Habituation

It is spring time. 
It's getting close to the end of the year.
It's just that time of year.

This is my twenty-fifth year of teaching.  It is also the very first time that one of the above three sentences has not been a part of my vocabulary.  You only have to teach for one year to know that your students never behave the same at the end of the school year as they do at the beginning of the year.  Usually it is around Christmas when the students' behavior begins to change.  We attribute that to Christmas fever.  Then the new year comes.  We start seeing behaviors that we didn't see earlier in the year.  The things that worked so well at the beginning of the year do not seem to be working as well now.  Pretty soon we are calling it spring fever and counting the days until spring break.  Then it is summer fever and we are counting the days until school is out.  Some years are better and some are worse, depending upon our class at the time, but the same pattern always seems to hold true.  After a few years we just accept it.  After all, it is what it is.

What if it didn't have to be this way?  What if our kids responded the same way in May as they did in September?  Impossible!!  Very possible!!!  Read on to find out how.

To understand why students' behavior changes from fall to spring, you have to understand the principal of habituation.  This is a word that I had never heard of before until Coach B. came to town and explained it.  Then the light bulbs all began to come on.  Habituation is a response of the brain's nervous system.  To help explain, please allow me to share with you the example that Coach B. used.  If you turn a slug over and touch it with a probe, the slug will pull away from the probe.  The slug will continue to pull away until about the tenth time that you touch it.  Then it will not respond to the probe at all.  This is known as habituation.  A stimuli that previously caused a reaction within our brains' nervous systems, no longer causes a reaction.

Let's now apply this to the classroom.  At the beginning of the school year everything is new to our students.  They are working hard to earn the rewards of our management system, our attention getting signals are new and fun, so are all of our classroom procedures and routines.  Over time, however, habituation will occur.  Students will become used to these systems, signals, and routines.  It has nothing to do with how good or effective they are.  The best management system in the world will not work as well in May as it did in August.  It won't even work as well in December as it did in August.  We continue using it because we know how well it works.  We have seen how effective it can be.  We tell ourselves that it must just be the students and the time of year that it is.  The truth is that it is not our management system, our students, or the time of year that is at fault.  It is simply a matter of habituation.

The solution is very simple.  If we change the stimulus, we will get a different response.  This doesn't mean that we have to completely change our management system, attention getting signals, or routines.  Keep the same structures.  Just spice up some of the components, so that it new and fresh for the students.  Whole Brain Teaching is great at that.  Below I have listed some of the ways that WBT keeps things fresh and avoids habituation.

1.  Class Yes is the attention getting signal in WBT.  There are so many variations of it, that the only limit is your creativity.

2.  The scoreboard (see separate blog posts on this topic) has ten different levels to it.  Each level has its own rewards and challenges, so that students are always looking ahead and excited about what comes next.

3.  The Super Improver Wall (see separate blog posts on this topic) also has ten different levels.  Students never know what might happen as they move from level to level.

4.  Mind Soccer, Whole Brain Teachings review game, has a number of different rules and variations which are introduced one at a time over the course of the school year.  This way the game always stays fresh and exciting, and kids are always begging to play it.

5.  Class leaders are used a lot.  Students never know who will be chosen or what they will be chosen for.  This keeps things fresh and exciting.

I have been following this advice all year, and I can tell you that it totally works.  At the first signs of habituation, I just change things up a bit.  It is like having a new class.  It is now May, and the school year is almost over.  The best news is that in twenty-five years of teaching, this is the first time I can honestly say that my students were just as well behaved at the end of the year as they were at the beginning of the year.  I wish that I had know about this principle of habituation years ago.  It sure would have saved me a lot of stress.  Please share this principle widely with others.  It has the power the transform classrooms.