To celebrate the birthday and life of Arnold Lobel(Born 22nd May 1933), The Quick Guide to Classroom Managementwill be offered at a 40% discounted price for 54 days (representing the 54 years of Arnold’s Life).
Arnold Lobelwas a famous writer who contributed greatly to the education of so many children through delightful books and stories such as Frog and Toad are Friends and Prince Bertram the Bad (which appeared on the famous Jackanory TV series).
He sadly passed away on December 4th 1987, aged 54 years.
Click on the image below to enjoy Richard’s book at this special, limited time price.
N.B.: Thank you so much for coming to my website! You’re amazing! Please comment on this post with your experiences and the methods you’ve used when everything seemed to just ‘go wrong’. I really want this page to be a sanctuary where newbie teachers can come and get some great tips about how to overcome their struggles (and to know that they are not alone!)
All teachers can make innocent, but devastating mistakes at work. As a new teacher, you’re bound to mess up a lot in your first year. So what do you do when everything goes South?
Illustrations byPop Sutthiya Lertyongphati. You can contact her atpopslittlespace@gmail.comif you would like her to do some beautiful illustration work for you too.
Being told off by your line manager when you’re just crossing the threshold of your new career can be an upsetting and stressful experience. You’re bound to make mistakes as a Newly Qualified Teacher, and you’re bound to be told off for them too. It happens to even the very best educators, and if it hasn’t happened to you yet, then don’t be complacent, because everyone can mess up at some point.
What follows next are some tips to get you through those tough times in a way that actually makes you look mature and professional at the same time.
#1: Admit when you’re wrong
Always apologise quickly and sincerely when you slip up. This could be for something relatively minor like forgetting to mark a student’s book, or something more silly like forgetting to turn up for a lesson.
Don’t be afraid of apologizing to students too. If you’re sincere, and you rectify things quickly, you’ll actually come across as being a genuine, human and approachable person. An example might be “Ah yes, Mark, you are right. I did agree to bring that textbook in for you today. It completely slipped my mind. I’ll make sure I pack it tonight for you and I’ll bring it in tomorrow.”
If you are genuinely to blame for what went wrong, then covering up your mistake can be the worst decision you make. When the real truth is uncovered later on down the road you’ll be seen as untrustworthy, deceitful and immature – the exact opposite of how you want to come across.
#2 Sleep on it
I know many teachers who have received aggressively toned, accusatory e-mails from bosses and line managers whilst in their early years of teaching, and later on too. It’s happened to me as well, and it can cause a wave of emotions to flood your thoughts and perceptions. Anger, fear, hatred, panic, worry and, of course, the desire to justify yourself.
When this happens, the best thing you can do is take a deep breath and relax. If possible, wait until the next day to send your response or to speak to the person in question. You’ll be in a better frame of mind, and your brain will have had the chance to process the information and think about solutions, subconsciously and unconsciously, whilst you were asleep (and make sure you do sleep: Tomorrow will deal with itself. Don’t toss and turn in a fit of worry the night before. Life is too short.).
This approach can be phrased as being ‘proactive, not reactive‘.
The worst thing you can do when you receive a flame (the technical name for an angry or aggressive e-mail) is to react instinctively by sending an equally aggressive reply. You’ll be acting on the basis of emotion, probably with a high desire to prove yourself right, and you could end up really annoying your boss in the process.
#3 Focus on solutions, not on justifying yourself
I once worked with a colleague who was in a right fit of worry. He was a trembling wreck, and was convinced he was going to lose his job.
The previous week, he had been leading a really fun activity with his class which involved singing, dancing and making wall art. The class loved it, but one student decided to covertly record part of that lesson on his mobile phone. The video later appeared on YouTube, and was brought to the attention of my friend’s line manager.
“What the hell am I going to do Richard? This is it, I know it. I’m finished. My career is in the toilet now”
I calmed him down and told him that nothing was ever that final in life. I told him that the very first thing he should say to his boss was not “I’m sorry, it’ll never happen again”, or “I asked all the kids for their mobile phones and he hid his” or any other justification. The damage had been done. The first thing he should say to his boss is “How can we solve this?”.
He took my advice and later reported that the conversation with his boss went a lot better than he thought it would. As soon as he shifted his focus towards solutions, his boss agreed to ask that student to delete the video off YouTube and to ask him (the student) to apologise to his teacher, which he later did. The whole situation was forgotten about that same day, and life went on as normal.
My colleague was wise that day. He realised that justifying yourself when being accused of something by your boss, especially when you’re in the wrong, only leads to conflict and argumentation. By making the focus of the conversation squarely on solutions, my colleague came across as being mature, in control of his emotions and committed to the greater good of the school.
#4 Speak with your line manager
There will be times when things happen, and you just won’t know what to do to solve the situation. Whether this is because you’ve made a mistake or not, you should always speak with your line manager, or someone with more experience than you.
A classic example of this scenario happened to me in my first year of teaching practice. I was walking along the corridor on a free period when I saw a student, who was supposed to be in class, just walking about aimlessly.
I stopped him, and asked him if he was okay and if he needed some help, when suddenly his teacher popped her head out of the classroom door and looked at me as if I was the most evil man in the world. She ushered the boy into her room (she’d sent him out of class, but I didn’t know that).
After class that teacher saw me in the science prep room and gave me a right telling off. “Richard, don’t you ever talk to my students again. I am well-capable of dealing with behavior issues. I don’t need your help”. Woah!! Now where did that come from?
I was fuming. I was doing my job and being told off for it. Ridiculous, I thought. What an arrogant, silly old bat she is. I was really mad. I asked to speak with my head of department, because I’d rather he heard my side of the story before he received a complaint next week.
We sat down together and I told him the story I just told you. He calmed me down and said “Don’t worry Richard”. He explained how that teacher had a very disruptive and challenging class that Friday afternoon, and she’s probably a bit stressed out. He advised me to just let it go and have a good weekend.
I took his advice and I’m glad I did. The situation was never brought up again. It was totally forgotten about by everyone.
Oftentimes, as teachers, we worry too much about silly things. If you ever find yourself worrying about a situation, then you have nothing to lose by talking it over with a more experienced colleague. I’ve used this principle many times in my career with great affect.
#5 Listen first, then explain
If you genuinely haven’t done anything wrong, or if you’ve been misunderstood, then you’ll need to explain your side of the story. Failure to do this may cost you your job.
Your line manager or principal might be angry with you about something. Let them vent first. Don’t get tense. Relax, and listen. Don’t react to the bubbling up of your negative emotions.
When the chance arises, calmly and politely explain your case. You’ll be surprised in the change of mood this will generate in your once angry boss. You’ll come across as mature and level-headed.
#6 Keep people updated
I was once accused of allowing my tutor group to graffiti on the tables in the Science lab. Of course, it wasn’t my kids. I knew this because we only had ten minutes together each morning and my eyes were on them throughout this. But how could I be proactive in ensuring that my name was cleared?
I set up a ‘graffiti log book’, and every morning at registration I would get my students to tell me if they saw any new graffiti on the desks. I also diligently went around the class and checked the desks myself, to really make sure that it wasn’t my kids that were making the mess.
After two weeks I presented my log book to the line manager that had accused me originally. I politely suggested that the graffiti was probably happening in the main lessons of the day, when students have up to an hour per session to scribble something on a desk.
My line manager appreciated my diligence, and we set up a monitoring system to ensure that kids who graffiti’d were identified quickly and made to clean up their mess. We even had special ‘graffiti cleaning kits’ set up in the prep room.
#7 Seek Advice
There will be times when you don’t know what to do. Instead of stewing around and worrying about things, or even plodding along and just ‘getting by’, use your inexperience as a chance to grow and develop.
A story from my own life journey comes to mind here. I was an NQT (Newly Qualified Teacher) at a school in northern England and I was having problems with Behaviour in one of my Year 9 classes. I tried sanctions, tellings off, rewards for good effort and even bringing in chocolate to give to the students if they worked hard. Each strategy worked to some degree, but collectively things were still not perfect .
I spoke with a senior colleague of mine in the Science department and he gave me one tip that had an almost instantaneous transformative effect on my classroom management. He advised me to focus my attention on the work being done and not on the student who was being disruptive. “Instead of saying something like ‘John, why aren’t you working?, or ‘John, you’re not concentrating’, try ‘John, how’s that work coming along? Are you finished yet?” Wow. Such a simple piece of advice but it helped me a lot. I would later write a whole chapter about behaviour management in my debut book, in which this technique played a significant part.
Speaking with your colleagues about your problems presents another benefit too. The people from whom you seek counsel will feel flattered that you consider them in such high esteem and will, consequently, be happy to help you out. By seeking help you also show that you are mature enough to realize that you don’t know everything, and when you share your problems you’ll often find that other people are going through similar problems in their lives too.
Did you find this post useful? Why not check out Richard’s books? Rated 5 stars on Amazon, and enjoyed by thousands of teachers globally, Richard’s work has earned a place in the global pedagogical hall of fame.
Book trailer: The Quick Guide to Classroom Management
I’m 33 years old and my life has been filled with technology since I was little nipper. At five years old I was beating up bad guys and firing bombs from cars on the Atari ST computer and at school I was playing word games on a BBC Microcomputer that had green text on a black background. That was the eighties – full of innovation, colour and 8 bit music.
Me fighting bad guys in Double Dragon – a classic game from the eighties played on the Atari 520 ST. This game built up my hand-eye coordination and problem-solving skills, and intiated my interest in martial arts. I would later start my journey learning Shotokan Karate – which I’m still practicing 22 years later! This picture is from my iPad – lots of old games can now be downloaded as apps.
Three decades later I find myself teaching students who have never known a world without the internet. It’s often hard for me contemplate the significance of this, especially when I think back to my teenage years when I spent many a long night and weekend studying from (dare I say it?) textbooks, at Flint Library.
We’ve made huge leaps and bounds as a human race in the past three decades, and when our current students enter the world of work and business they’ll be using technologies and systems that haven’t even been invented yet. Now how on Earth do we prepare them for that?
The answer is simple in theory: expose our kids to as much technology as possible and, crucially (and this step is seldom completed in classrooms today): get students to reflect on what technology they could have used (real or imaginary) if they had had access to it.
Let’s take a look at some easy steps you can take right now to bring more technology into your teaching.
Encourage your students to use their smartphones and tablets
Smartphones and tablets can often double-up as great learning tools! Try these actvities and you’ll see this for yourself. If some of your students don’t have smartphones then be sure to book iPads or school tablets in advance of the lesson.
QR Code Treasure Hunt
Step 1: Plant ‘clues’ around the school that each have some content on them. I often print A4 sheets of paper, each with a stage on it (e.g. one stage of cell division). Make sure that each piece of paper has a QR code clue on it that tells the students where to go next (e.g. “This is where you have fish and chips on a Friday”). An example of one of these sheets can be seen below.
Instructions for using QR codes treasure hunts in your teaching practice.
Step 2: When you’ve placed all of your clues around the school, make sure that your students have downloaded the ‘QR Reader’ app onto their smartphone. Split them into groups and get scanning!
Step 3: When the students have collected all of the clues they can then come back to class and make a display or poster of them. This can then lead on to a cool game such as the poster game and others.
Making videos and stop motion animations
Great for any subject, movies and stop-motion animations are fun projects which can really encourage students to approach a problem from creative perspective. The result?: Memory of the concept is greatly enhanced when compared with traditional teaching methods.
Children enjoy making and editing movies, and they are learning great skills that will help them later in life too.
Stop-motion animations do take a long time, and are more suited to processes and systems (e.g. DNA replication, corrie formation, steps in differential calculus, etc.), whereas movies have a wide-range of applications. An example of a stop-motion animation is given below:
Making graphs and charts and editing images
Any form of data set can be graphed in various ways by tablets and smart phones. This could happen in a history lesson in which you’re studying the number of new cases of the bubonic plaque over a set period of time; a mathematics lesson where the students have conducted a simple survey; a science lesson where the kids are measuring the light absorbance of different solutions or even an English lesson where you’re studying the frequency of particular adjectives in different texts. Good graphing apps include ‘Numbers’, ‘Viz’, ‘3D Charts’ and ‘Chart Maker’ (Apple™) and ‘Simple Graph Maker’, ‘My Graph (Chart)’, ‘ChartGo’ and ‘Juice Labs’ (Android™).
Portable homework diary
Are you sick of your students forgetting their homework? Does your school still use those old-fashioned homework diaries where everything needs to be written down? If your school isn’t using a homework database or a VLE to set assignments, then one way to solve this is to get the students to take a photograph of the homework task after you’ve written it on the whiteboard or projected it. This is also a very good option for students with additional learning needs and those who are operating with English as their second language. Additionally, if the homework is complex and involves multiple steps (e.g. navigating through a particular VLE portal), then students should be encouraged to take photographs of each step in the process.
Online Learning Games, Simulations and Activities
Book your school’s ICT lab and get your students to play some games or complete activities. Make sure you’ve checked out the website first so that you can give your students some direction before the lesson starts. Some suggested websites are given below:
Languages:Digital Dialects, Duolingo (be careful with this on as it allows students to create a profile and connect with other users)
Monsterland Challenge from Cool Math Games
Don’t be afraid of using social media in your teaching
Go back two or three years ago, and the thought of using any kind of social media in lessons was still very taboo in most schools. Now, however, a growing number of high schools are seeing the benefits that platforms such as Facebook™, Twitter™ and Instagram™ can bring to the classroom. Whilst all of this is very exciting, and very ‘modern’, we still have to tread very carefully. Some golden rules that we must follow as teachers when using social media with our students are as follows:
Always make sure that your students are of the permitted age to use the platform
Always show the students how to delete their account if needs be, and how to turn off notifications (some students and parents get very annoyed when they’re constantly receiving e-mail updates from whichever social media platform it is that they’ve signed up to)
Remind your students of the SMART acronym:
• Stay Safe: Don’t give out your personal information to people or places you don’t know
• Don’t Meet Up: It can be dangerous to meet up with someone you’ve only been in touch with online. Always check with an adult first
• Accepting Files: Accepting images, e-mails, files or messages from people you don’t know can cause problems
• Reliable: Is the website or person telling the truth? Always check information before you believe it.
• Tell Someone: Always inform an adult if someone or something online makes you feel uncomfortable or worried
If you follow these guidelines, then social media can offer a wealth of excitement, enrichment and interest to your lessons. It can encourage students to produce rich content, and can be examined instantly in a whole-class context.
Here are some ideas for using social media in your practice. Can you think of others? Please feel free to download and share this image.
Conclusion
I’m still fighting bad guys like you can see in the screenshot at the top of the page. The bad guys of making mistakes, fear, hatred, disappointment, loss and resentment. Just like in Double Dragon I still get my butt kicked by life, but I get back up and keep playing like I did as an excited 5 year old all those years ago. Isn’t that what life is all about? Perhaps games and ICT activities can teach our kids to be resilient, as well being open minded.
Some teachers are resistant to this rapid development, mostly because it causes an inconvenience for them. The days when we could know our subject and teach the same material the same way for years on end are over. Totally over. The modern practitioner must constantly skill-up and learn new tools and techniques, often at a faster rate than the students do. This has proven to be real challenge for me too, and I can still can’t figure out how to record a good podcast or YouTube video series, but I’m working on it (and you’ll be the first to find out about it when I do figure this out!).
Which is best? A smart phone or a tablet? If you’re planning for a lesson and wondering whether or not to book your school’s iPad set, then this list might give you some food for thought.
Should you book your school’s iPad set for that excellent lesson you’ve planned, or should you just get the kids to use their smart phones? Some things to think about:
Tablets do provide a larger screen and greater accessibility to some programs and simulations, and this is a big advantage for students who like large text and who have issues with manual dexterity
Always test the software first: Unfortunately, many programs and simulations that work on a Windows™ PC do not function properly on tablets and smart phones that use other operating systems. It’s really embarrassing and frustrating to set a wonderful ICT-based learning task only to discover that it isn’t compatible with the kids’ devices.
If you’re planning on getting students to submit docs, PowerPoints or pdf files through Dropbox, or if you want students to download a file of this type, then tablets are typically better than smart phones. The larger screen means that more readable text can be displayed on the screen, and this also makes it much easier to edit files.
Cost is an important factor when considering ICT orders in schools. Tablets generally cost two to three times less than their smart phone counterparts, and often allow for greater functionality. The other advantage is that school tablets will have been set up consistently by an ICT administrator, and will often not have SIM cards that connect them to a cellular network. This means that kids are much less likely to be playing around on social media when using school tablets, since sites like Facebook™, Instagram™ and others are much more difficult to access without their corresponding apps. Schools can also put controls in place to prevent access to such platforms.
One downside of tablets is that they can be slow, especially if multiple students are using them to access the internet via the school’s Wi-Fi system all at the same time. Smartphones can offer a quicker alternative in these cases.
Students are much more likely to share school tablets with each other, rather than sharing their highly personalized smart phones with their peers. This has obvious ramifications for group work
One big advantage of tablets is that their battery life tends to be much longer than that of smart phones. Your school’s set should also be regularly charged by the ICT administrator.
As a very keen and determined PGCE student at Bangor University’s outstanding School of Education, I was introduced very quickly to the importance of making my students fully aware of the learning outcomes (sometimes referred to as ‘aims’ or ‘objectives’), every single lesson. On a very fresh summer morning at the beautiful science labs at Bangor’s ‘Normal Site’, I and the rest of the science students were given a deck of playing cards. We were then asked to shuffle them and play poker, but keep any diamonds that were dealt to us, indefinitely. When this was finished, we repeated the game, but this time we kept any multiples of three. Once this was over, we were each given a set of coins and asked to toss each one in turn. If we got a head, we could keep the coin; whereas a tails meant that we had to dispose of that coin and place it into a big tub in the middle of the room. After about 30 minutes of doing this, we started to look at each other with rather puzzled and bemused faces. Some of my friends started to utter “What’s the point in this?” and “Why the hell are we doing this?” At this stage, our instructor stopped the activities and asked us all a very simple question: “How was that?”
A fun activity, but why were we doing it?
The replies came slowly at first, but as soon as a few people had mustered enough nerve to reply, more answers soon followed.”It was okay, but I wasn’t sure why we were playing those games”, “It was good at first, but I lost focus after a while” and “The whole lesson just seemed completely pointless”. After the exchange of a few giggles, we could all see that this was part of the instructor’s plan all along (he was always very shrewd in the way that he introduced us to key concepts). He then asked “What do you think the purpose of this lesson was?”. Again, the replies came in thick and fast “Something to do with data and numbers”, “Learning how to use games to entertain students” and, finally, one student hit the proverbial nail on the head – “To understand that if the students don’t know why they are doing something, then they’ll lose focus”. This final reply was correct, but incomplete. For this particular session, the instructor was trying to teach us two things. The first objective was to learn that it is easy to ‘cherry-pick’ data in scientific experiments (hence the collection of the ‘diamond cards’ and disposing of each coin that had yielded a tails). The second was the one that’s most important to me and you: that learning is only productive and effective if the students know what the mission/objective of each lesson is.
After learning this crucial lesson, I quickly put it into practice during my first year of teaching. I would always write the lesson objectives on the whiteboard (or project them on a screen), straight after I had given my starter activity. My lessons always started promptly, and my students always knew what my mission was. However, despite this, something was still missing. The problem was that almost every teacher in my school had been trained in a similar methodology, and were all doing the same thing. Each lesson to my students seemed like, in the words of one Year 9 boy, “different versions of a computer game with the same exact layout, just different colours and different bad guys to fight” (I thought that was quite a profound conclusion, actually. I gave that boy a house point for his linguistic creativity).
So what was missing? Why, despite following best practice, were some of my students still losing focus? Why was it that at the end of each lesson some students couldn’t even remember the objectives I’d shown them 45 minutes earlier? Well, the answer, as I discovered much later than I probably should have, was found in that unusual session back at Bangor University. The reason that I can remember that particular lesson so well is because it contained a sense of mystery, and because I and my peers had to figure out the lesson objectives for ourselves. But how did we figure out those objectives? Answer: The activities of the lesson aroused within us a sense of curiosity about its purpose.
We all remember things better if we’ve had to discover them by ourselves, as opposed to being ‘spoon-fed’ the information. More often than not, we are also more proud of those things that we’ve had to overcome, adapt to and solve by ourselves, than those things we’ve attained easily, and this principle feeds directly into this very effective methodology for beginning a lesson:
Begin each lesson by assigning work, analysing it and then getting the students to generate the learning outcomes for the lesson
By using this methodology you will not only capture your students attention as soon as the lesson starts, but you will also be encouraging them to use ‘higher order thinking skills’, especially if the students do the following:
Build models or construct some kind of concept illustration
Solve an open-ended problem (e.g. “You have five minutes to build a useful object out of the drinking straws on your desk”)
Include emotion in their work (e.g. “Imagine you are Neil Armstrong on the day he landed on the moon. Write a quick diary entry for him on that day. How did he feel?”)
Solve a logic problem (e.g. breaking a code, or answering a series of questions in sequence which lead the students to a final conclusion)
Use their physiology in an unusual way (e.g. “You have five minutes to build a tower out of the objects on your desks. One person in your group needs to balance the objects on their head. Who will create the tallest, most balanced tower?”)
Have a choice over whether to tackle the problem using a left or right-brain approach (e.g. “Sarah needs to buy food and drink for a birthday party. In front of you is a price list for every item at Partylicious candy store. Sarah only has 45 pounds to spend, so help her out! Maybe you could write some selected shopping lists for her, or draw a collection of items that she could buy.”)
Conclusion: Start your lessons promptly by assigning a good-quality starter activity, analyzing it thereafter and then asking the students to consider what the objectives of the lesson might be. I assure you, by starting your lesson in this way your students will benefit far more than if your lesson has an unfocussed start, directed solely by the teacher.
Have you ever noticed that there are some teachers in your school who never seem to have behaviour management issues? They just seem to be able to teach their classes with no disruption whatsoever; or, at the very least, they deal with disruption or poor behaviour quickly, fairly and consistently. These people are positive deviants; they should have the same problems as you do, but they don’t. These are people you can learn from, and who you should consult with regularly.
Be open enough to admit when you have a problem, and seek help from your colleagues.
In many schools around the world teachers are made to feel inferior if they admit to having a problem. I have experienced this kind of culture first hand, and it can be very disempowering. You speak up and you say “I’m having problems with ‘student x’, he just never seems to listen”, and one of your colleagues pipes in with a “Really, well he’s fine for me”. The person who dishes out this quick and smarmy reply is either a positive deviant, who you can learn from, or they’re lying so that they can make themselves look good in public. If these kinds of conversation are commonplace in your school, then it can be difficult to have the courage to speak up when you have a problem. However, it is absolutely essential that you do speak up because you’ll probably find someone who can help you when the problem is in its infancy, allowing you to deal with it before it becomes really bad.
Key steps to take when seeking help from colleagues
Speak up and admit when you have a problem: You can speak with a line manager or even another colleague you trust. If it’s a whole-class issue in which you’re having problems with disruption from multiple students, then try to find other teachers who teach that same class. Ask for their advice. The same rule applies if you’re having a problem with an individual student – find out who his or her other teachers are, and talk with them.
Identify positive deviants: Find all of those teachers who have a positive relationship with the student, or group of students, you’re having problems with.
Ask those positive deviants to observe your lessons: This can be hard to do, because most teachers absolutely hate lesson observations. However, you must see this as a massive opportunity to learn from the positive deviant who’s observing you. Besides, by just asking this person to observe your class you’ll be making them feel important, and they’ll probably like you all the more for it. Make sure you seek feedback from the observer, and be sure to record everything that he or she says about your lesson.
Observe the positive deviants: Book a time when you can see the positive deviant ‘in action’. Try to observe them whilst they’re teaching the same students, and make lots of notes (or even ask for permission to video the lesson). Try to think of all of things that this person is doing to reinforce and promote positive behaviour, and then try to model this in your lessons. You may even ask the positive deviant to observe you again at this point, if you wish, just so that you can ‘fine tune’ the new techniques that you have learned.
Be sure to sincerely thank the positive deviants when they have helped, and don’t forget to sing their praises to senior management and your colleagues too. For most people this seems silly – after all, why would you want to praise someone else’s teaching? I assure you: doing this will help you to build a strong professional relationship base that will really help if times get tough, or if you need help in the future. You’ll also be contributing to a whole-school ethos of mutual respect and openness, which can only serve to create a positive culture for everyone. You’ll also make a lot friends in the process!
This seems so obvious, doesn’t it? – Find your positive deviants and then model their behaviour. However; in most schools this never happens, and it’s mostly because our pride gets in the way. We don’t want to seem inferior to others by admitting we have a problem, and the rigour of school appraisal processes have turned lesson observations into an apprehensive, stressful part of a teacher’s life. This is incredibly regrettable and we must overcome this closed-mindedness and fear of being judged if we are to really learn from our colleagues and become the champion teachers we can be.
All character names contained in this article are fictional
Wayward e-mails are secretly destroying careersSending and receiving e-mails has now become an obligatory duty for teachers, especially in big institutions. A form tutor asks you for feedback about a particular student, so you e-mail your reply. The deputy head asks for any items for tomorrow’s meeting agenda, and those people that have issues they wish to raise type their responses and click ‘Send’. You have a problem opening a file on a school computer, so you send a quick message to the ICT technician. You e-mail parents. The list goes on and on.
As teachers, we are spending more time sat down in front of computers than ever before. E-mails allow us to communicate important items quickly and efficiently, and this ‘convenience’ is being improved upon year after year as smart phones and smart watches increasingly utilize novel systems to make dealing with e-mails an easy and fun task. All of this has made e-mailing become a ‘mechanical’ part of one’s working day, where little thought is needed to deliver a quick message. What most people don’t consider, however, is that e-mails are secretly destroying the careers of teachers, along with everything else they’ve worked for.
Charlene was annoyed. She had been slaving away for the past two terms getting her ‘A’ – Level Chemistry students ready for their final exams. She had lead after school revision clubs, printed reams of past-exam papers and resources, spent hours after school planning and setting up practical activities and had spent many a late night updating her school’s VLE with a myriad of resources for these senior, pre-university students. She felt that she had gone above and beyond the call of duty, and when term three came along and her students were on study leave, she planned to use her gained time to prepare resources for the next academic year.
Knowing that Charlene now had a considerable amount of free time, her head of department, Francis, thought it would be a good idea for her to help the other science teachers alleviate some their workload. She asked Charlene to take on one of her colleague’s Key Stage 3 classes for that term, and she asked her to help assess some of the end-of-year tests for the students in classes that she didn’t teach.
Charlene was furious! She felt completely unappreciated and exploited. She had worked her socks off all year, doing things that her other science colleagues didn’t have to do, and now she was being asked to do more. She needed to get all of her frustration off her chest, so she decided to e-mail her good friend: Tracey; who happened to be her NQT tutor in her previous school. She laid it all out, saying how her boss was a complete idiot (using some rather colourful language) and how her efforts all year had gone completely unnoticed. She felt really ‘hard done to’, and typing it all out made her feel much better. However, she made one mistake that proved to be the Armageddon for her career in that school – she sent the e-mail to Francis by accident, and not to her NQT tutor.
Using an e-mail system to complain behind someone’s back can be a fatal, career-killing mistakeThis kind of situation happens all the time – teachers sending e-mails to the person they’re talking about, and not to the intended recipient. For Charlene it was coffin nails for her job at that school. Francis scheduled a meeting with Charlene, and her conclusions were made very clear. She felt that Charlene could have dealt with her frustration in a much more professional way; for example, by simply talking it over with her. If Francis had known Charlene’s plans to get some good resources in place for the next academic year, then she would have passed on less work for her to do in her ‘gained time’. Additionally, the tone of Charlene’s e-mail was so negative and ‘immature’, that her character as a professional was now being called into question. Could she be trusted as a sensible member of the staff body? What if she had sent an e-mail like that to a parent instead? After Charlene was passed up for promotion the following academic year (because of feedback from her head of department to the school principal), she left by her own accord. To add insult to injury, Charlene’s new school needed a reference letter from her current head of department. Thankfully, Francis felt kind enough to emphasise Charlene’s good points, as opposed to writing the king of all character assassinations that she could quite easily, and understandably, have produced.
This story teaches us that e-mails should be handled with care. Always take time to craft e-mails properly, and always assume that every person in your school will see it. Never assume e-mail privacy, and always choose your recipients carefully. With the ability to send e-mails through voice-command and touch-screens on smart phones, it is now even easier to make these fatal mistakes than it has ever been before. Be vigilant!
Using e-mail as a professional messaging tool
E-mails are not private: That’s right – you’re school principal could be looking through your inbox as you read this! E-mails provide managers with a unique window into an employee’s life that they would never normally have in their day-to-day interactions. It is such a good ‘teacher monitoring tool’ that most schools will now have professional e-mail systems set up for them which allow ‘snooping’ by senior management. This is perfectly legal, and you’ve probably signed your consent for it in your employee contract. Many schools are now making all new teachers sign an ‘Acceptable use of ICT’ agreement, where it will explicitly say that your e-mails should not treated as though they are private. However, despite this, many teachers still do not follow professional e-mail etiquette.
Smart phones and tablets have made it easier for us to make silly mistakes, such as sending an e-mail to the wrong recipientNever complain in an e-mail: There are lots of obvious reasons for this, and many centre around the ‘management snooping’ issue. Additionally, however, many employees fall into the trap of sending an e-mail to the person they’re complaining about, rather than the person it was intended for. This can have apocalyptic consequences for you, especially if the e-mail is sent to a manager. Avoid this by making all e-mails professional, imagining that they’ll be blown up to A1 size and posted on the headmaster’s wall (because as far as you’re concerned, they might as well be).
E-mails can be copied, forwarded and saved forever: Whenever you send an e-mail, you are creating a permanent piece of evidence which may be used against you (or to support you) in the future. E-mailing your best friend to tell them how much time you’ve wasted drinking coffee today, or how you can’t wait for the semester breakAn e-mail is a digital document that can be copied, forwarded and saved in a retrieval system indefinatelyto come around because you’ve ‘had enough’, are not good ways to fill your HR file. I feel it’s important to repeat that you should treat all e-mails as if they were posters in the principal’s office.
Extinguish all flames: A ‘flame’ is a hostile or insulting message that is sent from one internet user to another. They often contain profanities, expletives or complaints, and in the teaching profession they are most commonly sent and received through e-mail. If you receive a flame from anyone then you must do two things right away:
Respond to the person who sent you the flame, making it clear to them that they should never send you a hostile message via e-mail again. Make it clear that e-mails are not a private messaging tool, and that you do not respond to expletives or profanities. You should also do this for any unprofessional or inappropriate e-mail, such as one from a colleague talking about how much he has slacked off that day.
Delete the original flame e-mail. If your inbox is being monitored, and a member of senior management sees the flame, they may think that you are in agreement with the person who sent it.
Teachers are held in high regard by students, parents and the wider community as a whole. We can never be ‘off-duty’, and we must strive for perfection and professionalism in all of our undertakings.
Scanning QR codes can be a fun way for studevts to ‘discover’ new information
Smartphone cameras are absolutely amazing learning tools as they can often double up as scanners, analysers and editors when paired with the correct app or software programme. When used properly, they can get students out of the classroom and can act as conduits for engaging the whole brain.
That being said, one does have to be quite cautious when using smartphone cameras with students. There are many documented cases of pupils filming their friends or teachers covertly in school, and then instantly sharing the footage via social media or even video-sharing sites such as YouTube™. In schools and countries where there are heavy child-protection laws and policies, this can be quite serious and can land the supervising teacher in a lot of trouble. My approach to this problem has always been to lay down the ground rules with my students first (i.e. to only use their cameras for the task at hand), and then make sure I am vigilant in supervising the activity. If you do this, then smartphone camera activities will be an enjoyable part of your teaching, and will greatly enhance the students’ learning experiences.
Smartphone Savvy: Camera Based Learning Activities
Code scanning treasure hunts: This activity involves getting the students to scan codes (e.g. QR codes) using their smartphones and then following the clues to find information. It involves some planning and preparation by the teacher beforehand, but it is well worth it! The steps to follow are:
Step 1: Create a sequence of information sheets (e.g. 5 sheets of information about different aspects of cell division)
Step 2: Insert a QR code (or other) into each sheet. QR codes can be created for free at qrstuff.com. Your QR codes should encode a clue to tell the students where to go (e.g. ‘Go to the library’ or ‘This is where you eat fish and chips on a Friday’)
Step 3: Hide your clues in different places around the school (try to use rooms and places that will be unoccupied, if possible). Make sure your first information sheet (with embedded QR code clue) is in the classroom where you will start!
Step 4: Make sure that all of the students have the ‘QR Reader’ app (or similar) installed on their smartphones. This can be set as homework before the lesson starts, to save time.
Step 5: The students will scan the codes and follow the clues, picking up the information sheets as they race/walk around the school.
When the students have picked up all the information sheets (the last QR code ‘clue’ should be something like ‘Go back to class’), then the students will come back to their classroom and complete an activity with the sheets. You may wish for them to organize the information in some way (e.g. into a poster or flowchart, which can be used in a fun memory game like the ‘Poster Game’ – covered in chapter ). You could also get the students to communicate the information in an unusual way (e.g. by texting a friend or by posting to the school’s blog via their smartphone)
The image below goes through an actual example of a QR code treasure hunt that I used recently with my IBDP Year 13 Biology students.
Instructions for using QR codes treasure hunts in your teaching practice.
