Extended Learning

Extended learning is a cutting-edge approach to behavior management. In any given day our school has close to 50 students administratively removed from the classroom. It is not uncommon for a student to be removed for disruptive behavior and then sent back to the classroom repeatedly. Those “high flyer” students are not only effecting their own education, but they are disrupting the education of all of the other students in the classroom.

Hiatt Middle School is home to about 570 students who are all the recipients of 100% free lunch. The majority of the students are living on or below the poverty line. Less than 40% of the students are reading at a level considered proficient by Iowa standards. We have made several attempts to “even the playing field” with our students including providing uniforms to students to visually erase the line between those students at various levels of the socioeconomic ranges.  

So far this year we have had over 1300 level two referrals. Level 2 referrals require administrative assistance. In particular our 8th grade class is extremely disruptive. Each month about 40% of them receive more than one level 2 referrals. We have exhausted many solutions to reduce the amount of level 2 behaviors. We are trying reward parties for well behaved students, we have implemented a Time Out room, and we have created a SWAT team that encourages positive behavior leadership.

What to do? With the amount of student removal we are getting nowhere fast. Students are being removed and sent back to the classroom because we cannot afford to keep them in the Time Out room or send them home. We need a solution. Instead of forcing the student to continually cause problems in the classroom we decided to think outside the classroom.

It was decided that if the student is getting continually removed from the same class we would give them the opportunity to learn at a distance. This would put an end to the classroom disruptions while giving the student a chance to focus and learn. Our research student is an 8th grade female who is failing both general math and math intervention. She is often absent from school and when she is in class she is extremely disruptive. In this year alone she has had over 27 behavior referrals and 15 of them are a level 2 removal from the classroom. Instead of sending her back into the classroom only to be unsuccessful academically and behaviorally we are giving her an opportunity to be successful by using Extended Learning.

The student stops into the classroom at the beginning of class to pick up needed materials. They go to the office and grab a laptop and headphones. The student is logged into a student gmail account and is invited by the teacher to a Google Hangout. The teacher mutes the student so that the Hangout doesn’t effect the class. The student then watches the lesson and completes any assignments that coincide with the lesson. The work is then left in the teachers mailbox and the student moves on to the next class.