Consistency, Consistency, Consistency

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.