Week of 10/19-23

My biggest struggle this week was an escalating situation in my 6^th period class between one student and a group of students. One student was being harassed by others, but then was reacting violently towards those students. The situation got worse each day. I ended up writing up 6 students on Tuesday. I had asked the students harassing the one student to stay after class and none of them did. The one student was gesturing threateningly towards the other students. The assistant principal spoke to all students involved. I also changed seats around so the group of students was split up. The next day in class, there was another incident between the one student and one of the group. I split up the two students and spoke with them both individually. The next day in class there was not any apparent issues, but they might have just kept their reactions out of my class. The situation was difficult to deal with because I felt like I was running around after school talking to many different people. I had no time to do anything I needed to do because I was trying to resolve this situation.

My biggest success this week was successfully managing five different classes of students I had never taught before. Both of my mentors were out this week. One was out both Monday and Tuesday, and the other was out in the afternoon on Wednesday. I took all of their classes on both days. I was able to manage both classes as well as teach them material. Even though they had never had me before, they respected me.

Week of 9/14

I think my biggest success last week was learning to juggle both my chemistry classes and biology classes. I finally learned all my chemistry students’ names and I am comfortable in front of both classes. In chemistry, I got to the point where I was familiar enough with what I was doing that I can now walk around and call on people, rather than being stuck to my lesson plan and seating chart. Having already accomplished this in my biology classes, I am now getting to know them better, trying to figure out what they are interested in and how I can relate it to class.

                I think the biggest issues I am having in both classes are with specific students. In chemistry, I have a student, who was suspended for three days last week. During the first week, it was apparent that he was a very privileged child who was used to having things handed to him. When he returned from his suspension, he kept asking about past work in class, and tried to get my co-teacher (mentor) and me to teach the previous material again. He would not come after school, and he would continuously disrupt class. We would play team teacher here by having one of us take care of the student on the side while the other kept teaching. We suggested several times he come after school, but he never showed up. We had a quiz today, so we will see how he did. Maybe if he does poorly it will show him that he does need help.  I have another student in biology who also does not like to do work. He is a special needs child and has a IEP. We have been working together to figure how to help him do his work. The problem is that he has anxiety issues so he has a hard time taking responsibility for his actions, such as forgetting to do his homework. He makes up excuses for every inappropriate behavior and is constantly asking to leave class. I am working with both my mentor teacher and the student’s special needs teacher to help him do what he needs to do to pass my class. At this point, I am initialing his planner with the night’s homework and taking points off for tardiness (tardy three times = help clean up after school). I am trying to praise both students for things I see them do well, such as the first student’s performance in the football game and the second student coming to class on time on Friday.

Discipline Issues Today

I know that not every day is going to be a good day in teaching. I even know that there will be bad days. Well, today was horrible. The funny thing is, it only took the last ten minutes of 6th period to make me feel like this was the worst day so far. First, I went into class knowing that I needed to talk to four students who had switched their assigned seats during a pop quiz (unfortunately I took attendence as I collected the papers, so I did not notice until the end of the quiz) and then had very similar answers to a couple questions. I was very sad that the students felt that this was necessary. In class, we were making posters to put up on the wall in small groups and someone decided that it would be a really good idea to draw on someone else’s poster (from a previous period) and wrote some things that ruined the poster. I can no longer put this poster up on the wall. And then the students were not following directions at the end of the period, and I nearly lost it. They could tell I was extremely upset about something. I talked to the whole class about the poster and none of them owned up. I told them how disrespectful this action was, and how I hoped that no one would ever do anything like that again. I should have said more, like how disappointed I was in the student that did it, but I was so close to snapping that it was all I could do not to start screaming at them. On my drive home I decided that I should have given them homework- write a letter as if you were the student who drew on the poster, apologizing to the people who made it. I think I am still going to have them do this assignment, just to show how serious disrespect is in my classroom. I will probably give them another quick lecture tomorrow about respecting their classmates, and how would it feel if someone did that to their work, etc.

Shared Thinking Reflection

I agree with the beginning ideas of Shared Thinking (Ch 11 in Love and Logic), that teachers should share the responsibility to think with the students. The students learn more this way, and teachers may not be as exhausted at the end of the school day. I thought this chapter did a great job of bringing together the three previous chapters, reminding us of many observations the authors had about good practices in managing a classroom. Their ideas did ease some of my stress when I think about being in charge of two classes of high school students in two weeks, but it also made me think worst-case scenario. What do I do with those students who do not respond to these procedures? I cannot expect every student to do exactly what the observed students did, especially because the students from the book were mostly middle school. I feel that high school students may not respond so well, especially if they have been labeled “trouble children” all their lives. I am worried about the attitude, “I’m bigger and smarter than you, why do I have to listen to you?” Although I understand that most of my students will not act this way, I still would not know what to do if I had a student like that in one of my classes. Many of the ideas in this book are helpful, but they are also only one viewpoint, one tool in your belt. I think the only way to learn how you will deal with these students is to actually be in that situation. Hopefully at that point, I’ll be able to figure out a way to handle the situation from past readings and experiences.

Consequences with Empathy Reflection

I thought that Consequences with Empathy (Ch 10 in Love and Logic) was very applicable to younger students. They often will respond better to questions about what consequences they may deserve. I do not think that high school teachers should immediately throw this technique out the window. I think there is less of a chance that a high school student will learn from making up their own consequences, but for some students, this will work. In high school, I would have been one of those students that this technique would have worked very well on. I hated to have adults disappointed in me, especially my teachers. But some of the students who act out in high school, and even sometimes in middle school, do not care what the adults think of them and do not care if anyone is disappointed in them, maybe because they expect that kind of treatment from adults.

I also think this strategy will work better for minor infractions, like talking in class or not doing homework. Larger infractions, especially in high school, may mean that those students deal with authority figures often and do not expect adults to care about what they do. Trying to show that you care will not work because their interactions with other adults have been so different. It would probably be a good idea to try this approach, but I would expect it to work more often on those little behavioral issues in class.