Book Study Guide – “Shattering The Perfect Teacher Myth.”

I recently purchased the book “Shattering the Perfect Teacher Myth” by Aaron Hogan, and found a study guide that would be useful whilst reading this book. I have read Chapter today (29/06/2018), these are my thoughts on Chapter 1 Questions:

Shattering the Perfect Teacher Myth

By Aaron Hogan

Study Guide

1. “For many years, sending a student to the hallway has been a standard consequence for bad behavior. When do think this is a truly effective practice? What are the unintended consequences of sending students to the hall?”

It seems that many teachers treat behavior in academics and classroom management the same. This should not be occurring, they are both different sets of expectations and should be treated as such. Genuine teachers, will re-teach the content, repeat, then find out where the student needs assistance/what they can do to help move them along. The same should be done with unacceptable behavior, behavioral expectations should be taught as we would academics.

Sending students out of the classroom for both academic misconduct and behavioral issues I think is counterproductive. I believe it is much more beneficial to isolate the student within the classroom from their peers (children are very social) therefore, this way their learning can continue in the classroom, the behavioral issue is being addressed through peer isolation. This is of course very much dependent on the behavior being exhibited, violent outbursts, bullying or abuse which are all extremely disruptive may require further intervention from the Deputy or Principal.

We should also never fall into the trap of making assumptions, teachers get busy with often not enough time in the day to address many of the behavioral issues, however like academics it is important we teach and model the behavioral expectations to students. I think one of the biggest assumptions we make as teachers, particularly when it comes to manners, is that these should be taught at home. Sometimes a child’s “Virtual School-Bag” won’t allow this to happen, with many students having disruptive home lives, we may be the only caring and responsible adult they see throughout their day. I think another assumption we make is that “students should know better” well if they have never been taught how to behave appropriately, then it really does fall to the teachers.

It is essential they learn from early in the year, begin to build relationships with our students so we can see where they are coming from, which will help with not making assumptions as we will understand where they are coming from.

We need to teach both social and academic skills.  We must teach with repetition, patience, and model expectations.

2. “How do we respond to academic & behavioral mistakes so differently? Why do we have such different approaches?”

The approaches should be the same, students need to understand, like teachers that behavioral management and teaching need to work together. If they can work together it would create a happy classroom environment, reducing the number of behavioral incidents as students would want to learn, be more engaging. The approaches should be the same, we should teach both explicitly to students.

I am not sure why we have different approaches, to me it seems like more work, and not consistent with classroom management, spending time on two different approaches is counter-productive.

It also comes down to the way we speak to students, using a firm but pleasant tone, is more productive, then yelling constantly at them which only makes them feel belittled and humiliated in front of classmates, will their behavior improve because of this? No, it will just create further resentment, making it that much harder to re-establish a positive relationship with that student or students.  We as teachers need to be also willing to apologize when such practices occur. Change occurs in the classroom when teachers are willing to change their approaches.

Praising students is a great way to model behavior both in their academics and classroom behavior.

3. What are the skills we assume students should just have, the ones we think we shouldn’t teach?

On my practicum last year, we had this discussion in the staff room, we shouldn’t have to teach things like:

• Showing respect
• Manners
• Social skills

These were the three main topics we discussed, sometimes they need to be taught as we need to consider a student’s background and home life circumstances, in a perfect world, students would come to school with the above skills intact. Life is not perfect for many of our students so they may not get the required support at home.

4. “Maya Angelou reminds us to “Do the best you can until you know better. Then you know better. Then, when you know better, do better.” How can teachers “do better” after comparing how we respond to academic and behavioral mistakes?”

I think it comes down to consistency. This is something that I struggled with during the first week of my practicum, was being consistent in ensuring students are performing academically and their behavior. I found it challenging in ensuring I had an eye on everyone, even more so when I was helping individual students. My classroom management certainly needed a lot of work, as at times I felt I was unfair to some students.

They both need to be treated the same.