Michael Linsin, who founded Smart Classroom Management in 2009, says the key to capturing pupils’ attention is to tap into their desire for adventure, laughter, challenge and fascination, writes Wyn Drabble.
Michael Linsin, who founded Smart Classroom Management in 2009, says the key to capturing pupils’ attention is to tap into their desire for adventure, laughter, challenge and fascination, writes Wyn Drabble.
Opinion by Wyn Drabble
OPINION
A report recently released by the Education Review Office says school classroom behaviour must improve. A study found New Zealand school pupils are among the worst-behaved in the OECD.
This came as rather the surprise to me, though I admit my comparative observations are limited to only two wider-worldcities, London and Sydney.
Though I eventually found satisfying fulltime employment at a school in North London, I started out there as a supply teacher. This meant you filled gaps at schools where teachers were absent.
You phoned in early in the morning and found out where you would be going that day and what subject you would be covering. Getting there would invariably involve an hour or so of travel - two buses and two trains - and the pupils you found yourself in front of often vividly displayed why the teacher might have been away.
The first class I ever had to cover was an art class, and when I walked in they were already destroying the furniture - table legs and the backs of chairs were in particularly high demand - and painting the bits in Westham United’s colours, maroon and blue.
Wyn Drabble.
An innocent and newly arrived Kiwi, I asked what on Earth they thought they were doing and they responded in a dismissive, eyeball-rolling sort of teenage manner that they were making “bop sticks”. Yes, I had to ask what bop sticks were, and was told they were for hitting supporters of the opposing team at the match coming up over the weekend.
“What do you do where you come from?” one asked. My answer must have sounded quite lame: “We cheer and clap.”
That was the unruliest classroom I have ever experienced, and I could not help but recall it when I read the latest findings about New Zealand schools. But how was the data gathered, I wondered?
At least Secondary Principals’ Association president Vaughan Couillault made some potential sense of it all to me. He said it was possible New Zealand pupils were less likely than their peers in other countries to tolerate disruptive behaviour so actively reported it. This would, of course, skew the data.
“They’ve got a heightened sense of social justice, and we create an environment where it’s safe for them to say, ‘I don’t like the behaviour of the person sitting next to me’,” he said.
I liked that view, as it was closer to my own observations of New Zealand.
The ERO has naturally made a number of recommendations to improve this dire situation. One of them could perhaps be to read and enact some of the writings of Michael Linsin, who founded Smart Classroom Management in 2009.
He says - this is highly abridged - kids love video games, action movies, snowball fights, skateboards, birthday parties, action sports. They love laughter and thrills, challenge and derring-do; they want to go on adventure park rides and water slides, hang out with their crazy friends and eat pizza seven nights a week. They spend their waking hours thinking about pursuing or engaging in their desires.
The key to capturing pupils’ attention is to tap into four desires, he says: adventure, laughter, challenge and fascination.
“If your classroom doesn’t include these elements, if you’re simply following along with the paint-by-numbers curriculum you’ve been provided, then classroom management will be a never-ending struggle.”
Yes, this is an over-simplified explanation and fails to take into account poverty, hunger, homelessness and countless other horrid contributing factors I could mention, but in the words of Couillault and Linsin, there might be some glimmers of hope.
