Ok, I've been waxing poetic about how wonderful and amazing WBT is and has been, and I've even mentioned my "tough" group before, but I just need a little encouragement and maybe a tip or two. (I'll be re-reading TCT next!)

My most challenging class meets 7th period. I have 23-25 ESOL students in a relatively smallish room (we barely all fit). They're 8th graders, intermediate English proficiency, and I'm teaching them English (ie writing). I have at least 5 strong personalities in there, and a good majority are happy to get pulled into their vortex of behaviors. The biggest problem is of course talking.

To illustrate, when I first started WBT, I left HW on there for over 2 weeks straight, and this class NEVER won, not even one time. Sometimes I'd let them earn less HW, but never (that I can remember) earned no HW. Perhaps I made an error there. But, even though there were students who I could've given a point to, enough of them were talking when they're not supposed to that I just could not do it. This bunch talks to each other no matter whether I'm looking right at them and going through the whole business of giving myself a point and reinforcing rule 2 or not. They talk when I'm facing them, they talk when I'm writing notes on the board, they just can't stop talking.

Well, eventually, one of my lead talkers saw me in the hall and asked if we could not play the game because he didn't want any more HW (even though I don't think he was doing it anyway). So that day, I put talk time up knowing there was absolutely no way they as a group could win, and they didn't. Still no effect. I tried offering them the ability to sit at table groups - no dice.

So, for the past two days, I tried identifying the rule breakers and gave them practice cards....by the end of class today, I had a combined group of 6 - some who didn't bring their signed slip back plus new ones.....

Meanwhile, I have seen more positive behavior from 2 others who could be leaders, so all is not lost.

I'm seeing such good things everywhere else, I just want to see it here too. Maybe I rushed things, or didn't follow all the steps, but I'm going to hang in there and keep at it.

Tomorrow I think I'll introduce "Please stop" and see how that works....

Okay ... you're doing fine, just keep steering a steady course ... give the whole system some time and don't change anything too quickly. You might not even start "Please, stop" yet ... the last thing you want to do is throw new techniques at this class to see what will work ... keep going, no new techniques for another week ... and, in the meantime, look through the "Industrial Strength Whole Brain Teaching" ebook ... we designed this system for the toughest of the tough classes ... and Jackie Pedersen piloted the program at a middle school that had a 42% suspension rate ... yes, you read that right ... 4 kids out of every 10 had suspension time. We know this system works ... but it is our last line of defence ... so, go to it when you've gone slowly through everything else ... or, jump into it now ... but stick with it!

Well, I put HW back on the scoreboard today (2 pages) and by the end of the period they'd earned 5 pages....but I'm hanging in there and actually smiling because of what else I had them do for me.....

I gave them each an index card and asked them to put their own name in the middle and the names of 4 friends from the classroom who'd they'd invite to a party...they really enjoyed that (if they only knew how I plan to use that information)! Then I had them turn it over and make two columns marked "yes" and "no" and asked them to list things under "yes" that they'd like to see on the scoreboard, and things they didn't want to see under "no"....Now I feel I have plenty of ammunition to begin again next week.

First thing to happen is seat changes based on friendships - they more troublesome you are, the more likely to be separated from those friends. I'll see how that impacts them next week. I also discovered that they are motivated by music, so maybe by sometime next week I'll switch to "Keep the DJ Happy"....

I love the fact that with WBT, there's always another card to play...knowing that helps me get through this challenging period.

It also helped that I was able to play games with my good periods! They loved playing Vocabulary Roll from the Fred Jones website. I let them play in groups and awarded points based on answers. I expect to see positive results next week on the quiz!

OH MY GOODNESS! YOU SIMPLY WILL NOT BELIEVE WHAT HAPPENED TODAY!

First, some background. Following up on my previous posts, I implemented some ideas from regular WBT, but knowing I also needed to borrow some from Industrial Strength, I did have new seats for my class making sure that each "leader" was at their own group table and that no one was sitting next to anyone they wanted. I also introduced Power Detention cards along with some of "my" music (bagpipes, broadway tunes, bluegrass, etc) and explained the "whole enchilada". Needless to say, kids earned detention and have served it - even though I had to make arragements with an 8th grade teacher (also doing WBT) to be my lunch detention enforcer....

At the end of thier detention, I've been taking a few minutes to have "teacher talk" with them... you know...."I'm not your enemy. You choose to make me the enemy." etc.

Well, yesterday, NO ONE earned a detention AND they finally won their first piece of candy (you wouldn't believe how hard they had to work for it or how excited they were about it.) Then today I had 2 leaders track me down during school before their class to ask if they could come and "hang out" with me after school.

That is totally incredible! The part about the leaders tracking you down is so wonderful ... wow! Thanks for the best present I've had on a Friday in a long, long time!