Making management fun OR "You can't do that, we're teachers not entertainers!"

I have reasonable content skills. I teach four subjects and I can safely say I'm not an expert in all of them (which doesn't surprise people and yet we expect our kids to get there - before they turn 14, if they wouldn't mind! Slackers!). I'd like to think I know a lot of stuff but I'm pretty sure a whole bunch of it is mindless irrelevance that I keep stored for trivia contests. Hey, I once won a t-shirt (size small - which I am not) and a voucher for a manicure. Oh yeah.

Anyway, what I think saves me in the classroom is my management structure. Many teachers have commented that the environments I have chosen to teach in (1) (2) appear unstructured. I couldn't disagree more. Structure is about consistency not uniformity, and although the two words are very closely related, they have enough differences for a student to notice subconsciously. By that I mean, some students will struggle under uniformity but flourish under consistency.

Structure comes from knowing your goals, having the means to reach them and valuing them. It can also come from fear or drilling or tradition. What would you prefer?

I believe our students want goals - just not my goals and certainly not some government official's literacy and numeracy based (and little else) goals. Kids want to be better, we all do, but they don't want to be 'us'. And why would they want to be? It's not like we've managed to save the world.

Most of all though, they want direction. Clear, valuable, personal direction.

So here's what I did: (There are two ways to write this next bit, the academic and the realistic. You know, I chose the latter.)

Some pretty clever people directed me to the work of some other pretty clever people. I then borrowed it and made stuff with it. I used a web based tool to give kids a way to connect with it. I gave them a reason to want it. I let them take ownership of it. I patted myself on the back and smiled smugly. Me, me, me!

Actually, the key here seems to be, my classroom's management structure isn't really related to me much. It came from everywhere else. And it looks like this...

Part One: 
Need: Visual, embedded rewards based system***.
Got: Class Dojo. 

It's a little bigger in real life! Click to embiggen.

Others have explained how Dojo works so I will not go into it too deeply. Put simply; you load your class lists, assign behaviours and click on the student's avatar to give them points for demonstrating that behaviour.

I differ only slightly from the site's intended use in that I didn't want to measure 'negative' behaviours and I wanted something for the students to be able to use their points for. To do this, I simply replaced the negative points with a 'points spent' behaviour so that I could see how many points they have spent on the, hopefully fun, rewards. Students can clearly see how many points they've earned and how many they've spent as long as you change the settings to display both 'positive' and 'negative' points. See, it's got a little bit of maths thrown in for good measure! ;) Yay, numeracy.

It's projected on the big screen whenever classes start. Try keeping the kids away from it!

Part Two:
Need: Personalisable (I do not care if that isn't a word) values to improve*.
Got: Habits of Mind pdf here

"What's the point of points?", said Mr Smarter-Than-He-Thinks-He-Is (I think it's a Spanish name) almost as soon as I started explaining things. A whole bunch of games-based learning theory, that I haven't linked to, implies that people love to keep score, even when it doesn't give us a direct reward (the 'throwing paper in the bin' game that we all play in the office is a decent example - especially when we miss and return back to where we took the shot so we can try again) but some kids aren't buying it. We'll get to them in a minute...

I want to help build successful humans. Art Costa's Habits of Mind is a collection of traits that successful people tend to demonstrate. 1 + 1 = 2! 

I've rewritten the habits to suit my student audience, added strategies from around the globe that represent each habit and included a whole bunch of tools students can use to develop their traits - and made it look pretty in poster form. The tools are, not surprisingly, easily available to students throughout the classroom. They are my long term goals - and, quite frankly, they form part of the vast list of things we should assess in schools but that don't, won't and possibly can't exist in standardised tests.

EDIT: You can now find the full set here

Some students have already 'self-diagnosed' and have begun using strategies to help address their concerns. Hearing them discuss their behaviours in a reflective manner while ALSO putting strategies in place to improve (rather than just mimicking the words they know will get them out of trouble) has been fantastic and quite rewarding for me too.

Smaller cards are also available for the student so they can focus on a single strategy. Oh, and they get double points for demonstrating the habit they've decided to focus on!

Part Three: 
Need: Something fun to aim for** - or for which to aim (English skillz!).
Got: A bunch of kids full of great ideas who, in the immortal words of Cyndi Lauper, 'just wanna have fun".

Mr Smarter-Than-He-Thinks-He-Is (I checked, it's not Spanish) was right. Points need to be useful. No student wants to reach for long term goals without a clearly defined path of sub-goals and micro-rewards to aim for along the way. I graciously and humbly let the kids do this bit because I was tired from making all of those posters! Here's what they did...

My personal favourite.

Some of them are quite obvious. Making me teach a class in a dress was... unexpected - their enthusiasm for it was not! Zombie escape is pure awesome (half the kids get made up as zombies and the other half... um, run!) Phone Home is clever (students can spend the points to make us call home and explain how good they've been). I've heard a few kids planning to do this just before birthdays! Movie Madness is kind of sweet, with some students aiming to earn enough points to 'shout' the rest of the class a full film! And let's be honest teachers, there probably would have been a point in the year when there would have been so much going on that the kids would have got a 'free' movie anyway. Not any more! And yes, I plan to have a food fight but the term 'food' might be loose! I'm thinking pie plates and shaving cream?

So that's it. It's been running for a few weeks now and it's really coming together but I'd love to know what others think unless you're from the hopefully shrinking, 'You can't do that, we're teachers not entertainers!' team!

Oh, and please go and buy the 'Zombie' T-shirt so I don't get sued. And yes, I already have one!


FAQ (frequently anticipated question): Can I have your HOM posters?
RGA (rarely given answer): Yes, always happy to share, just don't claim my work later at a conference that I'm at - I will find you (please read the last bit in Liam Neeson's voice, thank you) - you should find that each poster from this set links to a public dropbox folder. Those files are larger and better for printing on your school's trusty admin colour printer.

* Long term goals.
** Short term rewards.
*** A visual, measurement system.

tldr; We use short term rewards to reach long term goals in a visual way. Ta daaa!