"Are You Serious?"
A particularly striking poster projected behind me, I tossed out a few guiding questions and began fielding interpretations: What symbols do we see? How does the image make you feel? How does the artist make you feel this way? Who might the intended audience be? Lots of hands--students were eager to put their visual interpretation skills to the test and show off their background knowledge by connecting to their history classes. Discussion was enthusiastic and fluid, but, in this rising level of energy, one excitable student, probably in a carry over of a before class interaction, made a rude gesture at one of his table-mates.
Misbehavior and disrespect are not common in my class, so I was (maybe visibly) shocked and annoyed. I don't really consider my teaching to be an "act," but I definitely dropped something when I blurted out "Are you serious?" Not the smoothest move. The ensuing exchange, though brief, slowed the class's momentum and failed to resolve anything:
"Are you serious?"
"What?"
"What was that?"
"What?"
"We're gonna talk after class."
"Me?"
"Withitness"
In hindsight, this accidentally successful intervention worked in accordance with Kounin's emphasis on class momentum and not allowing disruptions to become derailments. Although I did not "nip it in the bud," (as put by Weinstein & Novodvorsky), and my initial response was anything but "withit," I think decisively informing the student that we would meet after class, coupled with resuming the discussion set a standard that class discussion does not mean that foolishness can fly under the radar (2011).
As I mentioned, this verbal intervention was noninvasive enough that the student did not disengage from the class. When actively participating in the discussion, the student contributes valuable perspective to the conversation, so, like with any intervention, the ultimate goal was to get the student back engaged and get class back on track. He wound up really enjoying the topic, and was actively participating by the end of class.
By the time the bell rang and we had our conversation, I was less interested in getting to the bottom of what he did, or intended to do, or the context, I just talked to him about my expectations: "When you're here and you're engaged and you're with class, you do great--I really value your input to our conversations. But where you get in trouble is getting on task at the start of class, or sticking with us in transitions. I want you to work harder at staying focused during those times so you can continue to do great work."
At the time, I wasn't sure if it sunk it, but a few days later when I had to redirect him back on task during independent work, he responded with something along the lines of, "you're right, like we talked about. Getting started right away, I'm working on it." This was pretty incredible to hear. I think keeping up the class momentum in the moment was key to the success of this redirection. We didn't get caught up in what exactly happened, he didn't have to get embarrassed in front of the class, we simply jumped back into the flow of things and reinforced expectations afterwards. He's still working on those transitions, but he seems to have taken that advice to heart, which, in any event, is the ultimate goal.
Works Cited
Weinstein, Carol Simon., and Ingrid Novodvorsky. Middle and Secondary Classroom Management: Lessons from Research and Practice. New York: McGraw Hill, 2011.