Mildred

Mildred is the captain of the girl's basketball team. She is rough. She had to be rough because she was thrown around physically by her abusive parents in a double wide trailer growing up. One day I learn that one of the walls in Mildred's trailer has a gaping hole in it, covered with plastic.

I sense on this first day of class that that Mildred would probably have little chance in her life to leave that trailer and stay in a five star hotel in Paris on a vacation. Mildred may not even be sure what I teach.

I have a problem, because Mildred's swagger upon first entering my classroom is saying, "I am going to take over this class, and bring five of my friends with me, and that is the way it is going to be."

Mildred just doesn't go to her seat. She walks around a little, not unlike an animal staking out new territory by peeing on things. Mildred is peeing, but not in the way Susie Gross means.

Have you ever taught a Mildred? Isn't it fun?

If in this moment I say to myself, "I am going to really love Mildred", it is a futile act. Mildred has not experienced enough love growing up to know how to even respond to it. Instead, I need a technique, a process, for dealing with Mildred in a specific way. I have two possible scenarios from which to choose:

Scenario 1:

"Mildred, sit down now. We are going to start class."

She doesn't. What do I do? Wag my finger in her face? Raise my voice? The class senses my indecisiveness. Mildred finally sits down, but not after establishing a negative mood in my classroom on the first day of class.

That was her purpose, because Mildred is comfortable in a negative mood. She thinks confronting people is a normal activity. She sits down, having displayed her power. You teach poorly the rest of the period, because Mildred is passively controlling the classroom via her aggression. Mildred wins.

What happened in this scenario? I allowed Mildred to bring her Personality A into my classroom, the personality she uses in all her classes and the one which will eventually cause her to drop out of high school before she graduates because it simply won't work for her in schools.

Is there a Personality B that you can develop with Mildred so that this doesn't happen? Is it possible for teachers in all subjects to interact in such a way with their students that the Mildreds of the world want to stay in school instead of dropping out?

Scenario 2:

When I greet Mildred at the door and sense her game, even though I know nothing about her, I sense that she may be "the one" who needs to learn some discipline at this point in the year a lot more than she needs to learn some French.

So when the students begin filling out their questionnaires, I casually sit down next to her and say, "Hi Mildred! What sport (activity, etc.) do you do?"

The reason I ask about sports is because a large part of teenagers' personalities are centered around sports. It is a good way for them to get a workable identity in school. I have found that well over 50% of the kids, in eighth grade at least, when I do PQA with them, tell me about their sports first. It's what they do.

If Mildred tells me that she doesn't play sports, I find out one thing she does. If needed, I stay with Mildred for the filling out of the questionnaire, just sitting close by engaging her in idle conversation every few minutes, visiting with other students if possible, but keeping my focus on her on this first day of class.

The class is seated alphabetically (in a big rectangle around the room) to prevent Mildred from establishing a "cell" with her friends.

When I collect the questionnaires, I first look at Mildred's questionnaire and bring her sport to the attention of the class. I turn this into a positive for both of us in the following way:

I start in English, "Mildred, you play basketball? That is so cool. I used to play basketball some but I wasn't very good."

Remember, this isn't about teaching French. It is about establishing firm discipline in the classroom, a prerequisite to success in any classroom, and doing so via personalization. Then I say in the target language:

"Classe, Mildred joue au basket!/Class, Mildred plays basketball!"

The students understand "class" because it is a cognate, and "Mildred" because I say it in English, but not "joue" so I write down:

joue au basket – plays basketball.

Now I stay there. I circle that expression really slowly using the question words, pausing and pointing, going slowly, not moving off the sentence until it comes to a natural stopping point. It is a simple sentence and everybody gets it because I am following the visual metaphor offered on page 108 of the Conclusions section of TPRS in a Year!

My focus is not on the target language now, it is on Mildred. I am neutralizing her by making her the center of attention. I whisper in English to her, "What position do you play?" She says point guard. This fact becomes a fact of supreme importance to me as I continue with this super-slow circling.

By now I have a basketball in my hand. I have created a kind of tension around the basketball. Will I hand it to her as I continue around the room circling? Mildred and the class sense that she will get that basketball if she keeps paying attention.

By my feigning a few handoffs to Mildred, but each time withdrawing the ball, the kids begin to understand that Mildred won't get the ball until she responds successfully with "yes" or "no" to me in French.

What have I done by this? By talking about Mildred in the target language, I have forced Mildred to pay attention to me because I am talking about her and because I am so impressed that she is the point guard on the basketball team.

People love to hear how great they are, and Mildred is no exception. I am beginning to own Mildred, the person who came into my classroom intending to own me.

And, in fact, Mildred buys into the whole thing. She has no idea that her Personality A is getting neutralized, and that her Personality B is being built. She gets the ball when the circling naturally dies down. I then interest myself in another student's sport or activity, but not before making strong and meaningful eye contact with Mildred when handing her the ball about who is in charge of this class.

What if Mildred decides to chuck the ball to a friend or toss it up and down? I simply take it and put it in the cabinet. When Mildred comes into class the next day, she goes straight to my cabinet where she gets "her" basketball. She is shocked when I allow her to do that, but she doesn't know that I am training her in her new personality. She also knows that the minute she disrupts class with the ball, it is gone.

I return often to Mildred these first few weeks, circling the simplest of sentences about her, keeping her involved, smiling, inviting her to accept this new Personality B – that of an important athlete in the school who pays attention in French class.

By the end of the week I have a naming ceremony using a small plastic sword from Wal-Mart, in which Mildred is dubbed in English (shoulder, other shoulder, top of head – that idea from Robyn Valdizon, thanks Robyn) "Best Point Guard in the History of Colorado High School Basketball," a name she will keep (spoken in English) all year.

I will use this name in all sorts of PQA and extended PQA activities, in stories, and in readings. The Best Point Guard in the History of Colorado High School Basketball needs to learn how to read French to know what great things she has done on the court as described in the readings I have created about her Personality B. As long as I keep Mildred engaged and important, she doesn't relapse into Personality A.

By always returning the focus to this wonderful basketball star (the greatest in the history of Colorado high school basketball!) and this great French student, Mildred buys into whatever I do. I win.

Personality B sets in fully by the end of the second week. The problem is solved, not by my loving Mildred, but by my doing a specific, designed, activity directed right at her in the first few classes of the year.

84652 From: Roberta Young

Ben,

That is such a wonderful and helpful posting! It's tremendously useful for me to remind myself of your message on a regular basis. It also reminds me of things I read in the book "A Framework for Understanding Poverty" (which, by the way, I also found very helpful and I recommend to other tprs'ers).

I'm not sure but do you have any special tricks or suggestions for dealing with a class that contains 2, 3, or more Mildreds?

Roberta Young

84672 From: "Ben Slavic"

Ha ha! two or three Mildreds! Very funny. And yet it happens in some schools where the school culture has allowed it.

The foundation of any teaching method is classroom discipline. It is not addressed enough in TPRS workshops. Classroom discipline is integrally connected to and emerges from the idea of personalization. It is a cooperative, not a confrontive, process. In a class of thirty students, it is the sum of thirty agreements made between one teacher and one student thirty times.

However, these agreements cannot be written down. Written contracts are made and broken every day in schools. They don't work, because the students are forced into them. Students do not enter upon written contractual agreements with a teacher out of free will, therefore contracts must fail, as they are one-sided, things that the teacher wants.

In point of fact, classroom discipline is an invisible thing. It is the result of an acceptance by the student of a feeling of unconditional positive regard from the instructor. This unconditional positive regard obviates the student's need to act out in the classroom. As such, classroom discipline cannot be the result of threats, or negativity of any kind.

The specific things that I can think of saying (others will have to add) about multiple Mildreds are to SPLIT THEM APART physically via alphabetical or however you do your seating chart. I use the alphabet because they don't see it as a planned attempt to separate them from their friends, but if the alphabetical seating still allows two Mildreds to be in close proximity to each other, I casually seat them in places where they cannot see each other. I work very hard at this seating because it works.

Mildred 1 soon forgets about Mildred 2 if Mildred 2 is in the furthest most out-of-contact seat in the room from Mildred 1. By the end of the first week of school I have identified the Mildreds and they are so far apart as a result of my meticulous pre-emptive planning that they are a non-factor. Any social group that hangs together meets the same fate - the kids become separate entities in my classroom and their group has no power.

I spend most of my first week energy on two things: 1) putting a name with a face and getting to know that face via a questionnaire, MEMORIZING AT LEAST ONE FACT from the questionnaire about the kid's interests outside of my classroom and then BRINGING IT INTO PQA, thus sending the message to the kid that THEY ARE IMPORTANT, and 2) sensing and proactively dealing with pairs or groups of kids who may not understand that I, not them, control the flow of ALL discussion in my room at all times.

Of course, the arrangement of the desks in some classrooms may prevent this, if the room is small with a lot of kids in it. For that reason for years now I insist that my employers provide me with tables and chairs. I place the tables in a rectangular form, minus the fourth side of the rectangle behind me. This gives me my section at the front of the room and a huge open space for teaching to the eyes, acting, moving around, swooping, etc. I never bump into desks trying to get to a kid who needs getting to. We hardly need the tables since we are doing CI all the time, but we need them a little for writing, maybe 10% of the time. But I can get four kids behind one table seated close to each other left to right, which REALLY SAVES SPACE.

The kids learn quickly that this is a class in paying attention with their ears so I have them put ALL BACKPACKS, ETC. INCLUDING PENCILS OVER ON A SIDE COUNTER WHEN THEY COME IN SO THERE IS NO DOODLING, PENCIL TAPPING, COIN TAPPING (don't go there with me) and no clutter. (Of course, if a kid NEEDS to take notes, I of course let them. After a week of PQA, we are learning so fast with our ears that they begin to look like an idiot, understanding the unspoken message from me which is you can't learn this stuff by writing, kid.)

So, and I will have done this by the end of just three or four classes, I will have identified the Mildreds, any "pairs" of groups of friends ( the pairs are the worst so I am really on that) and Mildred 1 will be in the first seat of the three sided rectangle to my left, with her cohort Mildred 2 on the corner on the same side of the rectangle 10 students away so the Mildreds cannot see each other, since they are facing in the same direction and are on opposite ends of that line of the rectangle. Then Mildred 3 (God help us!) is somewhere else, as distant from the other two as possible. I have the middle of the room to do my famous swoop move on any kid who tries to contact a friend when I am teaching. I got the swoop, which is a form of teaching to the eyes multiplied by 100, from observing Susie back in her classroom in Colorado Springs a few years ago. She swoops on kids and when she is done, they have become their pure angelic selves. I never could hear what she said to them, but I could guess. And all with that great Susie smile!

Seating kids is an art. But if we are working on building a team in the room, why should the members of the team all be facing us, like we are lecturing? We are NOT lecturing, we are playing and each of us must see the other, except the Mildreds. On my first day of work at Myrtle Beach High School in South Carolina (Go Gamecocks! – yea, Candy!) many years ago, my principal saw that I had the kids in a circle. He called me to his office and lectured me on the need for rows and desks, and how the kids needed something to "press down on". I tried to explain to him that I was teaching a language, but he didn't go for it. God bless that man. He had no idea of how we learn languages. He never heard of Va Va Voom Vygotsky and Blaine Ray of the Three Hundred Yard Drives and Keeper of the Flame of the Heart Laurie Clarcq and the French Knight Jason Fritze and Lynette de Chicago. That guy thought discipline was a thing of force, not cooperation.

So the answer to multiple Mildreds lies in the seating chart to some degree but it is in no way the main thing! It is merely adjunctive to THE MAIN THING - the building of a personality (B in my post) that works for Mildred and makes her not want to bring her other personality (A in my post).

I might add here that you take on only ONE MILDRED AT A TIME. Take them in reverse order of potential disruptiveness.— after a few weeks, with all the Mildreds seated way apart, and with pairs and groups broken up, and with all that personalized stuff being discussed, made into little scenes, PQA being extended, the kids speaking English only in response to your circled questions (and then only a few words, like three at the most) or after your frequent question "What does ___ mean?", you will be just fine. But if you don't, don your battle gear. Because in a month, it's going to be too late to handle those Mildreds.

A final thought, administrators will take us to task if we don't go to the parents. Riiight! How many times does going to the parents turn the key? It may SHUT MILDRED DOWN, because after a parent conference Mildred lives in fear of some kind of punishment (and on this planet right now some very serious forms of punishment!). But our job as teachers, in my view, is not to SHUT KIDS DOWN, but rather to GIVE THEM A REASON TO GET UP IN THE MORNING. That is how you really deal with Multiple Mildred Syndrome.

Ben Slavic Littleton, CO

84669 From: "mensatheclown"

Ben:

You mention having your students complete a questionnaire. In English? What kinds of questions do you ask?

I really appreciated your long description of the specific actions you take with a potentially disruptive student. It's easy to say "love your students," but warm fuzzies alone do not develop the discipline needed for a class to be successful.

Rita in Oregon

84673 From: "Ben Slavic"

Rita -

Here is the questionnaire I use. It was developed by a very gifted high school TPRS teacher of German in Maine, Anne Lambert, and I use it with her permission. A free printable version can be found at www.goodteachingstuff.com for use in your classes:

Name: ___________________________________________________
Birthday: _______________________________________________
Names and ages of siblings:
_________________________________________________________
Town you live in/town you would like to live in:
_________________________________________________________
Pets and their names/pets you would like to have 
and their names:
_________________________________________________________
Your favorite things to do:
_________________________________________________________
Your job: _______________________________________________
Instruments, sports, or games that you play:
_________________________________________________________
Sports players, artists, or musicians whom you admire:
_________________________________________________________
A celebrity whom you find attractive:
_________________________________________________________
Your favorite music groups/singers:
_________________________________________________________
Your favorite flavor of ice cream:
_________________________________________________________
Your favorite kind of sandwich:
_________________________________________________________
Your favorite drink:
_________________________________________________________
Other things you like to eat and drink:
_________________________________________________________
Some things you really don't like to eat or drink:
_________________________________________________________
Chores you have to do around the house:
_________________________________________________________
Your favorite item(s) of clothing:
_________________________________________________________
Any abilities or talents you have, however unusual:
_________________________________________________________
Something you fear: _____________________________________
Someone you admire: _____________________________________
Something you have that is unusual:
_________________________________________________________
Something you don't have that you really want:
_________________________________________________________
Any interesting or unusual facts about you:
_________________________________________________________
A place or places that you sometimes go and why 
(example: I visit my grandmother in Kansas because 
I love my grandmother very much):
_________________________________________________________
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84649
From: "Ben Slavic"
Date: Sun Aug 5, 2007 10:06 pm
Subject: Mildred (classroom discipline)