When Relationships Matter: A Socioemotional Approach to Teaching and Learning

By Crystal Tanyag Goins

When the whole world shuts down, what is left to rely on? Human relationships. In Mrs. Goins’ classroom, these relationships are called partnerships.
In this book, Crystal Goins shares her own personal story in creating a partnership approach to classroom management. Through her system called PART, she teaches her students and parents how to partner with the teacher in all areas of school readiness and academic success. She explicitly teaches routines and procedures with her students in mind. She uses a set of sayings called Real Talk that encourages students to communicate with themselves and others in positive ways. She provides a family like classroom environment where any student can feel like he or she belongs. Lastly, she makes learning fun again.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Feb 8, 2021
• ISBN: 9781663217769

Crystal Tanyag Goins

Crystal Tanyag Goins has dedicated her life to family, faith, and education. She is married to her husband, Ben, and has five small children: Reagan, Reggie, Wyatt, Jude, and Miles. Outside of her career and family, she enjoys time alone with Jesus, yummy food, and blogging. Learn more about her on her blog at www.mothergoins.blogspot.com.

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Copyright © 2021 Crystal Tanyag Goins.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by

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ISBN: 978-1-5320-9790-4 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-6632-1776-9 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2021901902

iUniverse rev. date:  02/08/2021

Contents

Preface

Acknowledgments

Introduction

The Fundamentals

Chapter 1     The PART System

Chapter 2     The Whys Behind PART

The Partners

Chapter 3     The Role of the Teacher

Chapter 4     Parental Support

Chapter 5     The Role of the Student

Socioemotional Learning

Chapter 6     Real Talk

Chapter 7     Weekly Lessons: Mindful Mondays

Premeditated Must-Haves

Chapter 8     Rules and Routines

Chapter 9     Classroom Environment

The Pacing Guide

Chapter 10   Training Period, Part 1: The First Twenty Days

Chapter 11   Training Period, Part 2: The Conditioning Phase

Chapter 12   The Midyear Shift: Work Ethic and Endurance

Chapter 13   The End-of-the-Year Shift: Building Team Spirit

Conclusion

About The Author

Preface

It was the summer of 2019, and I had just accepted a coaching position for a school-wide discipline committee at my school. The district had adopted a well-known discipline initiative for the upcoming school year. I was excited about the opportunity because I had served on the same committee in a different district eight years earlier. I suggested using my classroom management system, PART, as our school-wide acronym. I explained that I call all my parents partners and ask my students to do their parts every day to learn and love others. Furthermore, I told them what each letter meant in terms of classroom expectations. P stood for prepped and ready, which called the students to be organized and school-ready. A stood for attitude awareness, which called students to be aware of their emotions and reactions. R stood for respect and responsibility, which focused on how my students should act and talk toward themselves and others. T stood for teamwork because the class was a community of learners who cared for and supported each other daily. The committee loved the idea of using PART as our new schoolwide plan, so we started to plan the remainder of the summer.

As we planned PART for the school, I quickly realized that not everyone intended to use it in the same way I had designed it to work. It was hard for me to follow along with the process because I had been developing and using it little by little over the past ten years. Eventually, it was obvious that I had too many personal ties with the acronym to continue to serve on the committee, with all the changes. So I stepped down and thought I had lost my PART system forever.

I am forever indebted to my principal because she called me shortly after I resigned and gave me the option to take back my acronym, PART. This may seem trivial, but after the committee searched on the web for other ideas, PART stood out because it was an original acronym that no one had used previously. I had worked for my principal for three years prior, and I appreciated that she recognized how personal PART was to me. I didn’t realize it at that time, but I would have been deeply hurt if the school had used PART in any way without my input and experience behind it.

After much thought and prayer, I took my acronym back and decided to share it with the world in the way I had experienced it in the past. I’ve been on this journey to protect it and thoroughly explain its design.

Yes, I did indeed design this system, and I need to get used to taking the credit. I had never imagined myself authoring a book, but here I am, passionate about keeping the integrity of this system in place at any cost. It wasn’t until I shared it that I realized how commercialized my teaching profession had become. Now, as a teacher, your ideas and methods can bring you social media fame and, in some cases, profit. You can have pin boards on Pinterest. You can sell your packets and lesson plans on Teacher Pay Teacher. You can self-promote on social media with catchy hashtags and campaigns. Well, I’m not that kind of teacher—at least, that is not my end goal. My motives for staying in the classroom are purely about the students, particularly low socioeconomic populations of students, because I once was in their shoes.

This profession, believe it or not, was my only childhood dream. My parents were immigrants, and I had two older brothers and two older sisters. We had everything we ever needed while growing up, but it was dependent on my parents working multiple jobs and my siblings and I managing the household chores and responsibilities at very young ages. School was pretty much the only thing we did outside of home and family. Now, we are all college graduates and professionals.

My parents instilled a sense of respect for this country’s systems because these opportunities never would have been available for them as a married couple in the Philippines. Although my mom finished college and was a chemist when she married my dad, my dad came from a poor family of farmers. If he hadn’t signed on with the US Navy, the best he could have done for his family would have been to raise his kids to be poor farmers too. So my parents took their roles and responsibilities seriously in their workplaces and at home in this new country.

When they immigrated here in the 1960s, it wasn’t an easy time for them. The country was segregated, as were the navy ships. Depending on who my parents were with and where they were, they didn’t always fit in. They came over with my toddler brother (age two at the time), not speaking much English and with few resources and little money. My dad described the conditions as terrible, but he had no choice. He wanted better for his family, so he stayed with the navy for twenty-eight years, until he retired. In every new area my parents were stationed at, they communed with other immigrant Filipino families. They learned how to depend on and take care of each other. I think those relationships and their frugal money sense were their saving grace. My dad was stationed in four different places before he settled in Virginia as his final home.

My parents’ household was structured when I was growing up. I was aware of what I was privileged to have and do. We all had chores and duties to fulfill throughout the week. My parents made it quite clear that they were the authorities of the household and what they said we needed to do was what they expected to be done. My dad was the workhorse, main provider, and disciplinarian. My mom was the household manager, educational supervisor, and rule maker. They both worked full-times jobs, even after my dad retired. They also picked up a number of odd jobs here and there. Then, they managed a couple of rental properties. Because we were a large family, it wasn’t unheard of for us to go to work with my parents. If my older siblings weren’t available to watch me, I just tagged along with my dad at one of the rental properties. This was our normal. Our family’s work and needs were always central to everything, and we just made it work for the benefit of each other.

This is the backstory of how my PART system first began. This is the reason why, for almost ten years, I never doubted its application in the classroom setting. I grew up with the principles of organization, structure, discipline, respect, responsibility, and teamwork. Because we were people of color and of the working class, we also grew up with principles of hard work, resilience, grit, and determination. Our way of living wasn’t abnormal for a lot of less-fortunate families in our society; it just wasn’t always accepted as a systematic norm. That was the hard part of fitting into the American culture at times. Some of the etiquette and procedures were way too foreign for my family because we didn’t grow up with it modeled or taught to us at home. Some of what was expected from my siblings and me, even in school, was hard to manage when our parents worked many jobs or had a large number of kids to provide for. My parents always found a way to make it work, but when they couldn’t keep up with it, or if they stood out as different, it would instantly make them angry. They tried so hard, but adversity was unavoidable at times.

As I became an adult, I inherited some of that anger early on, but I quickly realized that the doors of opportunity closed pretty fast for those with a poor attitude. I made a note to myself that I needed to set my students up for success and included the expectation of a positive attitude as a classroom norm. The acronym PART did not come about until my fourth year of teaching. I had just gotten married and moved to South Carolina. I wanted to continue teaching, but nationwide, there were massive teacher job cuts, so the inventory for open positions was nonexistent. Fortunately, by the end of October, I was called in for an interview for a third-grade position at a Title I school in town. The current teacher was leaving the position because of the large number of behavior problems with the class. Apparently, this particular class had quite the reputation for misbehavior. Their teachers previously had left the class in kindergarten and first, second, and now third grade.

I observed them and made up the acronym PART as my basic infrastructure to classroom management.

P stands for prepped and ready. Nothing seemed organized, and the students struggled to keep their belongings together. They had no structure, and keeping to a schedule was nearly impossible.

A stands for attitude awareness. In gestures, words, and body language, the students displayed hostility toward each other. They were angry all the time and easily offended.

R stands for respect and responsibility. The students didn’t have any respect for anything, and because of that, they weren’t learning. I knew if I wanted to influence their academics, they would have to learn who to respect and how to earn the respect of others.

T stands for teamwork. It seemed that the previous teacher would stop instruction constantly because of interpersonal conflicts among peers. The class was cliquish and divided. I made it an expectation that we, as a group, needed to work together to get anything done.

At first, I used PART as a card system. Each child got a set of cards that spelled PART in a plastic pocket that I hung from a string at the front of his or her desk. If a child misbehaved under an expectation, he or she would have to turn a card around. If the child had two or more cards turned around by the end of the day, I would write a detailed note in the student’s folder about his or her wrong choices.

Because the system was more punitive than positive, I tried to balance PART with a banking log to pay students for good choices throughout the day. So, for example, if Johnny was caught working quietly during work time, I would pay him a quarter. At first, both systems worked amazingly. Within about two weeks, however, the students grew apathetic toward the PART card system. They were sick of the bad notes and didn’t care to comply with my rules and expectations. The students did love the banking log, but they grew greedier as the year went on. I remember totals of bank accounts reaching in the five hundreds because I was paying students five dollars, by the end of the year, to sit in their seats while working.

When I think back to that year, I smile and laugh at myself because I was so desperate to get the students to perform and be safe. To do PART in this manner was ineffective, expensive, and time-consuming. On top of that, I questioned whether I could make it in the teaching profession because I was emotionally and physically drained. Never again will I return to such madness.

Of course, I didn’t wise up to this rationalization until I took some time off from the classroom. After teaching three years in South Carolina, my husband accepted a job back in Virginia. We had been trying to have children for two years, so when we moved back, I took some time off work to recalibrate our priorities. I ended up taking four years off, having two kids, and mentoring teenagers through a high school ministry called Young Life. It was through those years of raising kids and working with adolescents that I came to understand the meaning of deep relationships and the value of young lives. I had studied plenty of child development courses in college, but nothing prepared me better for developmental learning than raising my own kids and counseling teens through their problems.

Because those years away from the classroom were hyperrelational or constantly about caring for people, I was wiser and more mature in how I wanted to relate with my students when I returned to work in 2016. I didn’t want any more gimmicks or shallow rewards systems. I didn’t want to coerce my students into learning. I wanted