Thinking about classroom order and equal opportunity at my
practicum site, I immediately think about the seating charts in my two periods
of math. In my first period,
students are grouped by ability and each “group” can have their own type of
distractions and interruptions. In
my second period, my teacher has placed the students who have the hardest time
focusing and participating right in front of him. So when he teaches and uses the board at the front of the
room, the trouble makers are right in front of him.
A couple of weeks ago, I had a sub for two days in a row. It was the same sub both days. There is this group of boys that
disrupts the class verbally – in a loud fashion. The sub kept addressing the boys’ disruptions. However, there were also a group of
girls who kept disrupting the class.
Their disruption was passing notes. It was not causing an audible distraction, so the sub did
not address it. However, two boys
were very displeased by their distraction and started getting angry about the
sub not doing anything about it.
This passing notes distraction ended up being an audible distraction and
a physical one once a boy got up and snatched a note away. He ended up having the whole class’s
attention during the sub’s lesson.
To me, this goes back to Lampert’s finding a balance. I think the sub was letting the note
passing go because he deemed the distraction not worth disrupting his lesson to
address it, while he did stop teaching to address the boys who were
shouting. These thoughts have now
led me to ask myself: what distractions are worth bringing attention to and
which ones are not? And is there a
line that can be crossed that changes the distraction?
I have found myself struggling with this at my practicum site too, Katy. When I'm up in front of the group I have no idea what students are whispering to each other unless they're loud. For all I know they are commenting on the lesson, or perhaps something was said that made them think of something else that they just had to tell someone right away (does that ever happen to any of us as a cohort during classes? I think so!) I try to keep an eye out for chronic behaviors that seem to be distracting, before making decisions to ask students to focus or to move.
ReplyDeleteI really want to learn more about ways to minimize classroom distractions though. Emily and John's CT is very effective with this, and she does it in a way that doesn't ridicule or embarass students and she moves on quickly again so as to not draw attention to disturbances. She seems to understand that distractions are sometimes natural and to be expected when communicating with a large group for a sizeable period of time, and that they are not a personal attack against the teacher or the group but rather the result of disengagement or of things going on with individual students. I will keep my eyes open and ask some questions and try to report back with more information about this!