Charting a Course for Progress

For our next assignment, I had to, "Imagine next year is completed. Using the system described in Chapter 4, you've faithfully charted your own behavior, as an instructor and your students’ progress. Looking back, what did you learn?"

It’s difficult to believe I've reached the end of another school year.  This year has been especially rewarding because, in addition to managing the behavior of my students, my primary goal was to manage my own behavior!  Each week, I would score myself from 1-10 for my ability to control my emotions in the classroom, and another 1-10 points for implementing my classroom management system with consistency.  Over many weeks my score fluctuated plus or minus one or two points, however, by the end of the school year, my average combined self evaluation score was an admirable eighteen! By managing my own behavior, I was better equipped to manage my classroom in a competent and consistent manner.

To monitor my students’ behavior, at the beginning of the year, I grouped my class of eighteen students accordingly:

4 Alphas: students who are always on task, follow directions quickly, and turn in neat work in a timely manner.

6 Go-Alongs: students who usually follow my directions, turn in their work regularly, and are often on task.

5 Fence Sitters: this group of students can go either way; their performance and behavior is somewhat inconsistent.

3 Challenging: students who rarely follow directions quickly, raise their hand for permission to speak, or turn in neat work.

There was one more group, “Leaders,” and at the beginning of the year, we had none.  Leaders are above Alphas; they are a reliable, consistent group that is, for the most part, self managing.

At the end of each week, I scored my students: each Alpha had a value of four points; each Go-Along earned three points; I awarded each Fence Sitter two points, and each challenging student received a score of one point.  I then totaled the points and divided by the number of students in my classroom.  The progress was slow, but consistent: by year’s end, the student score had climbed from a 2.5 in the early months to a staggering 3.45 in June! Not only did each student move up one level, but now we also had three Leaders in our midst!  Thank you, Whole Brain Teaching, for helping me to examine and observe our progress!

(November 12, 2013)

A Place for Everything...

For the second assignment, I had to choose two from seven common teaching mistakes, and write a letter of advice to myself about how I'm going to avoid these mistakes in the coming year.  I found it a challenge to have to write a letter to me!  I earned another 25 points toward WBT Certification!  That's worth a ten-finger woooo!

November 11, 2013

Dear Jackie,

The school year has begun, and I know you are excited about implementing the Whole Brain Teaching classroom management system! Chris Biffle talks about the “Seven Common Teaching Mistakes,” and I would like you to pay close attention to two of the ways we can avoid making our most challenging students even more of a challenge.

We know “Disorganized teachers breed chaotic classrooms.” Please continue to maintain the organization and structure you have in the classroom (and don’t forget the “funtricity!”). With Whole Brain Teaching, we can be organized and we can make learning fun! Remember, as Chris Biffle says, “At minimum, there should be a place for everything in your classroom, and everything should always be in the same place.” Be sure to heed his sage advice.

Remember, although teaching is fun, it is also mountains of work! Do not become discouraged, though. Mr. Biffle reminds us, “The less work you do outside of class, the more work your classes will be.” You need to be willing to invest all those hours of preparation in order to have a classroom that becomes the orderly, magical world where learning occurs. Good teaching should be seamless; those endless hours of preparation and planning will make your efforts appear effortless. You reap what you sow, so get out there and plant and nurture these Whole Brain Teaching tenets! Have a terrific Whole Brain Teaching year!

Sincerely,

Jackie

WBT Book Club First Assignment

This morning, I earned my first 25 WBT Certification Points from the WBT Book Club! Can I get a ten-finger "wooo"?  The following is a response I wrote for chapters 1 and 2 from the book,  "Whole Brain Teaching for Challenging Kids."  For this assignment, "Coach B says... "You've just been made principal of a charter school and you're about to address your staff for the first time. Select three points from chapters 1 and 2 that you are going to talk about describing key aspects of Whole Brain Teaching. Include one story about your teaching experience."

Welcome back to the beginning of a new school year!  We have a good deal of “news” to share:  new principal, new faculty members, a new crop of students, and a not-so-new teaching system we will be embarking on together this year, Whole Brain Teaching.

As the 2002 Outstanding Teacher of the Year, Rafe Esquith, so succinctly stated, “There are no shortcuts to excellence.”  My own journey in education has taken me over twenty years to be here with you today.  My first job in education was working at the Child Care Center at Rowan University, where I learned a good deal from working with toddlers and preschoolers. 

Whole Brain Teaching tells us, “The longer we talk, the more students we lose.”  There was no “lecture” with preschoolers—there was circle time, there were learning centers, there was free play. Did they learn? Yes, because they were having fun and they were engaged:  their little brains were filled with motion and songs, finger plays, rhyme, and repetition.  When we think about it, isn’t that what all of our students want—to have fun?

As you will soon learn, beginning with our introductory seminar this afternoon, “If a student’s brain is involved in learning, there isn’t any mental room left for challenging behavior.”  With Whole Brain Teaching, when practiced daily, you will find your students completely engaged in class, and emotionally invested in lessons that have them seeing, saying, hearing, and physically moving.  Will our hallways be filled with noise? Yes. But more important, they will be permeated with the echoes of students learning.

~Jacqueline Nessuno

Wet Feet

Thanks to several colleagues, that I am privileged to call friends (who shall remain nameless, as I value their friendship), I was recently introduced to the teaching system, Whole Brain Teaching. In my seventeenth year of teaching,  WBT is like a breath of fresh air.  The philosophy of WBT is simple enough: keep the students engaged, and make it fun.  As Benjamin Franklin said, "Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember.  Involve me and I learn." A major tenet of the WBT philosophy is, "The longer we talk, the more students we lose."  With WBT, we involve the student in learning through sight, sound, and motion.  The lecture method is dead.  I am just embarking on my WBT adventure, and though I've merely dipped a toe in the waters, I can't wait to get my feet wet.

If you'd like to learn more about Whole Brain Teaching, please visit the web site: http://www.wholebrainteaching.com/  There are many free resources available.

Chris Biffle's book, Whole Brain Teaching for Challenging Kids is available at Amazon.com