Since I have had many visitors lately, it only seems fair that I write the blog I should have written months ago.
Year 3 has a bit of a twist, because I changed schools, which means relearning many of the things I had already learned at the last school!
1.
The teacher and the classroom are symbiotic creatures. We're lichen. This is something I had begun to understand a little at my last school, because my classroom and I were getting along so well. In my work, that classroom was my right arm. I knew how it worked, I knew the trouble spots, and I knew it better than my students. Changing schools to a new classroom has got me missing my right arm a little. We're starting to grow on each other, though. (I think I just heard some science nerds giggle...but maybe it was just me.)
2.
Culture matters. I know we all say it, and we all recite it in our BTSA and credentialing essays, but it's still kind of jarring to actually come across the evidence. I moved from one low income school to another low income school, both with similar social issues, and similar household statistics. They are extremely different students. The school itself is extremely different. Even the culture of colleagues has its own beat to learn(There: Teachers used more last names of colleagues when discussing things amongst other teachers, here: First names, almost always. I'm still playing the matching game of which first name goes to the last name I learned from listening to students discuss their teachers!) Often it's the little things that baffle you in the change, such as at the old school the borrow pencils couldn't have erasers on them, the students would destroy them, at the new school the students can handle the erasers on the pencils, but will thrash the large spare erasers left on the table. Why the difference? I. Seriously. Don't. Know.!!! What is the psychology here?!
3.
BTSA still sucks. But it's not as scary as it used to be. I think perhaps that lowers my efficiency in it. All I know is that any small dregs of fascination I once had with it are gone now. If it was a toy, it'd be in the Goodwill box already!
4.
The "Are you a sub?" question returns upon changing schools. Dang, I had just finally put that question to bed with the students at the last school!
5.
Old technology. New technology. They'll both steamroll your day someday. Whether it's the computer that fondly recalls the debut of Oregon Trail as the good ol' days, or the shiny new projector that experiences epileptic fits when it sees light on the screen, it's always best to be ready to teach that lesson in a more creative fashion if necessary!
6.
Students like control. Gasp! What?! I know, "Thanks for that, Señora Obvioso!" But rather than just complain about the obvious, sometimes it's good to establish that this fact regularly causes problems, and try to work it into a few solutions. I have tried the whole,
"You will stay in this classroom as long as it takes until you tell me what was wrong about your behavior." (Oh goody, a show down) And believe me, some of those students would have spent their summer vacation in my classroom if I didn't find a way out of that corner I painted myself in.
7.
Give them better ultimatums. Let's face it, if you're being held late individually by the teacher, odds are, you're already in a lose-lose situation, and one "lose" option allows you to brag about your resilience to your friends when the teacher finally has to let you go to the next class. However, give a student the option in the form of "Lose&Win or Lose&Lose", and you'll find the student in a more reasonable mood. Example:
"You're staying 10 seconds late if you can tell me what was wrong with your choice earlier, or a full minute if you can't." No coercing, no pleading, just the facts. (I have a timer. I use it obsessively. They know it will be an exact minute.) Either way, you're staying, one way lets you shorten the stay and get on with your life. I tried this one week. Kids who would have gladly waited 15-45 minutes to stick it to me with my previous approach will fess up with full details in 10 seconds.
8.
Make it their problem. You may remember from previous LLSF entries, I have borrow pencils. Big, fat finishing pencils, this year from Lowes (I like these especially because they have the motto "Never stop improving" printed on all of them. Good statement for a classroom). I have magnets strapped to them. They get 5 new ones stuck to the board every quarter (The old ones are removed). If someone forgets to bring one back, then they only have 4 spares until the end of the quarter. If someone bites them until they're nasty, then they have bitten pencils until the end of the quarter. If someone saws a hole midway through the pencil (I have no idea how that was done), it is what it is. The regular borrowers learn, if they want a pencil available, they better put it back; if they want a nice pencil tomorrow, they better not destroy it today. It's their problem. If something goes awry, it is not my job to fix it, and thus, there is no point in messing with the pencils to mess with me when you're cranky.
The next part is the part I'm really getting better at this year: when something does go amiss, gently remind them that it would be great for the class if the pencil found its way back. I'm not going to yell at you if you took it accidentally, because it's not my problem. Everybody knows it went missing in 5th period yesterday. If you don't want to look like "the class that made it so we only have 4 pencils", it might be a good idea to bring it back. For the first time ever, we got a perfect score (all 5 pencils made it to the end of the quarter) by the 2nd quarter this year. It took until the 4th quarter last year.
9.
The kids you really want to scream at are the kids who really want you to scream at them. This one goes back to #6. Control. If they can get you to lose your cool, then you are in no more control than they are. They have proven that you are just as unstable as they feel. They knew they couldn't lean on you for support all along, because you're irrational. There are some specific students who really feel the need to test this
every stinking day. If you give in, and raise your voice, you're finally entering a battle that they can win. They know all the tricks. They have all the perfect button pushing lines on speed dial (and they know they work, they've tested them out on their parents ahead of time). Let's face it, they're kids. They're just flat out better at irrational shouting matches. At some point, your reason will kick in and remind you this is idiotic, and force you to back down. The odds of the student's reason debilitating them in such a battle is extremely low. Don't go there.
Send them out instead!
10.
Children forget that they are good at learning. Children are the best learners in the world. They pick things up with an alacrity that is the envy of everyone who misses that ability, and yet we have several generation of children that are scared to learn, because successful learning has been defined as something completely unattainable. People have a lot of negative things to say about Common Core. And to be honest, there are a lot of negative things about Common Core (although, often the actual negative things and the spoken negative things are not in the same neighborhood), but before everybody gets up in arms and starts defending the "good ol' days" let's recall that the good ol' days as they stand now are pretty sucky. The last system of education had become a place solely of telling kids to sit down, shut up, you don't know anything, here's what you need to memorize to be considered smart. There are actual official directions (IN POSTERS AND BOOKS) that warn teachers not to let students play with ideas, don't let them share ideas without teacher approval first, or take guesses and try them out, experiment, or come to their own answers through logic, because- much like Thomas Edison- they might not get the answer right the first time. Don't let them think it out; it's dangerous! This is the classroom the students have learned how to learn in, and so as science does its little tap dance of glee over being told by the Common Core that the students need to learn to "figure something out through experimentation" the students' eyes grow wide with panic. You give them a situation, tell them to make a prediction about the outcome and their mouths go dry. How are they supposed to know? You never told them the outcome. This is terrifying to them. However, give them lots of chances to play with things, to work things out, to be the ones who hit upon the answer before their peers, and you'll see them start to realize something: Thinking is fun. It's just a very slow awakening process, and I have to remember to be patient, and give gentle nudges as I wait for them to be brave enough to try something (cotton, coal, wire...anything!) until a light bulb comes on.
11.
Ask more questions. Whether it's in a disciplinary situation, helping with student understanding of a concept, or even when greeting a student in the morning, questions are important. Asking someone a question implies that they already have important information stored up, ready to access. Too often, as a teacher, I assume I probably already know the source of the confusion or problem. Too often, I end up wasting a lot of time trying to explain the molecular description of density, when a student really understood all that, she just wanted to know how to pronounce "molecular." Too often, students assume that they are completely, and hopelessly lost, and when I ask questions to figure out what they already understand, they realize they did understand it, they just didn't think it could be that simple. Too often, I assume that a student is just in a meddling, cantankerous mood, when I finally find out that the student's parent got arrested last night, and the student is just overpoweringly concerned about the rumors flying about campus.
12.
When you tell the students to stack their chairs on the table before they go, maybe make sure that everyone understands what that actually means. We have special chairs that allow you to rest the seat of the chair on top of the table, while the legs dangle underneath the table. It's great. Make sure, however, that you do not assume that because there are 35 students doing it correctly in the room, that the one new student will look around and do as they do. If you do, you will wind up with 35 chairs neatly tucked onto the table, and one chair literally sitting (feet and all) on the top of a table, looking out over its peers, wondering why all the other chairs in the room are so short...
