Observations

This past week in my observations, I observed a student who was always fidgeting in his general education class. The teacher told me that she had been struggling with what to do because she was flustered that he was not learning to his full potential, she was not teaching him appropriately, and he was distracting her and other students during classroom instruction time by not staying in his seat, talking out of term, playing with objects in his desk, and being aggressive towards students. In my first observation I had noticed that the student was doing these things when he was bored and it was refreshing that when I came back the second time that the teacher had talked to the parents and had something done for the student. The next time I came back into the classroom, the student had a little sheet of paper taped to his desk that had four questions on it: Am I on task? Am I playing with objects in my desk? Am I being nice to others? Am I talking out of turn? The teacher then explained to me that the student would be doing self-monitoring of his behavior. Every time the teacher noticed him doing one of these things, she would give the student a look or tap him on the shoulder to correct him and he would have to place a tally mark next to the behavior he had been doing. This really seemed to work, the student was more focused and nicer to his classmates. He was even helping his classmates with their worksheets when he was done. I really liked the way the teacher did this small correction to make a huge impact on her student. She noticed something was wrong and took initiative; it is refreshing to see this in the classrooms that sometimes a behavior problem can just be something small, and fixing this small problem can change the way a child grows in the classroom. I also liked how the teacher implemented the instruction. The student was never called out for his behavior, he was just given a simple, quick correction which only he and the teacher knew about, he was not called out in front of his classmates and was not embarrassed and I think that is essential to stopping a behavior without berating or embarrassing a student for their behavior. This teacher really inspired me that day and I hope to have more observations like this.