Speaker 1: Welcome to the Teacher's New Teachers podcast, the podcast for
teachers who don't want to just survive teaching but actually thrive.
I'm Kim Lapri, and for those of you who don't
know me or if this is your first time, welcome,
I'm a middle school English teacher in California and this
will be my twenty fourth year of teaching. Wow, it's
been a while. Whether you're watching this on YouTube or
listening on a podcast platform, I really appreciate it if
you'd liked this episode and do some form of subscribing
or following, depending on where you're at. And if you're
able to like, you can on YouTube and Spotify. Could
you leave me a comment letting me know how many
years you've been teaching. Maybe you haven't started teaching yet,
but either way, I'm always curious about the level of
experience my audience has, so I would really appreciate it
if you would do that. So at the time of
this recording, Mini, you're heading back to work after winter break,
and before I dive into this kind of heavy episode,
as you're driving or maybe sitting in your classroom before
students arrive, I want to start by sending some expectations. Clearly,
this is not an episode meant to make you dread
the year ahead. But it's also not an episode pretending
that everything is fine and you can do it. It's
about naming the factors that are shaping what we're seeing
in our classrooms right now, especially you're on behavior attention,
so teachers can stop internalizing these things as a personal
failure and start responding in ways that are actually sustainable.
I mean, there's a lot of loud content online about education,
and there's a lot of different takes about how kits
are worse, how attention spans are shot, and how no
one cares anymore. But most of that framing has left
a lot of teachers feeling frustrated. We feel blamed or
quietly questioning whether we're actually cut out for this. And
that's not what I want to do here. What I
want to do is zoom out and look at the
conditions students have been growing up and the conditions teachers
have been teaching in, and then connect the dots between
those conditions and what's showing up in our classrooms. Because
my core belief about all of this is simple, even
if it's uncomfortable and a little bit controversial, and here
it is students are not broken. They are simply responding
to the world they're growing up in. When I finally
understood that, I didn't sit there and use that to
excuse their behavior, but instead I stopped reacting to it
blindly and stopped wax poetic about how great it used
to be. And that shift and perspective alone has really
helped me to make teaching feel more manageable. And my
hope is that by the end of this episode you'll
feel less alone and what you're teaching, and more clear
headed about how you want to respond, both for your
students and for yourself. So before we talk about you know,
attention spans, behavior, parents, admin test scores, there's actually kind
of like this bigger truth underneath all of it, and
it's that students are not malfunctioning. They are behaving exactly
like the adults are around them. When you look at
what society, especially in America, looks like right now, what
we're seeing in classrooms cut it's I mean, schools don't
exist in a vacuum. Classrooms are a lot of times
a mirror of culture we're raising kids in. I mean,
you see this in different areas around the country. You
see it in the ideologies and the mores. It doesn't
matter which country that you live in, but you can
tell that whatever culture they're growing up in, they're raised
in in that area, it's reflected in how they act
out in person. So the thing that's been really hard
that I'm reading about and actually seeing locally is that
behavior issues are more pervasive. Yes, we know that, but
there's often a lack of accountability from students or parents.
It's like, yes, the student is behaving badly in your class,
parents are like eh, the students like whatever, And a
lot of times there's no meaningful consequences from administration because
they feel this need to make parents happy. And in
a way I can understand why admin want to keep
parents off their backs. I mean, remote learning pulled education
into public view like never before. I mean, parents felt
like they saw how school quote unquote really works in
our classrooms, even though I mean that wasn't normal school.
A lot of us were just like thrown into it.
And there are a lot of teachers who don't have
anything digital prepared to administer to the students through online learning,
even in that second year. And so because parents got
to peek into our classrooms just also created this wave
of armchair experts and parents were definitely speaking disrespectfully about teachers,
which when they do that at home, it bleeds directly
into student attitudes and behavior. So there's a lot of
finger pointing at public school education. There's a lot of
criticism by people who don't understand what's actually happening inside
our four walls. And that criticism doesn't stay inside staff
meetings or policy discussions. It moves into people's homes and online,
into group chats and comment sections and dinner tables. Students
hear this, they absorb it, and they learn from it.
And because when adults model this kind of cynicism and
disrespect and basically content towards teachers and education, contempt towards
each other as adults, I mean we've seen that, you know,
kids don't just notice that they replicated it. We used
to have these cultural norms where even if we thought
something cruel, we policed ourselves, We discouraged open hatred, we
shamed bigotry and any kind of dehumanization. That norm is gone.
Adults openly say hateful, bigoted things to each other, and
face to face people are being persecuted in America or
detained based on the color of their skin. I mean
violence is encouraged, it's celebrated or even excused, and rage
is rewarded. Cruelty is what gets people to click or
stay in an app, which of course feeds the algorithm,
and basically uncivil behavior has become normalized. This is the
future we as a society are raising to become our
future leaders. I mean, students aren't broken, They're just paying
attention and they see the way that the adults act
as permission to act the same way. So here's the thing.
Since students are watching how adults respond to stress and pressure,
I wanted to share how I respond in my own classroom,
and this is what has made teaching during this time
more sustainable for me. So the first is structure, just
a real emphasis on structure. I mean, we know that
students need routine. If they can predict what will happen next,
the nervous is sum can stay more regulated, so consistent.
Lesson formats like doing a certain type of warm up
at the start of every class, having certain activities happen
in the same order almost each time. And as much
as we might crave more freedom and creativity in our teaching.
Like I get it. I find that doing the creative
stuff within predictable containers of time or routines, or within
the usual way of practicing skills that tends to keep
students in check. So it's like they know that we're
doing this type of activity and I can just be
a little more creative by adding some more engaging elements
to it. And because the expectations are consistent, when you
have to address their behavior, it's no longer personal. It's
also not negotiable and it's not debatable. It's basically the
line of look, this is the routine, this is how
we do this, and this is when we do this.
You're not doing what's expected at this time, so these
are the consequences. Another thing that I found that I
have to do is explicitly teach focus as a skill.
But when my students are like in the flow in
the assignment, I call it when I see them sort
of like you know, phasing or spacing out, or falling
asleep or just struggling in general, and I tell them,
you know, I know you're bored. I know this is hard,
but just push through for three more minutes. And that
three more minutes gives them an end point and three
minute mark, give or take. I switch gears, and that
usually involves having them share what they wrote with their
group and then make it more interesting. Sometimes I'll mix
up the order in which they read to their group
members by things like you're going to share an order
of shortest the longest hair, things like that. So it's
just having them change gears, even just for a little bit,
even for just sixty seconds, really helps in terms of
teaching them how to focus for a certain amount of
time and put their all into that amount of time.
But I also normalize bored on. I'll even tell them, yeah,
you know what, I know, this part's boring, but you
need to learn how to do it because we're gonna
be doing X y Z next week, so just lock
in and you'll struggle less later. Teaching in shorter chunks
also really helps. Sometimes I found that you actually have
to plan these or set a timery for yourself, because
you know, you can get carried away when we're in
the middle of something. Otherwise, even something that we think
should be fun, like grouperg it can kind of start
to go off the rails because they've been doing it
for a long period of time and they haven't switched modes.
So if you can just like plan some shorter chunks
or just some ways to break it up, I found
that that has really helped. This is probably something that
a lot of you are already doing, but if you're
finding it harder and harder to maintain the intention of students,
you might actually have to do it more. I found
that building in movement and reset moments definitely helps get
them back on track. So if I can catch them
before I completely lose them, then that's even better. So
you've got to build it in. So something is simple
as having students stack all other papers and their group
together and then having them nominate someone to bring it
to you. That alone is a reset just anytime that
they're just switching gears. Also, if you use timers or
like I said, give them a timeframe, if you refer
visually to the agenda, maybe you have it written on
the board. That also helps them manage their mental load
and also holds you accountable to ensure that they get
that kind of like mental and physical break that they need.
Something else that I've always done, but have been more
intentional is giving grace without lowering the bar. So I
started to integrate low stakes activities into my class, and
this allows me to offer emotional support without removing the rigor. So,
for example, I decided that I was not going to
grade the warm ups, and you might think, well, then
students won't do it. They will if you build in
ways to check for understanding. But basically I use the
warm ups as an opportunity to few to clear up
misunderstandings and confusion and maybe even allowing students to get
some time to just like get mentally set for your class.
I found this to be really important for my students
with ADHD, who need a few minutes just to be
fully present. So maybe they're not really getting the most
out of your warm up during that time, but what
you're getting out of it is a student who is
more present and ready to learn because they had those
few moments to get set. During that warm up. I'll
engage them with a mix of something fun like we
do would you rather, which the kids I think is
great because to get to talk about their opinion and
maybe add something funny, and then I also balance it
with sentence correction, and so both ways they're still practicing
skills and concepts I teach, well, they get to be
silly for a bit. And I also find that encouraging
retakes and revisions helps students take risks, especially whether they're
not confident about an assignment. And this goes with normalizing
mistakes too. We want your students to make mistakes, but
it only works if you know how to tell them
that they may have mistake without humiliating them. So for me,
some things that I'll do if they answer in correctly,
I'll just make this like eke face, like E say
are you sure? Oh no? Or another thing I'll say,
you know, actually, if I had said X, Y and Z,
then you'd definitely be right, So I'm not calling them
out for being wrong. I'm saying, wow, in this other instance,
that was the correct answer. Or another way i'll say
it is, I can see why you got that because X,
Y and Z. But you're close you want to try again.
And if I'm randomly calling on students and one student
they're like really struggling, then all of a sudden, I'll
stop and I'll say okay, everyone, thirty seconds in your
group discuss what you think the correct answer is that
gives that student time to actually check if they're right
or to check why they're wrong, to get the correct answer,
and then I call on them again and they of
course say the correct answer, and it build confidence and
it builds trust in me. So those are just some
of the things that I do to build the relationships
with my students and build trust and as a result,
I get more buy in. Another thing that I think
is really important during this time it's just so hard,
is to find at least one other teacher who you
can invent to. It would be awesome if they were
in your school, but if not, I get it. But
you want to be choosy. You want to make sure
that when you find someone with whom you convent, theyre's
someone who actually listens and not someone who is going
to gaslight you or try to want up you how
like they had it worse. Yes, convent to you too,
but there's just something about finding someone who will actively listen,
and it makes all the difference when you have that
difficult student, that difficult parent, difficult admin, you know what
I mean. It's just really important to find those people
who you can always rely on and who you can
also provide the same kind of support. And if you
don't have anyone in your school, maybe you're new, or
maybe the environment's toxic. Then online forums like Reddit, Facebook groups,
they can be really helpful, but just be careful to
not let it become like this echo chamber for frustration.
You will be validated, but sometimes it can actually just
like amplify more negativity than provide perspective. So I don't
want to end this by telling you how to feel
about teaching right now. I just want to be clear
about this. What you're seeing in your classroom, it makes
sense when you look at the conditions that the students
and all of adults, including us, have been living in.
My intention of this reframe is to assure you that
you don't need to fix the system or absorb every
behavior as a personal failure, because I see a lot
of teachers who just think that these problems reflect how
they are as a teacher. Especially hoping that you'll see
that the majority of the negative behaviors you're seeing aren't
actually personal, even if they hurt. I recently had a
student come up to me with a smirk, maybe even
a sneer, and say, I heard from other students that
you're the worst teacher. She just had that like ruk
assault type of attitude, and I smiled sympathetically. I didn't
miss a beat and I said, Oh, that's too bad
for them, And inside my initial reaction was to be offended,
but then I remembered my interactions with their parents, and
I knew that the student was just parroting, mimicking that parent.
So a lot of it isn't personally now, knowing all
this isn't going to necessarily make it feel better what's happening.
But honestly, all we can do is make choices that
keep our classrooms steady and our nervous systems intact and regulated,
especially if you want to make it in this profession
until we retire. That's what's going to happen for me.
I'm sticking it up. I still love it, but this
is how I managed to still love it despite everything
going on. So I'd love to hear your opinions on
this topic as well as your experiences. I mean, what's
happening for you in your classrooms, both good and bad,
because I know it's not bad everywhere, but let's share
and help each other out. So be sure to leave
a comment if you can thank you for being here
with me today and I will see you next time.