The Noise Contradiction

My students and I are conflicted about noise, in different ways. First of all, there's noise, and then there's noise. I also think that noise in the context of a special education classroom is different than it is in other classrooms.

Noise vs noise: I constantly militate against the idea that learning = silence. It's mostly in my own head, because as a practical matter, kids make noise by default and teachers require then to stop making noise in order to accomplish some instructional basics. But I do remind myself, often, that kids learn from each other and from their own expressions, thoughts, and ideas, and they can't do this silently. Engagement is learning is noise. However, as we all know there is a qualitative difference between the sound of kids learning and the sound of kids making a racket. I try not to wish for quiet, never mind ask for it, when kids are engaged. I get a good chance to practice this when I substitute teach: the class "feels" a little out of control, but when I am subbing for Art, they're *supposed* to be talking, moving around the room and showing each other their work. I talk myself down. Then it's easier to stop and listen when it's my math lesson, being observed by my advisor, to make sure that it's "engaged noise" I'm hearing.

Noise in context: The children in my class are often very sensitive to noise. Even engaged noise can be overwhelming, and it has a visceral effect on the students who are most sensitive. I can feel them tense, feel their affective hackles go up, and the engagement with any academic task evaporates immediately. Then the cycle begins: it's noisy and it sounds like this:

Student 1: "Can you PLEASE be quiet, I can't do my work!"

Student 2: "I'm not making any noise, YOU are!"

Student 1: "You are TOO, you're kicking the table and humming!"

Student 2: "Well, you're shouting, YOU be quiet!"

Of course, this is all at top volume, so everyone else in the vicinity is now disturbed. It's like someone kicked over the project in the block area: instant, utter destruction of nominal, fragile quiet.

The "calm noise" of our classroom is shattered in this precise way, many times a day. We are addressing it through a social-emotional curriculum unit, looking at conflict, the causes of conflict, analyzing conflicts students have had, and throughout the day, identifying instances like these and looking for opportunities to be a conflict solver.

While there are many self-defeating behaviors and habits that you can see in a special education classroom, this one seems to me to be the worst offender. Is there anything more ironic than kids who need quiet, who crave it, who physically react to its absence, being the destroyers of their own quiet? It's not because Student 1 was too impulsive in asking for quiet, or didn't ask nicely, or Student 2 was defensive and didn't respond well. They all need help with the social and emotional and self-regulation skills that will both help them not make the noise and get past the noise. This, more than any specific learning challenge, is what makes it so hard for these kids to do all the normal school stuff that they want and need to do. This is why we forgo reading time for talking about conflict and how to avoid it. It may not be the root of the problem, but it's close.

Noise: Yours and Other Peoples'

It's Sunday and some sadistic soul has parked on the street outside our apartment. Their car alarm, I think, is set to honk the horn rhythmically for several minutes and then cut off for one minute. I called 311 with a noise complaint- the cops have not shown up yet. We're going on four hours now, and it's hellish. Only 60 seconds of relief every few minutes. My head hurts.

Our students often complain about noise. I think some of them with attentional issues are in a 12:1 setting because noise affects them so profoundly. Classrooms are noisy. At PSOhYes, the student I worked closely with often deplored the noise, sometimes loudly (which was necessary to be heard, in fairness!), and he was right. I can see how it can be hard to work if you're sensitive to noise, which he was.

Isn't that the received wisdom about kids, though, that they can't concentrate when it's noisy? I feel like that old truism is why we had to do math in silence when I was a kid, and why we still have quiet reading time today. At moments, it's how we ask students to show us that they are working very hard. We try to tell ourselves now that a certain quality of noisy chaos is a sign of engagement and signifies learning. I believe this; I think it's true, even though it's hard to tolerate for very long. But what about kids that really can't handle noise? And then, what do you when those selfsame kids are the ones making the noise?

We had been preparing for the last few weeks for a grade-wide exposition of social studies projects that was really a big deal, and happened last week. Activity in our room was frenzied and sometimes very noisy. The energy level was high and approached frenetic as we ticked down to the event. The kids were wired, even as they occasionally put their heads in their hands, heads on the table, heads under coats, to get a little down time.  

In addition to parents, administrators and teachers from other schools came. Classrooms were rearranged; work our students did was placed in other exhibits; our classroom was "invaded" (it felt like) by other kids' work and many, many people. Our students knew how to check out for a few minutes when there was no one around, but now there was no escape. It was a long two days.

I'll be curious to see what happens to the noise level when things get back to normal. Will the class be quieter than other classrooms? Or will they make their own noise until they can't stand themselves anymore and then shout for quiet? Or something in between?

Reading... or not?

We have four different reading groups in our class of 12 kids. At least four. I worked with one group of them the other day. They had a brief set of instructions: they were to re-read two short books of a series and then read a new one, and answer two questions about it. These were very short books, maybe 8-10 pages, with maybe 2-3 lines of text per page.

Kids in the second grade class I was in last semester were pretty quiet, but they were not silent and still during silent reading. But maybe because there were 25 of them, and not 3 of them, I didn't watch them each as closely in terms of their reading behavior. There was also an expectation (created by peers, not just from us teachers) that during reading time, you read. Students can read, and so they do. Maybe not every second, but for more or less the entire time. We had only one kid who didn't, and he was a source of great anxiety for the teacher.

But when you are sitting with three kids at one table, it's a completely different story. Focus is not these kids' strong suit, even if it isn't their main presenting issue. I really should have taken notes of the range of behaviors I saw during this activity. They were quiet and they were, for the most part, turning pages. But from moment to moment, it was not easy to tell who was actually reading.

So they answer the questions, or not, and that's how you know if they read the book, right? Well, maybe. It's like what I said in my post about assessment (http://studentteacher44.blogspot.com/2012/12/like-shakespeare.html)- when you ask a student to write, you are assessing their ability to write first, regardless of what you've asked them to write about. If they can't or won't write, you can't know anything about what they know or have learned by asking them to write. Right? So... some of the students seemed to be reading, but they pretty much all struggle with writing, so writing wasn't showing me if they had read the book, or understood it. The only way was to have them each read it aloud. And this was quiet reading time: not appropriate.

Anyone who survived the trauma of reading aloud in school when it wasn't their strong suit is probably saying "Nooooooooo!!!" at this point, but.... there really is something to be said for reading aloud. It's the real deal. I love quiet reading time, and I know a lot of second graders that do, too. But for this group, they may not be getting a lot of reading done. It's really hard to tell.

Same idea, very different execution

ABPS is quite different from PSOhYes, despite their similarly stellar reputations. The reps are for different things, for starters. There are definitely different emphases in all kinds of ways, from a teaching and learning standpoint. And, of course, I am teaching in a very different kind of classroom. But... it also just feels very different. And it's also been a bit crazy.

My cooperating teacher, who I'll call Mr. Lee, just to keep things simple, was sick for the first two days of my placement. The SETTS coordinator honored his request to have the students split and placed in the classrooms of their most recent teachers, which worked out better than you might expect. Both were CCT classrooms, for starters, which helped a lot. It worked out great for me, because I learned a few really cool things from the teachers I observed over the two days. And I got to know two of the three paras a bit, and they're both really terrific.

Mr. Lee was back today and things got back to normal. I met all the kids and they had a normal day in their own classroom. That was nice for everyone. I see now what my advisor means by his being a "therapeutic teacher." You can tell that their comfort, from moment to moment, their agency over what they are doing, and their voices, are most important to him. He comes at classroom management from the standpoint of what is the least stressful for everyone- himself included in that, of course. It's great, and very calming.

The school as a whole- well, I think it may partly be a function of the fact that this school feels much less crowded. So it's not military-style in the hallways, they can go out no matter how cold it is, they have a gym for recess when they simply can't go out, and they don't have to sit still with their hands in their laps very often.

For example, at dismissal, the cafeteria was nuts because of the bus strike (many kids bus to this school as it is a choice school for several districts) and two boys kept running off. At PSOhYes, they'd be called back immediately. Here, the paras were like oh yeah, they'll be back. One girl didn't get packed up by the time the rest of the class was ready to go. They left. I stayed with her and asked if she'd like me to walk her to the cafeteria. She said yes; turns out that was because she didn't know how to get there. But Mr. Lee was not worried, and neither was her grandmother, who was there to collect her. Others in the school would take care of her. That was of course what would have happened at PSOhYes too, but here it's just a lot more relaxed: no one will get lost, this is a safe place, and kids are supposed to run around. No panic.

And speaking of dismissal: instead of packing-up time being a scrum, in the classes I've been in it's "quiet time." There's enough time to do it, music is playing, no one is scrambling. A much less stressful way to end the day.

The stairways are kind of an analogy for that. They seem to defy their penal appearance by having the bright red banisters, and multiple pathways for changing floors. I believe the intention used to be that one flight was "up" and one was "down" but those traffic rules have been abandoned in favor of the relaxed attitude. It's growing on me, for sure.

Saying goodbye

Last Thursday was my last day at PSOhYes. IT was a GREAT day, thanks in part to Ms. Lee, who had some great ideas about what they would enjoy, and also went to a lot of trouble to make the day special. She had never had a student teacher who stayed as long as I did, and she felt that many of the students had really bonded with me, so she made sure that there was time for them to individually say goodbye. I had really bonded with them too- they will always be my "first class" and the one by which all others will be judged, I guess.

Ms. Lee told me before the holidays that I should do whatever I wanted in terms of teaching for my last few weeks. We figured out  few days that I could teach most of the day, and I also designed a Japanese lesson for each subject area. Some worked better than others, but a really effective and timely one was having the students review place value using Japanese numbers. Other teachers expressed an interest in trying it. We had planned a field trip to the Noguchi Musem in Queens, but that got nixed by the school bus drivers' strike, and we decided that at 90 minues each way, it was too far to go by public transportation.

For the last day, I found a few good web sites with Japanese games that the kids could play using the school's laptops. Predictably, getting them charged, set up, etc., for the lesson was not a simple matter and Ms. Lee had never done used the laptops before, which made it all stressful for her I'm sure. She also ordered in some sushi rolls and the kids had lunch in the classroom, which I didn't know was allowed! Between that and playing computer games in school, she made sure the kids will not forget me anytime soon.

We exchanged some gifts. The kids each made me a card, which she attached to a scroll of Japanese rice paper and rolled it all up on a dowel. I read them later with my daughter, and some of them were very touching. She patted my arm and said, "Don't worry Mommy, I'll get you another class." Ah, to be four. But she really enjoyed visiting the class, and she understood that I was feeling a loss.

I am going to another well-known Brooklyn public school, which I will call ABPS, to teach in a 12:1 self-contained special education classroom. Starting Tuesday. Stay tuned.

Like Shakespeare

Sorry, got caught up in the holidays. So here's a story/thought that's been stewing in my brain for a while. A boy I work closely with, most closely in reading, absolutely floored me on Monday morning of the week before winter break. He came to school in kind of a foul humor, so I tried to jolly him up by starting with a game that we play in the hall: we toss a ball back and forth and call a word or phrase to each other that has to do with the book he's reading. It can be anything; doesn't have to be vocabulary. This helps me see whether and what he remembers of what he's read.

He's been reading the "Ready Freddy" series, and on that day students were supposed to decide how they would present their independent reading project to the class. I didn't really know how to approach this task with this kid, but it needed to be very concrete. Imagine my surprise, then, when on the first toss he says, "Freddy is always nervous at the beginning of the book." Next toss: "Then he gets help from his friends, and he's excited about his plan." And finally, "He is always happy at the end of the book." Wow. Considering that getting this kid to answer questions about what he's read is about as easy as pulling teeth, this sounded to me like he had all of a sudden started spouting Shakespeare.

I found out later that this was basically a summary of a reading conference he'd had with Ms. Lee and another student (also reading "Ready Freddy") on Friday, which made it less out-of-the-blue, but still impressive that he internalized and could produce all of that at an appropriate moment. So, great. I had him write it all down as part of his final project (a booklet; he loves making his own books) before it disappeared from his mind. I also praised him to the skies, of course. I think he felt good about his work, as well he should have. A good first period on a Monday. I told his mom about it at dismissal. Yaay.

The next day, Ms. Lee was going to give an assessment that corresponded to the Common Core standards for reading. I attended the meeting in which this assessment was agreed on; students were asked to write about a character that they had read about in the current school year and imagine being friends with them; kind of a fun assignment.

This boy turned in a blank sheet of paper for this assessment. Let's just leave aside the reasons for that; suffice it to say that this is not an uncommon occurrence for this boy when it comes to assessments. There was another boy in the class who also turned in a blank paper; this boy's particular challenge is writing, so again, not so surprising as an outcome. But my question is this: isn't this as much a writing assessment as it is a reading assessment? How can you assess one without the other, "formally," as it were? Is there a way to do it?

Assessing these two particular students this way indicates a problem, but it doesn't assess their reading ability. This assessment doesn't tell you that one of these boys reads independently for 30 minutes a day, and the other cannot do that at all. It doesn't tell you that they both read (decode) at or above grade level. It doesn't tell you that one of them just made, with some guidance, a major breakthrough in expressing himself concerning his reading comprehension.

Perhaps this assessment served its intended purpose for all but these two students, although this is far from clear. My question is this: how useful is this reading assessment if it is as much about how well a student writes as about how the student reads, or how sophisticated their thinking is about what they are reading? If we rely on writing to inform us about their reading, and thinking, then what happens when writing is a problem? Do we assume they're not reading? That doesn't seem fair.

Happy New Year everyone. More in 2013!

Water and conversation

I have been thinking a great deal lately about language and its work as the main medium of teaching. The Japanese have a saying: “Water and conversation are free.” This was an obstacle in my previous career in consulting, as there is a predisposition in Japanese business culture not to pay for “conversation,” which is often what our services boiled down to. My job was to make the conversation interesting and valuable enough to pay for.

In teaching, it’s even harder than that. Language seems so ephemeral- do students hear the words we say to them? Do they understand? Out of 25 kids, how many are hearing me at any given moment? Did that fire truck mean I should start over? We don’t have the luxury of meandering conversations: if nothing else, we’re limited by the attention span of the least attentive child. We have to write koans and haiku. Every word has to be packed with meaning, we have to know how to say the most in the least amount of words and time, and the lesson has to be more than the sum of its parts: its substance has to stay in their minds somehow. Right now, I waste words, and time, casting around for just the right lever to pull, to tip their minds in the direction I want them to go. I feel like I don’t know where we’re all going—mainly because I’ve never been there before. I am not reliably leading them, yet, where I want them to go. If they do wind up there, it feels like a happy accident, and I need to also find a way to know if it happened at all. It’s all still water and conversation.

。。。水とお喋り