Engaging Students and Creating a Community in the Classroom

What is our purpose?  As believers and followers of Christ, our purpose is to bring others to closer to Christ

Our classroom may be the only experience of Church that some of our students will ever have

 We have to realize that the students sitting in our classrooms are experiencing so many things in their lives:  Family problems  Parental divorce  Identity seeking  Making friends  Falling in love/infatuation  Peer pressure  Bullying and cyberbullying  Thoughts of worthlessness and suicide

According to psychology, all children and teenagers want two basic things: to be valued and heard They want to know that others, especially adults, value who they are and that what they say matters Our focus as teachers should be on the students and their needs

Practical Steps

Building rapport  Get to know your students.  Call them by name.  Build relationships.  Earn their trust.

Start class with meditation time also known as “mindfulness” or “quiet time”  Visitacion Valley Middle School (SF)  50% reduction in suspensions  60% reduction in truancy .5% increase in overall grade point average

Facilitation  Show them that you value them and hear them. Affirm their responses.  Example: A head nod, rephrase the response, or acknowledge the response: “Thank you for sharing.”  Take it a step further: connect students’ responses in order to build community  Example: “Cindy, how do you relate to what John shared?”

Make it relatable  As much as possible, relate the material to their lives.

Short Attention Spans  Let’s change it up.  Include different activities to keep their attention.  Video clips, songs, group discussions, skits, art projects, journaling, etc.  Use technology.  Example: Your homework is to tweet a vocabulary word. Create a short film on vine for history homework.

Empowering Students  God trusts us, his children, in being co- creators with him. Let’s do the same with our children.  Give them options within the learning process  Example: Do you want to do group discussions today or reflect on a movie clip?

Teachers’ Aides  What if we gave our teachers’ aides greater responsibilities?

Dealing with Challenging Behaviors  Recognize that every behavior has a function. The three functions of behavior are:  Positive reinforcement: trying to gain something  Negative reinforcement: trying to escape/avoid something  Sensory regulation/stimulation: trying to increase or decrease stimulation  Example: If a student is continually tapping his pencil, he may want the teacher’s attention or his body might be telling him that he wants to move around.

Seek to understand the function of the behavior  Often, when students engage in challenging behavior, it results in them being sent to time-out, the principal’s office, or even suspension. However, these punishments contribute to what the student wants- escaping or avoiding the aversive task. The consequence is actually desirable for and so the behavior is likely to continue  Punishment teaches a student what not to do; it doesn’t teach a student what to do instead

Replacement Behaviors  Try to understand the function behind their behavior and suggest a replacement behavior that fulfills the same goal  Example: Johnny is hitting his classmates to achieve peer attention. Rather than punish his behavior, teach him to tap his peers on the shoulder. He achieves the same function using an appropriate behavior

Replacement Behaviors  In instances where a student is trying to avoid or escape a task, understand why the task is aversive.  For example, Yolanda, is having trouble speaking English, hates being in circle time with her peers and fidgets and screams to leave the circle. Rather than allow her to leave the circle, the teacher changes the activity to repeat key words in Spanish, ask her individual questions in Spanish, and builds in hand movements into the activity so Yolanda can participate.  It’s important to have a team. Work with your school counselor, school psychologist, resource specialist, other catechists, etc.

Jesus is our model. Seek to understand.

Thank you! Ynez Lizarraga Associate Director for Youth Ministry Archdiocese of San Francisco