The professional development that I have sat through lately has been on writing curriculum. While writing curriculum is great, it doesn’t meet the needs that I currently have: the Covid bubble of students.
When Covid struck and schools were shut down in 2020, we had entire groups of students who suddenly were moved along with gaps missing in education and their social emotional development. The years that followed were about social distancing and maintaining a separate space, but we still failed to teach them how to interact with their peers.
Now that we are back to a somewhat normal schedule, we still have educational gaps and students who do not know how to deal with conflict in social environments. Their way of dealing with conflict is disruption in the classroom environment and screaming. Yes. Middle school students screaming across the room at one another in the middle of class. And it has happened on multiple occasions.
Dare I mention the addiction to TikTok? The app that so many became addicted to during the quarantine. They are so addicted that they forget they are in class and start dancing.
Our professional development was to adapt lessons to overcome the missed learning, but we did not have any on how to help these students adapt to a normal environment. I still have outbursts of “Corona virus” anytime a student sneezes or coughs to clear their throat. It is now a joke and form of bullying. Despite trying to teach students the right and wrong of being in the classroom, students still fail to understand the importance of an education. Their mindset is that they will be passed along regardless of knowledge, and because so many failed to turn in assignments when quarantined, but were allowed to do so, they don’t see the connection between assignments and success. They lack the intrinsic motivation to be successful. Even extrinsic rewards do not motivate them to do well.
Through this year, our admin has been trying to find ways to motivate students by having Honor Roll rewards and behavior rewards, but honestly, some do not care and would rather not have the rewards. Are these students problematic? Not all the time. They just refuse to do their work and at times, they can’t sit still or quiet in the classroom. Staying in when others get an extra recess? It’s nothing for them. They don’t care because they are getting their normal recess. Taking away canteen time? No big deal. They didn’t have money for it anyhow. Or they can just get a friend to buy for them. Now if the school decided to limit the amount that one student could purchase like they do with Elementary, that might change things, but I still doubt it.
What we need is how to motivate these students who give up completely.
What about you? What professional development do you wish you had?
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