I arrived at school and quickly scrambled up the three flights of stairs to my classroom to cut out the students’ photos, tape them to fluorescent cardboard stars and add them to each class’ poster that is displayed in the windows. You can see the stars in the window from three flights down; so, it has other students and teachers asking me what it’s all about.
The “Stars of the Week” system is making a difference. When students chat with each other at the beginning of class many teachers stand in front and the students quickly realize that they need to quiet down. My students don’t exhibit that instinct – yet. Right now I could stand in front of them for the 50-minute period and not a whole lot would change from minute 1 to 41. Instead, what seems to work is writing “minus points” on the board and writing a students’ names if they are talking, touching a classmate (or wrestling one to the ground), calling out to me, making fun of a student who just lost a point . . . I have never believed writing students’ names on the board is a sound method of discipline; but, I have to adjust to a different environment, a different culture and that method seems to work here. In the U.S. we are so concerned with every little move we make and its effect on a child’s affect. Here, writing one’s name on the board seems effective in quickly smothering undesired behaviors without leaving the students traumatized or running home to complain to their parents – pretty refreshing, actually.
