I've been guilty of this, still in my first few years of teaching. Well, there's a sign on the wall, why aren't they getting it? A healthy part of growing and developing involves testing your boundaries, taking risks, and launching silent or overt protests to your restrictions--and my students have proven to be no exception.
This year, I took a healthy look at my classroom rules, tried to make them succinct as possible, and also tried to very broadly outline positive and negative consequences that could be experienced for each rule. To chart them all would be exhaustive for this activity, but I have chosen what I consider to be one of the most prominent rules of the room: No Electronics Without Permission.
I have chosen to highlight positive and negative student interactions with this rule because I found myself designing many more activities dependent on, or at least with the option to use, technology to develop student work. As such, my students very often find themselves with the ability to use electronics in my class--and also, with many opportunities to take liberty with the rule. It's difficult for a plugged-in young person to discriminate between appropriate and inappropriate classroom behaviors--and sometimes even if they can, they will implement a game of cat-and-mouse. I've already found a few rather gaping holes in my policy--relying too heavily on a smartphone to complete class work, for one--so the intricacies of this rule are always in flux.
The challenge with pinpointing and implementing positive reinforcement for appropriate interactions with classroom rules remains the human tendency to only be vigilant for, point out, and remember the infractions. Using electronics without permission in classes comes with a whole set of reporting procedures that every student at my school is eager to avoid. Negative interactions with this rule are therefore very easy to prescribe consequences toward.
For example, students will often try to sneak a few rounds in of whatever game they please while using their electronics to complete classwork--especially if they are fast-finishers. This is typically pretty easy to spot--they've completed the work as quickly and carelessly as possible, so they can re-costume their avatar or launch virtual battles with other students in the class, and it almost always culminates in several surrounding students crowding around one device, abandoning their own work, to see the action in progress.
In response to these instances, I step in immediately and confiscate the device. I have a daily behavior/classwork checklist that I use for all students, and this infraction gets noted on that list. Once class has ended, the student and I have a brief conversation about why the device was taken, and how it cannot be used for the remainder of the week to complete classwork. Usually this stops the problem, because the student knows I have taken notice of them, and they also know the next step--confiscation of the device again, but this time the student must go to the behavior "Supervisors" as they're known in my school for retrieval. This results in a larger consequence for the student, as if they have visited the Supervisors too many times on the same offense, parents will be notified.
I've never had to take the issue much farther than just revoking electronics privileges for certain students in the class. Yet, I haven't put much thought into tracking positive behaviors--there again, because I make little marks and ticks for students causing concern, leaving the well-behaved set blank, with no distinguishing plan for their behavior.
I imagine a flowchart for implementing positive and negative consequences regarding the Electronics Rule as thus:
ACKNOWLEDGING POSITIVE BEHAVIORS
At the beginning of this year, I formed small group "committees" in my classes to help me identify and implement positive rewards for following classroom rules and displaying good behavior. The results of this have been mixed, but I can say that appealing for student buy-in to this process has created what I feel a higher level of enthusiasm for class activities, as now they are able to see a "light," as it were, in terms of how I will incentivize their positive interactions with my rules.
Myself, I do not like token economies. As a subject teacher, I handle too many classes to make the system consistent and efficient. Many of my classes have an economy system implemented by their homeroom teachers--and as the educator that spend the most time building their class culture and reinforcing their behavior in the school at-large, I think it is a more appropriate system for them. In truth, I encounter a lot of competition between students in my classes, and a token economy system would only serve to breed discontent, in my eyes. My class sizes are rather large, so giving a list of choices for class incentives, and appealing to the class to reach a consensus, builds our own community with a kind of democratic tone.
Building positive incentives around the above rule regarding electronics can be tricky at times, because I'd like to eventually see equal consideration and priority given by students to all classroom rules. Using an electronic device in class, in and of itself, is its own reward for many students, so how can I expand the incentives shown above to encompass other, perhaps less savory rules, in my class?
I think the biggest challenge for me, moving forward, will be to stay aware of positive student interactions with all classroom rules, and having a clear plan on how to approach the discussion of incentives. Reflecting on this, I feel as though many of my classes have been doing well, and that they probably don't know how much I appreciate their work if I've been focused solely on corralling the trouble-makers. So striking the balance, and giving incentives for students with good behavior, would in itself make an example to others about how their behavior in my classroom matters.
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