Written version of RIME paper (GCID) for MER, Exeter 2007
18
and interrupting, despite warnings, and at the end he was asked to stay behind
so that I could enter a detention in his diary. He did not have his diary and
continued arguing about the punishment. He claimed that it was not his fault
... and that it was my problem. He finally walked off saying that he was not
coming to the detention, that he hated me and that I was ugly!
Unsurprisingly, Tyler gained nothing but D and E grades - that is, the lowest - for
both effort and achievement, throughout that year.
This is how Sandra described Tyler, and others in his group who had also been
identified as underachieving, during the year of the project:
-Sandra: Well there’s one group in particular that were causing me concern
because they’d grouped themselves together. And they were three boys (Tyler,
Bob and Chris) who had had quite serious behavioural problems in music last
year and were on the verge of being removed from the class and not able to
take part anymore. And within that group they’ve actually been almost the
most positive group that there is. One student (Tyler) comes early to every
lesson to set up the equipment. They just work together so positively. There’s
been no problems with any of the behaviour we saw last year.
During the project, Tyler and his peers gained mainly A grades for effort and
achievement. Furthermore, and more importantly for today’s paper, they negotiated
constructively and enthusiastically with each other.
Here is an extract from a recording of the group working together, again
without a teacher in the room. This is actually during the second stage of the project,
but they were engaged on a similar task. What I would particularly invite you to focus
on, is the way Tyler is talking about how he thinks the group should stage their final
performance for the rest of the class.
-Tyler: I should come in first, yeah, I’ll be on the drums, and I should go
(plays a rhythm with a cymbal).
-Ian: Yeah and you could have a steady beat. (Tyler plays the Dizzee Rascal
drum rhythm.)
-Chris: Oh, I wonder where you got that from!