November 19

Chapter 10-Doors and Windows: Remembering to Explore All Options

When you find yourself stuck in a situation with a student in which you feel there is no way out, what do you do? According to Souers, we really need to step back and look at the whole situation, including all the options, rather than moving in to the ultimatum. Giving yourself the permission to look for the window when you come up against a locked door is imperative. This might be hard for us to do, especially if we are used to using the ultimatum.

Change is difficult. It is also important to remember that change take a lot of time and patience. During these difficult situations we will make  mistakes and so will our students. They need us to help them learn the skills to make it through the difficult situations in which they find themselves. We, as teachers, need to know that the students will not learn these skills overnight, the first time we teach them.

The activity on page 125, teaching us to widen our peripheral vision, is a great strategy to help us out of the ultimatum situation. Once we are better able to expand our focus from the incident with the student to the bigger picture, we can see that there are, in fact, many different possibilities that can be explored and that the ultimatum is not the solution at all.

Think about a time when you gave a student/child an ultimatum. Looking back, because we always have much better vision when we look at something a second time, was there something you could have done better?

 


Posted November 19, 2017 by tiebcmembers in category Fostering Resilient Learners

3 thoughts on “Chapter 10-Doors and Windows: Remembering to Explore All Options

  1. Rhonda

    I pride myself on offering my students many different ways to learn and to show their learning. The Daily 5 format helps me to provide this for my students. In September and October students were taught how to increase their stamina to be independent learners (or at least not disturb the teacher or others). Now I’m able to work in small groups (which I love coming from being a Resource Teacher to a Classroom teacher) with students for language arts and math. The rest of the class can be working in a variety of areas throughout the classroom – at the stand up desk, on a rocker chair, at the board, at a table. They can be working with different tools – iPads, listening centres, Chrome books, white boards, manipulatives. They could be working independently, with a partner or in another small group. One of the pressures that I put on myself (referring back to my comment in Chapter 9) is ensuring that all students are working at their level. This means having a wide realm of stuff on hand. Sometimes I concern myself that I so busy catering to each student’s needs that I’m not delving deep into the curriculum. For example, when a child wants to be supported while writing a story on the iPad and I have a guided reading group that I want to teach I feel very stretched. I recently gave an ultimatum to a student. The student was expected to be writing a story on an iPad. Most students were almost finished their paper copy of their stories and he was still trying to figure out which iPad his story had been previously saved on. I gave him the ultimatum that he could not use the iPad and that he had to use paper to write his story. I felt stretched between teaching my group and getting this student launched on his writing. In hindsight, I had a slip of paper – somewhere – which indicated the iPad that the student was supposed to be using. I could’ve left the guided reading group, got my slip of paper, and got the student launched. Instead I interrupted both my guided reading group, this student’s vision of successfully writing on the iPad and probably the whole class. I have since found the student’s writing on the iPad and will give him the opportunity to finish his story on this tool. Deep breaths!

    Reply
  2. Maureen

    This is a difficult chapter for me. As a Resource Teacher it is my job to help teachers figure out how best to help students, designated/labeled or not. I really try to take the child’s perspective adn I am fortunate that I usually have the time to wait until the child is ready to talk. What I find difficult is when I consult with the teacher and give some suggestions for a different way to work with a child and the teacher agrees, but then will not follow through. Instead the child is again, removed from the classroom.

    I like the visual of widening our perspective and want to use this analogy with the teachers working with difficult students. My hope is that students will be able to stay within the class and not be sent to the office.

    Reply
    1. tiebcmembers (Post author)

      I have the same issue with teachers not always following through on what has been discussed. This is especially frustrating when they have requested a SBT Meeting for support and do not take anything said within that meeting to try out.

      Reply

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