- Bells that tell you when to use the restroom and when to eat
- Lunch food that comes in patties, rounds, triangles, squares, sticks, slices, and wedges
- The daily chats with colleagues gathered around the warm glow of the one functioning copy machine
- Those restful afternoon meeting naps
- Paperwork to keep you from accomplishing anything important
- Comp time
- Free cryptic handwriting puzzles from your students
- Seating charts that save you the trouble of actually having to know people's names
- Those engrossing philosophical discussions about the use of the bathroom pass
- The dangerous thrill you savor when you skip an important meeting
- The positive effect of chalk dust on your oily complexion
- Seeing a beautiful sunrise through your classroom window
- Seeing a beautiful sunset behind the mountains of papers you have to grade
TOUCHPADS I have five students in one of my classes who have some behavior issues, so it is my responsibility to report on each child on these special forms I've been given. I am to report on the percentage of time in a class period that each of these students behaves appropriately and inappropriately. I have to give a definitive percentage for "time on task," "hands and feet to self," "in his/her seat," "verbally respectful," and "working independently."
Now I am serious about filling out these forms accurately. I can't just estimate a percentage of time. If I did, what would be the value of my reports? I needed to collect data as accurately as possible. So, I created a system.
I purchased touchpads that I can connect to my computer. Each time I hit the touchpad it counts as one second of inappropriate behavior. For each child I have five touchpads, so there's a total of twenty five touchpads in my classroom. At the end of each period, I would total the seconds that the child was inappropriate and divide by the total number of seconds in the period to get the percentage of class time that each student was involved in each specific misbehavior. While this did make my observations more of an exact science, it truly was a challenge.
When I teach, I move about the classroom, so I placed the touchpads all over the room. It took me a few weeks to remember which pad was for which child and which misbehavior, but eventually I got it down. I had touchpads on the floor, on my desk and file cabinet, on tables, and even mounted on the walls. I spent quite a bit of time rushing about the room to hit the proper touch pad, but the exercise was good for me - I lost five pounds and my overall cholesterol dropped 30 points.
Everything was going fine until yesterday. That's when the whole system fell apart. I would rush to one side of the room to log Jeremy's kicking of Grace's chair and then I'd sprint to the other side of the room to log that Jason was out of his seat, and then while I was registering the time he was out of his seat, Lorna would say something verbally disrespectful and I'd have to try to do two touchpads at the same time. That Jason can really wander, and that Lorna can really be longwinded in her verbal disrespect. By the time Jason sat down, and Lorna shut down, I was busy logging the amount of time Chris was sleeping and Marybeth was off-task writing a note to a friend. Then Jason got out of his seat again because Lorna was cussing at him. Then Sam started the off-task behavior of folding other students' papers into airplanes and tossing them across the room. I was dashing from one touchpad to another in an effort to accurately log the mayhem while I redirected the students, explained the weaknesses of the Articles of Confederation, and signed a couple hall passes.
Then someone from the main office made an announcement over the loudspeaker and the rest of my students got off-task and I had to try to settle everyone down while at the same time logging the misbehaviors of the select five by running from station to station hitting touchpads. One of the touchpads is mounted over the classroom door and as I jumped to hit it, I slipped, and instead I slid out the door and into the hall. When I returned, Lorna was deep into a rant of verbal disrespect and Jason, Chris, Marybeth, and Sam were busy running from touchpad to touchpad, logging each other's inappropriate behaviors.
"My data!!" I screamed, and then, "Noooooooo!!" and everyone stopped.
Concerned for my sanity, they all sat down and were quiet. I took a deep breath, and as calmly as possible, asked the students why they were messing with the touchpads. They responded honestly and appropriately. They told me that they thought the touchpads were fun, and that, in fact, they had been hitting the touchpads and logging misbehaviors for weeks. They would wait until I was across the room, or my back was turned, or I was talking to someone else, and they would hit a touchpad. Apparently they had been inaccurately inflating my data for weeks. I was shocked and disappointed. I didn't know what to do. But then it hit me, and then I was inspired.
Now, each of my five students has their own five touchpads and they log their own misbehaviors. They like having the touchpads. Each has three on the desk and one for each foot on the floor. And the students do a better job of keeping track of their own misbehaviors than I ever could have. Jason never leaves his seat any more and Lorna has significantly cut down on her longwinded disrespect since her carpal tunnel acted up. And because logging their own misbehaviors is an assigned activity, they are rarely off-task in class anymore. I couldn't be happier. Well, I guess I could be a little happier. I gained back those five pounds I had lost.
Copyright cc 2011 by John P. Wood for Learning Laffs
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