I am a new hire at a local public high school.  Although I have almost ten years of experience, I have no experience with this particular context.  Most of my students in recent years have been very motivated, mature, and respectful.  When I came in, I expected things to go fairly well – much the same as they always have.  A teacher with as much experience as I have often comes into new situations very confident.  I have taught in a wide variety of situations, solved many problems, and faced many challenges, but very little could have prepared me for this.  Within a week I was losing confidence and realized that I needed help to find a solution. 

            Within a week or two of teaching my new classes, I began to realize that I had a problem on my hands – I was not in control of my classes.  The disruptive behavior of some of my students was making it impossible for me to teach.  My students’ behavior reminded me of times when I was a student in high school and we worked together to intentionally cause the substitute teacher as much trouble as possible.  Yet, it seemed that they were not really conspiring to create this problem, but that it was just happening naturally. 

The main reason why I had difficulty teaching them is that they constantly talked out of turn.  Part of this was not bad at all; many students simply wanted to answer, ask questions, or interject.  It’s good that they wanted to participate and interact, but too many comments at the same time made it difficult for anyone to hear me.  One student in particular could not stop moving his mouth and I felt bad about scolding him because he was always on topic and contributing to the class.  Another part of their constant noise came from them chatting with one another.  Sometimes they were talking with each other about the topic, which once again is not so bad, but other times they were just chatting without any regard for the fact that there was a class going on.  The overall effect of this on our class as a whole was that the noise level escalated.  Since more people were talking, it became necessary for others to speak louder in order to be heard; this in turn caused other people to speak louder until it started sounding more like a party than a classroom.  Now, I know that ESOL classes are supposed to be interactive and social but this was going way too far.  Some of the students were complaining that they could not hear me, and others were just giving up. 

To make matters worse, some students were making inappropriate comments.  Students were harboring some hostility towards others and had started voicing their resentment loudly in class.  These inappropriate comments led to very disruptive arguments that wasted class time and left people bitter.  Many students were unwilling to cooperate with certain other students.  Not only were they insensitive to each other, but they were also insensitive to me; they voiced negative attitudes towards the work I was giving, the book we were using, and the class in general.    The ultimate example of this was seen in some of the students’ complete disregard for my authority.  One refused to even take a book from me.  Others refused to stop talking when I told them to be quiet and listen. 

All of these disruptions and distractions resulted in a great wasting of time.  Sometimes as much as twenty minutes would go by with very little accomplished because of disruptions.  This of course was causing even the best behaved students to give up.  Students were not paying attention, not doing homework, and not doing classwork.  Very little learning was going on.  This situation was unacceptable.

            I didn’t know why I was having this problem, so I took a number of steps to figure it out, starting with watching other teachers teach to see how they dealt with similar problems.  The first thing I noticed was that they were not following the same practices as I was.  Their instruction was generally more teacher-fronted; they used a minimal amount of group work or pair work; they generally taught from the front of the room and had students respond by raising their hands to volunteer.  Despite these different practices, when teaching the same groups as I do, they had some of the same problems, just not to such an extreme as I did.

The next step I took was to tell other teachers that I was having a problem and ask them if they knew why.  Many of them blamed it on the previous teacher.  I learned that the previous teacher had had no ESOL training and was basically a middle school English teacher near retirement who had decided to try teaching ESOL students because she had thought it would be easier.  After making the switch and finding out it was more difficult, she reacted poorly.  I heard that she had treated some of the students insensitively and had avoided lower-proficiency students altogether because she didn’t know what to do with them.  The teachers told me that the students had never talked in her class because they were scared of her and she wasn’t patient enough to help them talk.  She also assigned no homework.  Because she was so unhappy with her job and couldn’t wait to retire, she took every sick day that she could with very little warning.  For this reason, the students had had substitute teachers half the time but not even a long term substitute.  On top of that, school had been totally disrupted by a combination of testing, snow days, a bomb threat, two real fires, and recently, a war protest.  So far, the students hadn’t had any real time for instruction and until I came hadn’t been expected to do any work. 

My colleagues gave me some advice about my situation.  One such piece of advice was to stop using pair work and group work.  I watched them use a number of teacher-fronted routines that seemed conducive to learning yet some what sedating.  I figured that it wasn’t my ideal teaching routine but at least it gave students a chance to learn something.

Eventually, I actually asked the students if they thought we had a problem, and they gave me some more insight.  They told me that I needed to be stricter and give more detentions so they would take me more seriously.  They also told me that I should assign seats to split up certain chatters.  They said that they were happy to finally have a “real ESOL teacher” (their words exactly) and that they knew they needed to do some work.  Some complained that they didn’t know what to do.  Others protested that they didn’t mean to make me upset and claimed that they were trying to be good.  When I asked them about the last teacher, what she was like, and what she did with them, they couldn’t explain.  I asked if she had used a book and they said she had used the same book as I did.  When I asked what pages she had completed, they could not tell me.  All they could tell me was that she read to them a lot and had never expected them to speak or do any work.  Every time I taught them something that they were supposed to already know, I would ask, “Did Ms. R teach you this?” and they would say “no.”

From reflecting on my own practices and how they interacted with the context, I came to certain conclusions about why the situation was happening.  Firstly, it was clear that the class had developed a certain culture of its own before I had even arrived.  In the absence of a regular teacher, they had taken control of their class.  Since I was arriving halfway through the semester, I was an invader trying to change what was already established.  My effort to establish new routines had been met with confusion and resistance.  To some degree, they were testing me just like they had tested their substitutes.  They wanted to know what they could get away with but they didn’t want me to get mad and treat them badly in return.  Part of this classroom culture was the precedents set by other teachers.  Other teachers hadn’t done what I was trying to do.  For many reasons, students didn’t actually know how to do what I expected of them.  My homework and classwork were overwhelming and intimidating.  They did not know when they should talk and what was appropriate.   They sincerely liked me and wanted me to like them, and even felt the same about their peers with which they were fighting; they just didn’t know how to interact respectfully and sensitively.  Besides the fact that I was fighting to change norms established before my coming, I was also fighting problems of my own creation.  I had to share some of the blame as a teacher.  I did not know how to manage a high school class well.  My lessons were poorly designed.  I realized that I had a lot to learn about teaching high school.

I set out to test a number of solutions.  One such solution came from my cooperating teacher as she was having much the same problem with the same students.  In frustration she had decided to do the opposite of what her intuition told her; she had decided to try a jigsaw activity just to see what would happen.  We planned the jigsaw really well, and when actually implemented, it worked great.  The students learned much more than usual and they all embraced their increased responsibility.  They were on task and related to each other well during that lesson.  They said that they wanted to do it more.  This led me to believe that increased use of well-planned cooperative learning activities and group work would help cultivate a more positive and more productive classroom culture.  I organized my classes into a series of very tightly scheduled events that never dragged on and left no time for blabbering.  Students were given tasks and time limits as soon as they stepped in the door.  I always gave them only enough time to complete the short task and no time for foot dragging.  When they ran out of time because of foot dragging and complained that they needed more time, I pointed out that they had not finished on time because they were off task or slow to get started.  When they complained that they didn’t know what to do, I pointed out that they were talking while I was giving instructions.  It was their loss and only they were to blame. 

One major advantage to this group work was that it involved changing the seating.  Moving students around drastically changed the class chemistry.  Some students had been in bad combinations and had now found good combinations in their new groups.  Some students changed their behavior totally when moved.  Students who had been fighting before soon became good influences on each other and cooperated well. 

We also talked about behavior and rules so I could make my expectations clearer.  I told students that I wanted them to have more opportunities to speak and that I would give them more but they had better let me have my time too.  We talked about raising our hands to speak and practiced it.  Students who contributed inappropriately were simply told that their behavior was inappropriate and asked to modify it themselves, all the while hearing that I still valued their presence and contributions.  Some detentions were given but always accompanied by my telling them that I liked them very much anyhow.  The new focus was on teaching appropriate behavior without anger, or humiliation – the same way that language and culture is taught. 

Even more important was that an older, very experienced instructional assistant frequently visited my classroom.  She taught me how more efficient so I wouldn’t fuddle and dotter so much, wasting precious class time on nonsense.  She gave certain students some sorely needed one-on-one help, and they really seemed to appreciate it.  She was so strict with them that they learned to appreciate me more.  We discussed treating each other with respect and getting respect in return. 

On top of that, I learned to chunk my instruction better so it wouldn’t be so overwhelming.  I had realized that many students could not do what I was expecting them to do academically.  They were intimidated by my assignments and were afraid to try.  I needed to teach them how to do the things I expected them to do instead of just telling them to do it.  I had forgotten that I was teaching fourteen-year-olds and had taught the class in much the same way as I would have taught highly-motivated adults.  We did more guided work in class and less at home. 

Although I haven’t been using my new approach long enough to see its real results, I feel I can see some already.  Students usually settle down much faster and less time is wasted.  They are interested in the tasks I give them and they are usually focusing well by the time they are half way through.  Students who like to talk enjoy being free to talk their heads off in their groups and usually stay on task.  In turn, they stay quiet and let me speak when I am giving instructions.  Students seem to be learning what I am teaching them, but some students still don’t do any homework.  I have concluded that the reasons for this have to do with their lives outside of class.  I might have a talk with their parents.  Some have confided in me that their parents don’t give them any time to do their homework.  Overall, I am quite happy with my students’ behavior in the last week and I am looking forward to seeing what the future holds. 

From my experience, I have come to a few conclusions.  One of these conclusions is that high school students want respect and responsibility but often don’t know what to do when they get it.  We have to give it to them but teach them how to deal with it much the same way that we teach them other skills.  They need to be taught appropriate behavior.  One way of doing this is by explicitly stating what we teachers expect of them and what is unacceptable.  Students’ violations of these expectations need to be treated much the same way as learner errors, but also require consistent and appropriate punishment without anger or humiliation.  The consistent punishment is part of what they are learning to understand so they must not be denied it.  Finally, students can get the respect and responsibility they crave through cooperative learning.  When a class is “out of control” the solution is not necessarily to get more teacher-fronted, but may in fact be the opposite.