Classroom Behavior in Fires in the Bathroom
by Kathleen Cushman
reply by Shu Shi

“One behavior may carry a number of meanings. For example, students give a lot of reasons for putting their heads down on their desks: They may be physically ill, tired or sleepy, frustrated, angry or stressed, daydreaming, depressed, bored, or just confused”. —Cushman

I’m a student teacher and an observer. I often see my students sitting on the ground rock their bodies to and fro when listening to the lecture. They are supposed to sit on a classroom rug, but we don’t have one, so they have to sit on the firm ground for over 30 minutes. That’s the reason why these students cannot sit still: they are physically ill and tired. Some boys sitting on the back area are higher than peers. If they want to stretch their legs, they just lie down on the floor, and of course the teacher will be very angry.
No specific rules talk about how to deal with this situation in our classroom, and students don’t know how to do. Most decorations in the classroom, such as colorful vocabulary bank, math wall, and some other rules about how to revise students’ drafts and how to decode a non-fiction text, are all about academic knowledge. Sometimes, the teacher just assumes that these students get bored because they have the short span of attention. Most of the time, the teacher would assume that the more time the teacher spends on teaching the academic knowledge, the more students will be engaged in the class. The reproach like “We don’t have time to discuss how to behave like a 5th grade student/high school student, you should know how to behave!” is often heard in the classroom, especially when the teaching pace is fast or when the time almost runs out. However, students don’t think the teacher doesn’t have time to pause and discuss the classroom behavior; instead, they will consider this misbehavior as acceptable based on teacher’s comments. It’s too often to see that students disrupt the classroom because of certain pardonable reasons (such as the intention of stretching their bodies); however, the teacher doesn’t dig into students’ real meanings behind the behavior, teachers either merely tell students not to do it right now, or ask a rhetorical questions (Don’t you think it’s inappropriate for you to shout out before raising your hand?) to warn students. My suggestion is it would be better if the teacher pauses and discusses the classroom behavior with the whole class and writes the rules regarding to this misbehavior and asks students to add the list; or the teacher could have a private conversation with the misbehaved student after school, but it should be resolved in that day, not in a couple of days, so that the student would know his behavior is absolutely not acceptable. Last but not the least, the teacher should tell students what they can do.