[LM_NET] Gen: 4th grade behavior problems

[Janice Davies <jgdavies2004@YAHOO.COM>]

I tried to respond to Darcy, but my email bounced so I'll share this with the 
listserv:
   
  I haven't taught in an elementary school in about 12 years, but  your post 
reminded me of the monster 4th grade I had in 1994. Actually, I'd known the worst 
of the troublemakers since they were in 1rst grade, and it had only gotten worse.
   
  There is no one way to deal with them, but there were some strategies that were 
moderately successful.
   
  First, it helps to pinpoint who the actual troublemakers are. I doubt the entire 
class is really bad, it's just that a few of them feed off of each other and create 
an atmosphere that flows throughout the room, and then the rest of the students 
lose respect for the teacher. 
   
  You might try conducting their library class in the classroom for a few weeks. 
The classroom setup is usually more structured and it will be easier to manage and 
identify the disrespectful students.
   
  If it's one or two, that's easier. You can move them away from the rest of the 
class. If it's more than two, that's going to be a lot harder to deal with. There 
are only so many corners to put them in. See if you can enlist the help of another 
teacher to take a few of them off your hands during library time. 
   
  One year I had 3 impossible boys who wouldn't allow me to get through my lessons. 
I discussed this with the principal and she agreed that these boys wouldn't be 
allowed to participate in the library lesson. Sometimes they were in the office 
during library time. More often, I made arrangements with either the kindergarden 
or first grade teachers to keep them. The boys hated that and begged me to let them 
come back for library, but after a few tries, I stopped letting them come back.
   
  Another strategy that seemed to help was taking away recess. This was hard 
because most years I had recess duty, but I talked to my principal about it and 
explained I needed that time to work on discipline issues, so I had the recess 
period for the 4th grade free -- actually this was my lunchtime.
   
  I would have the students who had misbehaved come in during their recess. I would 
sit in the chair as I did for storytime, and they would sit on the floor. I would 
spend the entire time talking with them about library behavior and why their 
behavior that week had been inappropriate. I was deliberately boring and They hated 
it. I'd talk about why it is important to listen and behave during library time and 
how unfair it was to the other students that wanted to listen if they disrupted the 
lesson. I explained that I did have useful skills to teach them that could be 
useful in being successful in life. I talked about how much more material I had 
been able to cover in the other classes since I hadn't lost 20 minutes of 
instruction for behavior issues. If I ran out of things to say, I repeated what I'd 
said, using different words. I would ask them individually to identify what their 
behavior problems had been and how they planned to improve for next time. 
   
  Those things seemed to help. 
   
  Of course it helped enormously when two of the most disruptive students moved 
from our district. 
   
  Good luck.
   
  Jan Davies
  Retired Library Media Specialist
  Columbia, Maryland
  jgdavies2004@yahoo.com
   
   
   

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