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Newark Public Schools

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Full coverage of Education Insights

September 5, 2001

Editor's note: Julie taught a summer school class of third graders in Newark, New Jersey--a city that continuously does poorly on statewide and national standardized tests.

Week Four - Changing attitudes

I decided to change my attitude today. I read an article on behavior management, and it suggested that by recognizing bad behavior in the classroom, acknowledging it and punishing it, I was actually reinforcing it.

Instead, I decided to try ignoring the bad behavior and only recognizing the good behavior. I also decided to praise my kids more.

We have a new girl in our class. Her name is Crystal, she's from Haiti, and she doesn't really speak more than a few words of English. She walked into the room while the kids were taking their subtraction test after breakfast. Jack and I gave her the subtraction test, just to give her something to do, as a practice.

After a week of studying subtraction and doing worksheets, I still had kids who were scoring around 60%. But Crystal polished off the test with a 90%. And, when she did the word problem, she labeled every step that she took and highlighted her answer.

Mrs. Johnson proudly showed this to me, "You see, this is how they learn to do it in Haiti."

A life lesson

When the subtraction test was over, I handed each kid a copy of a poem about two frogs that were drowning in a bowl of cream. One of the frogs, in despair, gave up and seeing the situation as hopeless, let himself drown and die. The other kept swimming around. Soon enough, the cream was churned into butter, because the frog was constantly moving his legs, and the frog, finally standing on top of a lump of butter, was able to jump out of the bowl.

It was a poem about attitude and about eliminating the word 'can't', which I feel very strongly about with my kids.

After the poem was read, we reviewed the plot of the poem, exactly what happened, and then I asked, "So, what's the message here? What's the point? What is the poem really about?"

I got some varied answers like, "Two frogs,", "Drowning in a bowl," and "Wait, how big was the bowl?" and then I asked a different question. "Ok, we have two frogs, and they're similar in a lot of ways, like they're both small and green and they jump around, but something about them is different, what's different?"

Latasha's hand shot up in the air. "One of them dies and one of them doesn't…?"

"Ok, that's true, but why? What is it that makes one die and one live?" I looked out at 12 contemplative faces.

Jessica raised her hand and gave me the answer to my first question. "You should try."

I praised her for her answer and said, "Ok, great, that's the message. So what's the difference? I'm looking for a word that starts with 'a'….Attitude!" They all looked like light bulbs went on in their heads. "They have two different attitudes…one has a good one and one has a bad one, right?" Twelve heads nodded at me. The conversation went on, Lisa pointed out which one had which attitude, etc.

I wrapped up the discussion with, "So, the next time you think you can't do something, the next time you feel like a frog in a cream bowl, what are you going to do?" Hands went up and I called on different kids.

"Try…"
"Try!"
"Try," mumbled Jamal with a smile.

"Ok then, great. What's the point of the poem?" I called on Keith.

"You can do anything you want."

Latasha was waving her hand in the air, too, "Anything is possible."

I was pleased with my lesson, as even though the kids didn't seem to get it when I handed them the poems, I now felt like they had grasped something very important.

Teaching with love

Tracy came over to me, crying, in the lunchroom, because Latasha and Erika had been forcing her to move her seat for the new girl, Crystal. As I was calming her down and telling her I would deal with Latasha and Erika, Mrs. Johnson realized what was going on, and she stormed over, yelling at the girls, putting them at separate tables, and taking away their recess time.

While the girls definitely did something wrong because they were being pushy and bossy and disrespectful to a classmate, I get very anxious when Mrs. Johnson yells at the kids. Especially now, since I am trying this new positive discipline routine, where I am trying to be polite to my kids, ignore the bad behavior, listen to my kids, avoid jumping to conclusions, and set more of an example.

I'm not saying that teachers in Newark are bad; some of them are good teachers, some even damn good teachers. But, from my observation, for the most part, they don't know how to listen to their kids, they insult their kids, they don't show them love, and they yell. This is what the kids live with. This is what they learn. No wonder.

Positive examples

I gave the kids a spelling list after lunch. The major emphasis was on the difference between "your" and "you're" and "they're" "there" and "their". We did a series of examples of sentences using these words together, however, and by the time we got to having me recite a sentence orally, the kids were using the proper spelling of each word as they wrote the sentences I had recited into their notebooks.

As I walked around the room checking their work, I was sure to pat them each on the back and praise them with something like "Great!" "Perfect!" or "Beautiful! That's beautiful!"

I don't know if that sounds cheesy. But it worked. They smiled. They were happy, and proud, and they believed in themselves. And, I really think that half of having an effective classroom is having kids who are happy, and eager to learn because they know they can do it. And when kids are happy, they generally don't care to pick fights with other people.

The behavior problems aren't going to go away in one day, or even just one week. But, I think that by showing the kids that I don't care, or that the bad behavior is not worth noting, then maybe they'll learn to ignore each other (which is half the problem, because "she did X" turns into a reason for "me to do Y"), and the problems will decrease in the long-run. They also like having my attention, and if they only get it for good behavior, well then, I think that's what I'm bound to see.

My day at this point, however, was far from over. Today was Aftercare day of the week. Rachel (another teaching assistant) and I requested to be together for most of these, though, so that makes it a little better.

I noticed that because I had a good day with my kids, I was a lot less exhausted and my energy level was better than usual. There were no major fights. Listening to Mrs. Robeson yell at the kids, though, upset me again, because I don't like the yelling at all anymore.

Undoing all the goodness

When Keith's mom came to pick him up from Aftercare, he was playing ball. Now, Keith is one of the best students I have and is one of the best attending this school. He's very respectful, an extremely talented artist, and very, very intelligent. He knows things like the fact that Japan has four major islands. He is constantly asking questions, and today, I caught him browsing a textbook for fun. He always does well in all subjects on both class work and homework.

So now, he threw the ball at the wall against which the boys were all playing, and it came back at him really hard and hit him in the stomach. I went to make sure he was ok, and then he saw his mother, who said, "If you didn't hurry it up some more, I would have given you another one of those."

How harsh. And it killed me. When these parents and teachers yell, I get upset because I feel like they are undoing everything -- all the goodness -- that I have been trying to build up all day long.

Names have been changed to protect student and teacher privacy.