Yeah, I called your mom in the middle of class -- now what? A ticket?

Wow. So many things have happened this week. It has been a relatively good week, but there have also been some rather interesting things (like breaking up a brief hallway fight—don’t worry, I’m okay!).

As I mentioned in earlier posts, I began a new investment system this week. The first thing we do in my study skills and social skills classes is recite the class affirmation. Right now, I am leading it, and they are repeating after me. However, I let them know that they will step up as leaders in the classroom and lead it in a couple of weks—there is a prize if students choose to memorize it. In case anybody is interested, here is the affirmation:

I am a scholar.
I know that I am not perfect.
Yet, I can continuously grow as a person through hard work and self reflection.
I cannot control everything around me, and I know that life is not entirely fair.
However, I am in control of myself.
I can control my actions, my attitude, and my sense of possibility.

Today, I make a choice.
I choose to exercise control over my life and push myself to my highest potential.
I cannot do it alone.
I will seek help when necessary and offer help when able.
Today, I make the choice to work hard and be a good citizen, team player, and human being.

I am a scholar.
Today, I make the choice to be me.

For the class competition, the entire class can move up or down a chart that I created based on group actions. However, the entire group can be affected by individuals. As individuals, the students still can get positive reinforcements through individual tickets. I am hoping that these positive consequences can help some of the students that have become almost desensitized to negative consequences.

Today showed a little promise, although the system is by no means solid. In my social skills class, just about everybody came in on time; therefore, I thanked them, and I moved the class up on the chart. I also gave each individual, who was on time, a ticket. We then started off the class with our affirmation. After that, we began to work on the test. Then the distractions started.

One of the students (a member of the big three) decided he wanted to keep making noises. I told him that he needed to stop. Determined not to keep doing negative consequences, I went positive—that is, I started thanking the other students for their behavior and giving out tickets. This kind of helped, but other students got a little distracted at times. However, I continued to thank those who were staying on task and give out tickets. Those other students, for the most part, tried to stay on task because they wanted to keep getting tickets.

I did a mixture of ignoring him (I knew he just wanted attention), and telling him that he needed to stop disrespecting his fellow students and colleagues, who were trying to take a test. I became even more determined to keep using positive consequences when he asked me if he could just go take the test somewhere else—basically, he wanted to get kicked out! I was determined to keep him in the classroom, but it did get hard.

Eventually, I actually called his mom while in class. I apologized for having to call her during the day, and then I told her what was going on and asked her to speak to him. Now, the student wasn’t happy I called his mom, and actually called me “gay” when he saw that I was calling his mom. After he talked to his mom, he straightened up a bit, but he still had a few outbursts. Yet, it helped to calm the other students down when I asked if any of them wanted to speak to one of their parents, too.

At the end of class, I acknowledged that it might be frustrating for the students to move down the chart because of only a couple of people (throughout class, a girl was fake crying and screaming, “I want a ticket”—again, I did a mixture of ignoring and addressing her since she definitely was just trying to get attention). I told them that they still had a chance to win, but they had to talk to their fellow students. I tried to impress upon them that they have to work as a team; yet, they would still be rewarded for individual behavior with tickets. Moreover, I mostly just kept thanking those students for being mature and respecting their classmates.

It’s not perfect right now, and I’m not sure how it will end up; however, I did see how a majority of the students reacted positively—even some of those that I had problems with in previous classes. Only time and consistency will tell.

So excited about the weekend! Tomorrow, I’m going to educator’s day at the zoo!