The Unreliable Narrator
An expression that has been popping up in many of the blogs by new TFA corps members is “behavior narration.” This is, evidently, the big new ‘thing’ that the new TFAers are leaning as a classroom management tool.
Back in 1991 when I was a CM, myself, the first edition of the book ‘Assertive Discipline’ was the guide that our classroom management training was based on. Back then the big thing was writing students names on the board for the first consequence and putting a check by the name for the second consequence. This technique was such a disaster, for a lot of reasons I won’t go into right now, but let’s just say that in later editions of ‘Assertive Discipline,’ Lee Canter denounced that technique that he once considered so vital.
So after a little research I found that Lee Canter is still out there and wrote the small guidebook for TFA in which this ‘behavior narration’ technique is suggested. Here is an excerpt from that guidebook:
Back in 1991 when I was a CM, myself, the first edition of the book ‘Assertive Discipline’ was the guide that our classroom management training was based on. Back then the big thing was writing students names on the board for the first consequence and putting a check by the name for the second consequence. This technique was such a disaster, for a lot of reasons I won’t go into right now, but let’s just say that in later editions of ‘Assertive Discipline,’ Lee Canter denounced that technique that he once considered so vital.
So after a little research I found that Lee Canter is still out there and wrote the small guidebook for TFA in which this ‘behavior narration’ technique is suggested. Here is an excerpt from that guidebook:
When you finish giving directions to the students, you immediately monitor the class looking for