If you're struggling to engage students when you're running the Open Parachute lessons, we recommend reviewing these helpful tips to maximize your success:
Consider changing the time of the day when implementing OP lessons. Students might be tired, overstimulated, or overwhelmed if the OP lessons are consistently at the end of the day or at the end of the class time. Changing the routine might be beneficial.
Revisit classroom norms and boundaries from the boundary-setting lesson before beginning EVERY lesson. These are from the Student Introduction section on the Platform. It is important to revisit these before each and every lesson, to establish and sustain expectations.
Explore our Educator Well-being lessons, specifically the "Dealing with Students who Resist Learning" lesson. It explores helpful strategies how to navigate students that are disengaged in learning.
Try the "Narrating the Positive" strategy when students are disengaged or disrespectful: Narrating the positive is an effective verbal strategy to promote desired behaviors for individual students but also benefits the entire class. This strategy can be implemented at any time of the day, regardless of the current activity or the academic content; it can be utilized anytime, anywhere. When you narrate the positive, you verbally narrate in every detail what student(s) are doing well, and not focusing on what they are doing wrong. What you decide to narrate aloud should be the desired behavior you have prompted. The key to narrating the positive is to bring attention and praise to the desired student behaviors and purposefully ignore the undesired student behavior. Students will see they are acknowledged for the positive choices, not the negative choices. For example, narrating the positive for getting into their OP discussion groups for a project could sound like this: “Thank you to Jennifer for finding her group and getting to work immediately. I appreciate how Andrew’s group is already on task and focused together at their table.”
Utilize Restorative Chats when an issue arises in an OP lesson: Restorative chats foster a culture of empathy and accountability, where everyone collaborates to find a solution and restore the relationship. A Restorative chat is a private conversation between the teacher, the students involved, and potentially a facilitator (such as a counselor or administrator) after an issue has occurred. If the current issue at hand is between two students, the teacher can facilitate it. Restorative chats model problem-solving and how to proactively approach relationship problems in a healthy way, so that the problem is resolved respectfully. These chats could be used to shift the disrespect that might be occurring during an OP lesson. A restorative chat starts by establishing norms that we will all be respectful, kind, and use active listening throughout the process. Then, each person involved takes turns sharing their thoughts, feelings, and perspective without being interrupted. Then, the teacher or facilitator will work collaboratively with the students to find a proactive solution that meets everyone’s needs and then discuss how to prevent this issue from reoccurring next time.