Break The Rules (Occasionally)

In my world consistency is important. If I make a rule, I enforce it. Structure works, it makes it obvious that I’m being fair, my students feel safe and endless arguments are avoided. After all if I forget a rule my students will remind me. They are excellent rule keepers (even if they don’t always apply them to themselves) and woe and betide anyone that decides to break them.

But that in itself makes life complicated. After all, as every teenager knows there are some rules that are meant to be broken. One day my students will go into mainstream lessons where other students WILL most certainly be surreptitiously breaking rules discretely – they will pass a note to their friends, they will chew a piece of gum, they will rock on their chair. Somehow it’s essential that my students learn to tolerate this. And that is not an easy mission.

It’s an ongoing work in progress; we work on whispering the broken rule to members of support staff or writing it on a post-it note to give it to the teacher at the end. The thought of not reporting it is, for many, too hideous a thought to contemplate, so we strive to achieve anything but reporting it out loud to the teacher in front of the class and thus receiving death stares from every other student in the room!

However, this comes with advantages. If we’re careful we can flip it and use it. My students find listening hard. There are a million and one tiny details competing for their attention. A piece of paper flapping in the corner, another student fidgeting under the desk, the sound of the wind in the trees – if I want their attention I have to work for it. And there is one thing I know that is sure to get it – yes you’ve got it, a little bit of rule-breaking!

So when I taught George’s Marvellous Medicine, and I needed them to focus on listening to just how tall Grandma was becoming – I stood on a chair on a table, whilst staging the whole event by putting a look-out at the classroom door, just in case the headmaster happened to walk past. And whilst teaching Harry Potter and learning to fly – I once again stood on said table, broomstick in hand before jumping (sorry flying) off and racing around the classroom at top speed. I ended by swearing my students to silence and telling them it was a secret. Great excitement ensued. We had collaboratively broken the rules!

Of course, they are the world’s worst kept secrets in history; along with the time I pretended to be a goat and head-butted them (I now have no recollection of why), these are the tales with which they regale our visitors whilst extracting the promise from them not to tell the headmaster. They are probably the lessons they remembered the most, their attention was gained, differentiation achieved. Once again, without a worksheet in sight!

So go on, what are you waiting for, give your students a lesson to remember; break a few rules! But shhh, don’t tell the headteacher…..

This is a re-blog post originally posted by funASDteacher and published with kind permission.

The original post can be found here.

You can read further posts by funASDteacher by clicking here

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