselves in stories they read and hear. I love when teachers hold a gentle insistence that students read, and visit the school library. It’s a lovely gift—giving kids access to stories of people who feel like they are feeling.
Instruction on narrative. Trauma or not, every kid has a story with characters, plots, and relentless rising and falling action. We live in a world that devalues the opinions of young people, inasmuch as the world, as a whole, doesn’t give voice to them. Teachers can flip that concept around and make their classrooms places where narratives happen and are valued.
Diverse literature. In the larger scheme of things, the importance of diverse literature is a relatively new concept in schools, and I find immense relief that it is something we are talking about and prioritizing. Seeing and hearing that other people, other kids, are grappling with problems and issues, and that they look just like we look, is a level of relief I’m not sure we can ever quantify.
Miss Troutman and I recently reconnected through social media. In a private message, I thanked her for her kindness and for being the person who knew what I needed. She was gracious, demure, and gentle, just as I remembered her. “It’s rare that I can still see the 10-year-old in the face of an adult,” she wrote. “But I can see your face in your pictures. Except I see peace and confidence now. I’m glad about that.” We plan to meet for coffee the next time I go “home.”
For students in the midst of trauma, teachers have tools and platforms available for kids to write and read their way through the dark times. I hope all teachers know how much it matters. Someday, those young people will be in their midforties, and they’ll remember being seen. And they’ll be grateful.

Jen Schwanke
Jen Schwanke, Ed.D., is a longtime educator, teaching and leading at all levels. She is the author of three ASCD books, including the just-released, The Teacher’s Principal: How School Leaders Can Support and Motivate Their Teachers. She has written and presented for multiple state and local education organizations, and has provided professional development to various districts in the areas of school climate, personnel, and instructional leadership. She is an instructor in educational administration at Miami University. Dr. Schwanke currently serves as a Deputy Superintendent in Ohio. Follow Schwanke on Twitter @Jenschwanke or her website jenschwanke.com.

Monday Motivator #20 2022-23

 

7 Small, Simple Classroom Management Resolutions For 2023

January 6, 2023 by Michael Linsin

https://smartclassroommanagement.com/2023/01/06/classroom-management-resolutions-2023/

Small things can make a big difference.

Tweaks here and there. Changes in perspective, in temperament. Fine-tuning the dial to a clearer, cleaner signal. Improved classroom management doesn’t have to be hard.

If it feels hard, if you’re straining and striving but reaping little more than stress, then you’re doing it wrong.

Everything we recommend here at SCM must be doable, effective, and best for students and their social, emotional, and academic well-being.

But it also must be best for you. It must make your job easier, less stressful, and more enjoyable. If this criteria isn’t met, then you won’t see it on our website.

With this in mind, I compiled a list of seven small, simple resolutions anyone can employ and see real, sustainable results.

They take zero extra work or planning. They need only your commitment.

Resolution One

Stop all friction with students. Resolve to never lecture, scold, or show an ounce of displeasure. Even while enforcing consequences, be only pleasant—and nothing more. This alone can be career-changing.

Resolution Two

Let your classroom management plan do all the work for you. Relieve yourself of the profound distress of having to rely on the perfect, unattainable alchemy of words and expressions to curb misbehavior, and instead do the most effective thing you can: Lean on your plan.

Resolution Three

Shift all responsibility for listening, learning, and behaving over to your students. Allow none of it to cling to you. Instead, double down on your job, which is to provide great instruction and protect every student’s right to learn and enjoy being in your classroom.

Resolution Four

Become as calm as a mountain lake. Believe it or not, keeping your cool both inside and out is a decision you make every day, nothing more. In the few minutes before school begins, decide that no matter what happens that day you’ll float above it.

Resolution Five

Hold no grudge. The secret to influential rapport isn’t to try to get to know your students better. It isn’t to ask about their hobbies or show how cool you are. It’s to be consistently pleasant to all students. Do this and rapport comes naturally, organically.

Resolution Six

Focus on setting your students up for success from one moment to the next and from opening bell to dismissal. This is done through detailed instruction of every transition, movement, heartbeat, and object of concentration so that there is no question what is expected.

Resolution Seven

Accept only excellence. This is a mindset, not a task. If your attitude is one of expecting the best, finest, and highest quality, then that’s what you’ll get it. It’s a law of nature. Every student will know it and adjust to it by your attitude alone.

Paso Fino

Notice that each resolution requires commitment. Full-on determined resoluteness. This is a good thing because it’s easy to know what you must do and whether, when, and if you’ve gotten off track.

If you decide on just these few things, you’ll find unusual success.

You’ll find transformation and rejuvenation. You’ll discover that your students aren’t who you thought they were and that you have far more power and control than you ever thought possible.

It’s in your hands. Truly. So right now. This moment. Review the list once again. Print it out if need be. Read it every day. Focus and commit.

If you stumble, if you fall and scrape your knee or bloody your nose, get right back up on that Paso Fino. Dust off your chaps, right your Stetson, click your tongue and never look back.

Those days are gone forever.

Monday Motivator #19 2022-23

 

Open Your Mailbox: This strategy comes from Panorama Ed Playbook:

Goal

The goal of using this strategy is to create a safe space in which students are expressing what they need to engage in their learning.

Action

This short ritual focuses on creating a safe and inclusive space for students to share what they need in order to succeed as a learner.

Preparation:

• Consider preparing sentences as a scaffold for students who will benefit. For example: “For me to learn this morning, I need my teacher to ___ and my classmates to ___.”

Instructions:

(1) At the beginning of the day (or at the start of a learning block) have students form a circle. They can be standing or sitting at their desks.

(2) Prompt students to go in a circle and, if they feel comfortable, share what they need to be effective as a learner that day.

• Ensure that students know it is totally optional to share. If they do not share, the expectation is that they pay close attention to the students who are expressing their learning needs.

(3) Close this activity by affirming that you have heard these needs and share that you will do your best to honor them throughout the day/period.

When You Might Use This Strategy:

• Use the strategy at the start of the instructional day or learning block as an opportunity for students who would like to explain to their teachers and peers in a safe space what they need for the block of work time to be effective.

Why this works

Teachers actively trying to create learning partnerships with students can use it to build engagement and empathy in the classroom. It also helps better engage kids who don’t typically express what they need to learn.

Monday Motivator #18

 

Little Things that Make a Difference

Life’s too short for bad coffee.
—Gord Downie

The Best Cup of Coffee

 Ruth Ayers
https://choiceliteracy.com/article/september-16-2022-little-things-that-make-a-difference/

There is a phenomenal coffee shop in my town, and my favorite coffee is a honeycomb lavender latte. The coffee is made with fair trade beans and the honey is locally sourced. I wish we could meet for a cup and a chat.

One morning I was wishing the coffee shop opened a lot earlier because I think I would be a better writer if I started the day with a honeycomb lavender latte. It’s really the best cup of coffee, I thought. 

As I sipped my own coffee, I realized that it was tasty, too. In fact, it really was the best cup of coffee to start the day. It is made with fair trade freshly ground beans and a touch of cream. I began to wonder what would happen if every day I expected to drink the best cup of coffee.

The next day, I tested my theory. I poured a cup of coffee, took a sip, and said out loud, “This is the best cup of coffee.” Every day I repeated the process. Do you know what happened? Every day I drink the best cup of coffee.

It was a small move that changed the course of my day in mighty ways. I look forward to the best cup of coffee each morning. I am glad to start the day with gratitude, rather than the discontentment of wishing for something different.