I’m just curious and want to see where different educators are at. Please make a choice whether you are a classroom teacher, a principal, superintendent, specialist, librarian or any support role.
(As of 10/2/2011 I have stopped accepting votes to this survey. Scroll down to see the results of the survey.)
As of 8/6/11 at about 6pm PDT 43 people have taken the survey. Here are the results (as of 9/26/11, after eight more votes, the graph didn’t really change much; the 5 to 10 mins and 15 to 20 mins are still way in the lead):
Click on the graph to see a larger image. I think these results are pretty telling. Basically they tell me that different teachers have different comfort levels when it comes to having their students socialize during class. It’s funny because it reminds of conversations I’ve had with my students and one student in particular. I had this student in Science for 6th, 7th and 8th grade. She always got her work done no matter how much she socialized or didn’t socialize. She paid attention in class and participated in class discussions. A wonderful student to have in class. So when I asked her how much time she felt was enough to be on task each period I was surprised to hear her say, “about half.” Half? I thought she’d choose an amount of time that would be way more than half. That left me wondering, if this is what a student who gets all her work done thinks then what do students who don’t get their work done regularly think? Well, it’s obvious. I’ve had students get mad at me when I’d point out that they stopped working because they had already worked for five minutes or less. And they didn’t seem to understand my frustration. I still don’t get that.
The scenario we are looking at here is for those students who cannot seem to socialize and get their work done at the same time. I can have a table of six sixth graders where all six of them are working and socializing. From my observations some of the socializing is about the work being done, usually happens when I get within hearing range, but most of the socializing is not about our work. What ends up happening is that on average two of the six students end up getting their work done completely. On average three of the six students end up getting some of their work done in the same time, and the last one (sometimes two) ends up getting little to none of his or her work done. So I try to encourage students to help each other because although some of them can socialize and get their work done there are those in their tables or teams who cannot.
How do we help students who can’t socialize and get their work done, get their work done and learn? Or is it enough that they are soaking in the learning from their teammates? I struggle with that and there have been years where we’ve accepted that soaking up was happening because of defiant behavior. I can’t force a student to learn but I can help foster an atmosphere where learning is contagious. 🙂
