It's my biggest weakness.
For the first few weeks of school, my classroom management was extremely haphazard. I didn't really notice as I was doing it, but I was being inconsistent, indecisive, and ran my classroom with too much emotion. As I settled in and realized that chaos was surrounding me, action had to be taken. After revising the rules and procedures (mentioned in previous post), I had to change my way of approaching things because they clearly weren't working. B.G. made the challlenge to enforce the rules and consequences in one class. It's a great (and incredibly difficult) challenge. Yet I had to do better.
I've had to focus on three things in all my classes:
1) When I say things, they happen.
2) Not explaining myself
3) Using the rules and consequences (DUH!!!)
The focal point of this work was going to be my fourth and fifth block classes. By far, these were the most challenging groups I had to deal with. I went out of my way to do all of the aforementioned. When I say raise your hand, I mean it. When I say no bathroom passes, I mean it (even for the kid who later squirms in his seat). I gave out a ton of detentions and office referrals. I let them know that if they aren't interested in receiving an education and choose to interrupt the education of others, that I would be more than happy for them to spend their time on the other side of my door.
A few weeks later these classes are still challenging. Yet I sense changes (since change appears to be slow and painful). We are moving back from chaos to borderline manageability. More work is getting done. Less time is being wasted. Most importantly I feel a little less like a failure.
Friday, November 17, 2006
Friday, November 10, 2006
Classroom Management Redux
I have somehow survived 14 weeks of school. I've taught about 10 units about everything from pronouns to irony to civil rights. I've been cursed at, insulted, and made to feel like dirt. I've also had incredible, unspeakable highs where I honestly believed that life could not get any better. For the most part I fall in between, feeling decent while constantly exhausted.
Overall, I feel like I am learning more than my children. My students had over a decade of experience at being students of questionable ability. I was a rookie at teaching. I came with my idealism and a classroom management plan that reflected it. As time flew by I threw the idealism out the window, fixed the massive failures of management system, and began working within the reality of my high school.
For the most part, the plans of idealism worked in my room as far as procedures were concerned. The glaring error of my rules and consequence system outweighed the joy I felt at the success of those procedures.
The rules were the first to be thrown out. This summer they were the following: respect, responsibility, and honesty. They sounded really good when I was in Oxford. Down in Jackson, they led to chaos as an inexperienced teacher attempted to enforce very broad rules. I'm sure they work for some teachers but these kids needed some specific rules that I could specifically enforce.
The new ones are:
1) Raise your hand to speak
2) Only one person speaks at a time
3) Come to class prepared
4) Ask for permission to leave seat
5) Students may not chew gum or eat food
I find them to be much easier to enforce and have enabled me to be far more consistent in their implementation.
I also changed my consequences. There were many steps before the fall and it seemed like a good idea. Instead, there were too many steps before an office referral. More importantly there were too many steps before I felt OK sending a student to the office.
The new consequences are:
1) Warning
2) Detention (length determined by teacher)
3) Office referral
Changing the rules has enabled me to cut straight to the chase: poor behavior will not be tolerated. I don't care if they spend more time outside my room than inside it. Until they act in an acceptable way, you will not be a member of this class.
As far as other matters are concerned, I have generally preserved the structure I envisioned this summer. A few of my envisioned procedures (tardy, greeting students at door) have been superseded by school policy. Others (late work, homework, entering the classroom) have gone as planned. There are a few things that I never really envisioned as issues (killing time during long testing periods, "learning walks", accommodating pregnant students) that I had to sort of make up as I went along and just pretend to my students that it was planned this was the entire time. God forbid they think I am incompetent as I think I am.
I think this whole learning how to manage a classroom this is very much a trial by error sort of thing. I failed at it badly for at least six or seven weeks until I finally started figuring out what worked for me and consistently made it happen. Change is slow but if I make it, part of me suspects that I might actually enjoy the majority of the time spent in my classroom.
Overall, I feel like I am learning more than my children. My students had over a decade of experience at being students of questionable ability. I was a rookie at teaching. I came with my idealism and a classroom management plan that reflected it. As time flew by I threw the idealism out the window, fixed the massive failures of management system, and began working within the reality of my high school.
For the most part, the plans of idealism worked in my room as far as procedures were concerned. The glaring error of my rules and consequence system outweighed the joy I felt at the success of those procedures.
The rules were the first to be thrown out. This summer they were the following: respect, responsibility, and honesty. They sounded really good when I was in Oxford. Down in Jackson, they led to chaos as an inexperienced teacher attempted to enforce very broad rules. I'm sure they work for some teachers but these kids needed some specific rules that I could specifically enforce.
The new ones are:
1) Raise your hand to speak
2) Only one person speaks at a time
3) Come to class prepared
4) Ask for permission to leave seat
5) Students may not chew gum or eat food
I find them to be much easier to enforce and have enabled me to be far more consistent in their implementation.
I also changed my consequences. There were many steps before the fall and it seemed like a good idea. Instead, there were too many steps before an office referral. More importantly there were too many steps before I felt OK sending a student to the office.
The new consequences are:
1) Warning
2) Detention (length determined by teacher)
3) Office referral
Changing the rules has enabled me to cut straight to the chase: poor behavior will not be tolerated. I don't care if they spend more time outside my room than inside it. Until they act in an acceptable way, you will not be a member of this class.
As far as other matters are concerned, I have generally preserved the structure I envisioned this summer. A few of my envisioned procedures (tardy, greeting students at door) have been superseded by school policy. Others (late work, homework, entering the classroom) have gone as planned. There are a few things that I never really envisioned as issues (killing time during long testing periods, "learning walks", accommodating pregnant students) that I had to sort of make up as I went along and just pretend to my students that it was planned this was the entire time. God forbid they think I am incompetent as I think I am.
I think this whole learning how to manage a classroom this is very much a trial by error sort of thing. I failed at it badly for at least six or seven weeks until I finally started figuring out what worked for me and consistently made it happen. Change is slow but if I make it, part of me suspects that I might actually enjoy the majority of the time spent in my classroom.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
