Twenty-six of our strongest sophomores from last year have been given to me as juniors, to take algebra 2 and pre-calculus in one year. About twenty are serious and ready to work. About six are boisterous and unable to hold their attention on listening to one person for more than about 90 seconds—but they do quality work when they work. All twenty-six would clearly (to me) be bored in our regular algebra 2 class. The knee-jerk reaction: the ones who know how to stay focused can stay, the other six have to go. But that’s the reaction that has put thousands of students, primarily low-income students of color, in courses below their ability level for decades. So the right thing to do is keep them all, and work explicitly on classroom behavior skills. And the only time that doesn’t feel good is when the first twenty students keep telling me they can’t concentrate, that the six don’t belong there, that I should get rid of them.
And there you have it: the single most influential tension in the US education system. It’s why we have private schools and charter schools and parochial schools and good schools and bad schools.
Work in Pencil 
You’ve got that right! What to do? I don’t know.
I had students evaluate each other once – it didn’t go well. The disruptive ones just grew more resentful. I’ve read that judgement does not fully develop until about age 24. At 17, these kids are accustomed to acting out and lack the judgement to see how their behavior affects others.
If we could somehow turn that energy into something beneficial for the class – and give them the opportunity to move more – maybe they would see that they bring value. So maybe let them work on a side board, or on white boards. Assign students to be class note takers, or researchers. Have students suggest problem scenarios, create diagrams in GeoGebra, or graph in Desmos.
Stepping back from my experience, I see now that my “disruptive” students needed something different. I wish I had Twitter back then, maybe I would have seen it sooner.
I reblogged this post on the Productive Struggle Blog because I don’t have any great answers but find this topic worthy of discussion. Sometimes it’s about finding the engaging activities or changing the structure of the classroom to allow students to get their energy out, but I have to believe the students need to meet us halfway somehow.
There are high school students in my community college courses. Some of them are disruptively boisterous. I don’t have any suggestions, but want to listen to this discussion
@Sue: Maybe I’m hard-hearted, but why in the world wouldn’t you simply unregister these students from the course and tell them to try again next term? In a high school, I’m supposed to be helping high school kids learn to work as adults. But in an adult education setting, I can’t imagine why kids who want to work in that setting but haven’t yet learned how should be allowed in. I would think getting kicked out would be the most effective way to get the message to them of what’s expected after high school. There must be another side to this I’m not seeing?
Dan, there’s a high school within our college, called Middle College High School. My pre-calc classes are often 1/4 to 1/3 high school students. If I dropped them from my course, they’d be in big trouble with the high school. (It’s not extra, it’s their high school commitment.) My pre-calc class last fall had at least four disruptive college students – they’d come in late, chat with neighbors, etc.That influenced the high school students. My best students sat toward the front. It was a frustrating group, but the ones who wanted to learn had a good experience.
This semester, I have a few boys in the morning section who I’ve called on their actions – one was being goofy (commenting on other people’s names, changing his own name, …), the other calls out answers and questions too loudly. They are coming along. In the afternoon, one girl dropped something and got under the desk to get it, her friend was cracking up. I called them on it, and they have been more respectful. I also have college students in that class who chat too much – maybe about the math, but while I’m talking. I’ve called them on it.
(In the past I have had way worse experiences with college students than the boisterous high school students. Some college students are angry that they are required to take math to transfer, and they come to class hostile. This is mainly in beginning and intermediate algebra. I am not teaching those classes for a few years – until i think I have a way to prevent those students from messing with the positive atmosphere I try to cultivate.)
I am less frustrated this semester than I would have been in the past. I see how engaged most of them are much of the time. That makes up for these little difficulties. I think they need to learn how to work in groups. We’re doing pretty well.
“So the right thing to do is keep them all, and work explicitly on classroom behavior skills. And the only time that doesn’t feel good is when the first twenty students keep telling me they can’t concentrate, that the six don’t belong there, that I should get rid of them.”
Is there any chance you could use multiple work spaces with this class? I’m imagining a routine where the traditionally-good students can split off to a quiet space to think. Maybe you could get the library onboard to provide space.
If the only problem is that the kids are ready, but boisterous, then count yourself lucky. So no, THE problem in education is not ready, but annoying, kids. THE problem in education is kids that aren’t ready, are several years behind, AND are behavior nightmares. Who yes, are disproportionately black and hispanic.
So don’t kid yourself. The problem isn’t academically, intellectually, cognitively ready kids who just don’t behave. That’s not what puts low income kids of color in lower classes.
The problem, in fact, is quite the reverse: an organic placement of kids in math classes based on ability puts most kids of color in the lower classes. Twenty years ago, this was deemed politically unacceptable.
Your problem is relatively minor, if the kids are prepared. My world is kids who aren’t prepared–and because we’ve had decades of pushing kids forward when they aren’t ready, the racial mix of kids is now all over the place. I have white, black, Asian, and Hispanic kids who are ready with good behavior, mostly black and Hispanic kids who aren’t ready, with terrible behavior, and and white, black , Asian, and Hispanic kids who aren’t ready, but work really hard and are well-behaved because once you focus on classroom management, you can’t fail the last group.
So it’s a mess. Every math class is approximately one degree lower than its stated course. I teach algebra II, but that’s pretty much algebra I. I teach mostly algebra in geometry. I’m teaching pre-calc, and mostly covering algebra II. The trick is to do it in a meaningful way, but yes, the courses are a year behind.
If they’re all smart, maybe skip the phony courses Algebra 2 and pre-calc and show them calculus.
🙂 They’re smart but their background is weak … as in, they haven’t seen quadratics yet. But I did open the year with interpreting the slope and area of linear piecewise functions of velocity and distance and we’re going to use the distance implied by a non-constant velocity to get into quadratics, so I guess in a sense I’m following your suggestion …
I am super late to this party, but was wondering if you could tell us more about when you’ve seen the 6 students be awesome? (it sounds like you have) And are there ways of helping the other students see this? I’m dealing with similar issues in my 6th period class (“Send them to the office!” is a pretty routine call from other students, unfortunately).
Thinking about making positive class culture more explicit – having them write thank you notes to each other or have them say something positive about each other.
Have you done restorative circles at all?
Sorry to let this go so long:
@ Sue – Yikes. Good luck.
@ Megan – Sometimes, but if it gets to be a habit kids rely on, then the class culture is fragmented, and I’m not nearby to coach the ones that leave.
@ Realist – With this particular class, they are prepared. So I am lucky.
@ Nicholas – Haven’t done notes or restorative circles (I’m guessing you’re from the west coast?) but we’ve made some progress. We’ve had a lot of discussion about it, and explicity talked about what we’re trying to accomplish and what the results are when things get hyper. I’ve done a lot of positive reenforcement of times when kids remind each other to settle down in ways that are respectful and productive, and I’m seeing more of that. And an unintended but happy side effect is that ALL of them are tired of the culture/environment discussions, so all I have to do is start one and suddenly they all just want to get to work.
Don’t worry about being late. The party never stops.
Oh, my. I taught for three years at a middle college program in Ann Arbor. If kids acted out in the college classes and it got back to me or to anyone in the middle college program, these kids would be risking getting pulled out of ALL their college courses and made to spend another term in one or my high school classes they’d already passed academically. We had a very serious “soft skills” curriculum that they had to pass, not just academics, and failure to get approval from ALL four high school subject teachers could hold someone out of college classes. Or in other words, the middle college faculty and staff need to be informed if their kids are screwing around. Once the kids know you know the deal, you have some leverage. If they don’t shape up, ship them out. No mercy. No reason kids who are PAYING to be in those college classes should have to put up with idiocy.
As for rude regular community college kids, don’t know how your security handles this sort of thing, but when I was on the faculty at Borough of Manhattan Community College in NYC c. 1990, I had one kid I had to have removed. And the security guy was perfectly calm about it, but he got the job done. The reasons are long and complex, but I don’t regret getting that guy removed that day.
Now comes the real tester: the original situation Dan described. Doesn’t matter if the kids are academically ready. If they’re not able to handle the classroom culture, something has to happen. There are lots of approaches, but it depends on lots of variables which one you try. Those variables are the institutional culture, the individual kids acting badly, the rest of the class, and you.
I assume you want the kids to be able to stay and learn and contribute. I’m sure the rest of the class wants the disruptions to stop so that they can learn. But what do the disrupters want? And where does the school stand on disruptions?
You can try speaking with each of the disrupters individually outside of class. Speaking to them collectively or in class will get their most defensive responses possible. Shaming them in front of peers is almost certainly a losing strategy even if you wanted to do it, because they’ve had a lifetime of that and are (mostly) inured to it. They’ll just brazen it out and you’ll have accomplished nothing.
You can hold a discussion in the class, but probably the first one has to occur without those kids if you want the rest of the class to be candid. Nothing wrong with planning something like that while maybe a counselor or administrator talks (calmly) with the disrupters to find out what choice they want, given some reasonable options which will have to include being transferred to lower math classes or out of math entirely for that term, along with more constructive alternatives.
I’ve yet to find a simple, in-class solution that works once you get a critical mass of disruptive kids, and six is likely such a critical mass.
Of course, I’m VERY late arriving here, so. . . maybe you’ve solved it by now.
Michael, your comment makes me want to ask the high school what their systems are for this. But both the principal and the counselor are new, so I might wait a year, until they have more experience.
Some middle college programs cater mostly to at risk kids. I can’t imagine that being a grand idea, but that doesn’t mean it couldn’t work. But if the college faculty and the middle college folks aren’t working in tandem, then even a program like the one I taught in, which was NOT specifically geared to at-risk kids, can go off the rails and create a lot of tension.
We had specific college faculty in math (don’t know about other subjects) who welcomed our students, at least the first year I was there. That worked extremely well. Unfortunately, the best of them was made into an administrator, and the second year we got a vastly more varied group of kids, due to a lottery, and that combination wasn’t very good for us on the whole. If I were administering such a program now, I would be damned sure to work VERY closely with the college teachers and administration.
I don’t think it pays to wait. The sooner they realize that they (the admins) live in a bigger pond and have to teach their charges to play nice, the better. But you know the local turf better than I do, obviously. Good luck, Sue.
I really enjoyed this post and ensuing discussion. Dan, I wanted to chime in and say you’re doing the right thing. I’m a math teacher at a vocational high school (in Mass), so we attract many “boisterous” students and non-traditional learners. In your 26 student class, you have the ability to make the biggest different with “the six,” but I don’t think it’s at the expense of the 20 quieter students. Life is not always quiet, and (as long as your classroom isn’t *always* loud) it can really benefit honors students to practice learning in a livelier classroom setting and to realize that intelligence belongs in many forms.
I will share one strategy that has helped me in my honors classes, just in case it helps someone else:
Some students have trouble containing all their random thoughts in their brain without letting some escape out their mouth. When a student is making too many unrelated comments during a lesson, I suggest they go on the “write it down” plan. If they agree/take the hint, I give the student a piece of paper and ask them to write down their random thoughts instead of sharing them out loud. Since I think it’s important that the student is still “heard,” I’ll read their “write it down” paper at the end of class if they want to turn it in to me, and sometimes even write a note back to them. At it’s most effective, this strategy makes a surprisingly big difference in the general focus and noise level of a class. It also gives disruptive students the opportunity to get attention in a more positive way and teaches them a strategy they could adapt to use in another class.
I think explicitly teaching appropriate learning and school behavior skills is so valuable, so I’m really happy to know that I’m not the only math teacher who feels that way!
Cool – I’ll try it.
P.S. Apologies for my creative punctuation… I obviously should’ve proofread my post!