One of my students this year has some major learning disabilities. There was discussion about moving him to a special education class but, for a variety of reasons (including the fact I had developed a solid relationship with him), we decided that keeping him in my class would be the best place for him.

He’s a good kid. One of his challenges is having difficulties focusing, and I’ve been struggling to figure out what I could need to help him do his work without necessarily having to check-in with him constantly. Nothing I had tried worked.

Last week he and I talked about the issue again. I told him that I wanted to try-out something new — every time I gave the class an assignment, I would give him full credit if he completed half of it — but only if he got right to work on it and I didn’t need to remind him to get to work. He seemed pretty excited about the idea, and readily agreed.

Much to my surprise, it worked beautifully. During the entire week, he was very focused. The one or two times he appeared distracted, I only had to say, “remember our agreement,” and he immediately got on task.

Each Friday I have students write a reflection responding to a question. Yesterday, the question was, “What was one thing you did very well this week and why do you think you did it so well?”

This student’s response was:

“I made my agreement with Mr. Ferlazzo and kept it. It was something I knew I could do.”

Assuming this continues to go well, in a few weeks I’ll consider talking with him about gradually moving up the expectations.

Making individual “deals” with students, I’ve found, is a key to a successful classroom (see “I’ll Work If You Give Me Candy”).

Have you had similar experiences?

Alice Mercer and I (with Alice being the lead) will be co-facilitators of an online discussion group on classroom management issues hosted at Edutopia. It just “opened” today.

Feel free to jump in the present discussions on use of the phrase “shut-up” and on sharing how you control your temper in the classroom. Or start another topic!

My mainstream ninth-grade English class has been really exceptional so far this year — very hardworking and clearly wanting to learn. They were the ones who responded so positively to the lessons on “exercising your brain.” I haven’t experienced the challenges I had with last year’s class.

Yesterday, though, the ferocious rainstorm that drenched northern California “set-off” kids in many classes at our school, and my ninth-grade class was no exception. There were several incidents of students throwing paper balls or markers at each other — nothing too terrible, but still unacceptable and the first kind of behavior issues I’ve had to deal with this year.

Every ounce of my being wanted to really “tell-off” and punish students (which I’ve certainly done on occasion), but I knew that kind of reaction never works, so I held my tongue and told them we’d talk about it today.

I began the class today calmly telling students that I was disappointed in what happened yesterday, though I didn’t “name names.” I pointed out how positively I’ve felt about them because of how they’ve handled themselves this year and how hard they’ve worked, and that they’ve heard me speak highly of them to other teachers and administrators. I reminded them about the “marshmallow” story we had discussed, and how important having self-control is to their future.

I wasn’t planning on ending my very, very brief talk with a question — I generally believe you shouldn’t ask the whole class questions in a situation like this unless you’re pretty darn positive you’re going to get the response you want. However, it just came out:

“Can I count on this not happening again?”

Much to my surprise, I immediate heard five students say “yes” — the five boys who had been the ones directly responsible for the paper and marker-throwing the previous day.

In terms of effectiveness, I suspect handling things this way is going to have a much more postive longer-term impact than an angry reaction and punishment would have the previous day. It’s probably a good argument for us teachers to have some self-control, too — something I’m not always successful at displaying…