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It is the duty of the educator to concern himself with the welfare of every student as if he or she were his own flesh and blood; just as he turns to his own child—out of love and devotion showing fatherly concern and tenderness—so should his feelings be vis-a-vis his own students.
The teacher who is unpunctual becomes responsible for wasting the time of every student in the class—and this increases exponentially, according to the number of students present! And as if this were not enough, halachically he is regarded as one “who does G-d’s work in a fraudulent manner,” as explained in the Shulchan Aruch (Kitzur, 165:12).
How can a teacher, who presumably believes in what he is doing, be late for class? Where is his sense of responsibility for the Torah study neglected by his students, for their precious time that he has squandered? Surely this qualifies as “doing G-d’s work in a fraudulent manner!” And where is his fear of Heaven, if he is able brazenly to disregard an explicit halacha in the Shulchan Aruch).
The students must be left in no doubt as to what makes for modesty in dress. Similarly, very great care must be taken to avoid situations of yichud, (seclusion with a member of the opposite sex not of one’s close family), in accordance with the halacha.
When a student behaves immodestly—she becomes a provocation to the onlooker, and there is no telling where things may lead. Whatever the cause, with her remains the responsibility for what ensues, even if nothing could have been further from her mind. When discussing modesty, this concept—“causing the multitude to stray”—should be thoroughly explored.
In an earlier generation, it was not unknown for a teacher to give a student a patsch—a light smack. Nowadays, however, (unless the teacher who does so is certain that he is doing it for the good of the student, and not just to vent his own anger–) this is forbidden, absolutely forbidden, since we are not allowed to strike a fellow Jew. Experience has taught that laying one’s hands on a student has only negative effects. We should therefore renounce the practice completely.
We must take every opportunity to make the students aware of just how important a concept is contained in the words, “Cleave to His ways,” (Rashi R’eh, 13:5). The Amidah prayer is a “resource” for this purpose, as these examples show: You are a warrior—the child must emulate the Creator and strive to be a warrior, to prevail over its “yetzer hara,” (evil impulse). Who revives the dead— he must strive to revive the person who is spiritually dead—specifically, the wicked, who even in his lifetime is considered to be dead, (Berachot, 18b). But this has to be done with the purest of motives, and when this is the case, the fact will be borne in upon the other so strongly that he will be helped to change his ways.
If we are informed that a Jewish child is in mortal danger, we are duty-bound to try and save it— failure to do so, G-d forbid, is a transgression of the commandment: “Do not stand idly by when your neighbor is in mortal danger,” (Kedoshim, 19:16). Now if the Torah makes salvation of the body such a sacred obligation, can salvation of the soul be of a lower order! Are we not taught that one who leads another to sin is guilty of a greater wrong than one who takes his life? (Bamidbar Rabba, 21:5). If this is the case, even more than what threatens flesh and blood, must we fear what threatens the soul. The saving of a Jewish soul brings with it infinite responsibilities—and a level of merit and reward commensurate with such a deed. On the other hand, one should never think one’s efforts are wasted, G-d forbid, for to save even one Jewish soul is to save an entire world.
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Classroom Management and Loss of Time at the Lesson Start: A Preliminary Study Timo Saloviita
Introduction
The lesson start is a transition period in which both students and teachers enter the classroom and orient themselves to the commencing class. Starts have been identified as typical moments in which teachers have difficulties in attracting students’ attention (Jones & Jones, 2007, 223). Some time is always required to get the teaching underway. Lesson beginnings also have been used to exemplify the “hidden agenda” of school life in the sense that they have often turned into instances of meaningless waiting. The concept of hidden agenda was introduced by Philip Jackson in his book “Life in Classrooms” in 1968. He described the school as a place where the virtue of patience was exercised through learning to suffer in silence during the dreary waiting periods characterising typical school life (Jackson, 1990, 18). Jackson’s ideas have achieved empirical support through other empirical studies concerning school life. Walberg, Niemic and Frederic (1994) made a distinction between allocated, engaged, and productive time. Allocated time is the time assigned by curricula for learning. Engaged time means time on task. Productive time is the proportion of engaged time in which the student is really learning with high success. Yair (2000) observed in a study of 865 participants that the students were engaged with their lessons about half the total class time. Weinstein and Mignano (2003, 158) estimated that productive learning time cannot be more than 33% of the total time used in school. Smith (2000) studied the fragmentation of annual instruction time in United States schools. She reported that the percentage of lesson time that classes spent on noninstructional activities was 23%. She also found great differences between teachers.
Because of the difference between engaged time and productive time, the relation between learning outcomes and engaged time has remained at a moderate level, rising to an effect size of .38 (Hattie, 2009, 184). However, the connection between learning time and learning is well established, and several methods have been sought to extend the time available for meaningful learning (Walberg, Niemic and Frederic, 1994). Thus far lesson starts have not been separately studied. This study was carried out in order to fill this gap and to discover what really happens during the first minutes after the programmed lesson start, and how much time is wasted during this transition period.
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Results
At the time when the lesson was scheduled to begin, the teacher was present in 56% of cases and all students in 35% of cases. Only in every fifth classroom were both teachers and students present at the scheduled time. On average, the teacher was two minutes late and the lesson started six minutes late, counted from the assigned time. Some teachers spent the breaktime in the classroom and were therefore immediately present at the lesson start. If this did not happen, the teacher came in four minutes late on average and the lesson began seven minutes late. The maximum delay was 15 minutes, observed in four cases.
Management Procedures and Typical Problems
In order to get the students to settle down for the lesson teachers used several means. Some teachers asked the students to stand up. This happened most often (44%) in grade levels one to three, less frequently in grade levels five to six (31%) and only rarely (9%) in grade levels seven to nine. If the students were asked to stand, in most cases (77%) they were allowed to sit down only after a sign was given by the teacher. Other means used were verbally prompting pupils to go to their own desks (57%) and requesting silence (47%). Teachers praised students in 44% of cases and used some punishment in 3% of cases before they started the lesson. Typical problems in the classroom immediately at the start of the lesson were talking (53%), lack of attention (43%), and students not sitting in their seats (21%). The observers were generally satisfied with the level of order at the beginning of the lessons: 84% agreed with the statement “The lesson began without delay and in good order”, 95% disagreed with the notion “The teacher had difficulties calming the class down”, and 87% agreed that “The teacher used effective methods to manage the classroom”. The three measures of classroom disturbance had no statistically significant association with any measured background variable, which were grade level from one to nine, classroom type (whether special or mainstream class), number of students in the classroom from one to 32, presence of the classroom assistant in the classroom, sex of the teacher, weekday, time of day of the lesson, or subject of the lesson. Of these variables group size is of special interest because teachers generally agree that small groups are easier to manage than large groups. In this study the correlation of group size with the delay of lesson start was r = .032, with the Classroom Order Scale r = .045, and with the Observed Disturbances Scale r = -.050 indicating no differences in relation to group size.
Discussion
A typical organization of the school day in Finland consists of single 45-minute periods with a break of 15 minutes between the periods. This is determined by the Decree on Basic Education (1998) according to which at least 45 minutes must be used for instruction in each school hour. During the break time the pupils typically go out to the school yard. Half an hour is typically set aside for lunch and is included in a longer break.
Lesson endings and lesson starts are usually signalled in Finnish schools by bell rings separated by 15 minutes. In actual practice these bell rings mostly signal the beginning and end of break time, not lesson starts. In a few schools the bells ring to signal the end of break time, and then, after two minutes, the beginning of lessons. Only these schools obviously obey the rule laid down by school legislation on the minimum duration of the lessons. In addition, in some schools the bell rings only to signal the end of break time, while the teacher decides the end of the lesson. The loss of time at the lesson starts seems small, but when it accumulates, the total amount grows abundantly. If six minutes instructional time is lost in every lesson start, it grows during one week to approximately 150 minutes and during the whole school year to 5700 minutes or 127 lessons of each 45 minutes. This equals five full weeks of school attendance.
In order to save more classroom time for efficient instruction, the lesson starts are one important part of the school day in need of restructuring. The practice of two bell rings, the first indicating the end of break time and the second the lesson start, should be adopted generally. Second, working practices and routines should be introduced to ease the start of the lessons. When considering lesson starts it seems that the children’s behavioural disturbances are not so much the problem, neither group size. More important seem to be the routines adopted by the teacher. The classroom management literature has developed recommendations for how best to start lessons so that disturbances are minimized (Jones & Jones,2007, 223-224). Using these recommendations it should be possible to add more instructional time to schooling and accordingly achieve better learning outcomes. Because the lesson starts have been only minimally researched, replication studies are needed to validate the results of the present study. It is recommended that future studies use interrater assessment by means of a second observer to evaluate the accuracy of observations. Thus far the classroom management literature has given some attention to the importance of lesson starts. However, empirical research concerning the outcomes of various recommendations concerning lesson starts is still mainly lacking. The present study was intended to function as a kind of pilot study to generate interest in this somewhat neglected corner of classroom management literature.
European Educational Research Journal 2(4):167-170 October 2013
DOI:10.12973/eu-jer.2.4.167
License: CC BY
