All my students have potential. I tell their parents that. I think that is the most clichéd line ever. "Your son has so much potential. He just...." I think this New Year I'm going to quit saying that. I'm going to have my students live up to their potential in my classroom. I can't help what happens to them when they aren't in school. But I need to make my classroom an environment where students can come and learn.
This year has potential. My resolution is to live up to it. I need to establish discipline in my classroom. I have ideas. So far I haven't put them in to practice because I haven't established any consistent system that creates order in my classroom. My goal is to create structures that clearly let students know what is expected of them and what is going to happen if they don't behave accordingly.
Sunday, December 31, 2006
Thursday, December 07, 2006
10 and one half days until...
I hate to say I'm counting down the days, but I most definitely am. My troubles at school seem to be growing, but my support is as well. Two of my math classes are pretty much out of control. I can't get students to be quiet long enough to teach anything. Its a mess. In Freshmen Seminar students have stopped listening to me. There is a total lack of respect. All of this is making teaching very difficult.
Hope is not lost. I work with very excellent people who are willing to help me out in so many ways. From pulling kids out of my room to daily keeping me on track. Most of all I gotta be more stern. That's what it really comes down to.
Today I visited the Crossroads School in Fells Point. This is an excellent middle school. The school follows the expeditionary learning model . This school is the way I wish my middle school had been. The culture of the school at first seemed so radically different from any school I attended and a world away from my current job. The students were actively engaged in so many things that my students are apathetic to. I saw students engaged in a discussion of how they could have resolved a conflict better. Group norms seem consistently well established. The students seemed very conscientious of the typical teacher language that is being used. Discipline and order were not something established din some mythical way.
The quality of work these students were capable off blew me away. The math class I observed had students engaged with the work and thinking about and discussing math. The class talked about why you have to switch an inequality sign around if you multiply or divide by a negative. That was a level of thinking going on with the students higher than simply having them memorize algorithms and much higher then what I am getting in my class.
My goals currently are to improve the structures in my classroom so that more order and learning can occur. One thing I took from today was the importance of making it clear to students what is expected of them in both behavior and in quality of work. More concretely I plan by Christmas break to have structures in place so that students will enter my room, begin there work and know what we are doing for the period. Additionally I am going to instill the habit of leaving the room clean and the desks ordered. I've got 10 and one half days....
Hope is not lost. I work with very excellent people who are willing to help me out in so many ways. From pulling kids out of my room to daily keeping me on track. Most of all I gotta be more stern. That's what it really comes down to.
Today I visited the Crossroads School in Fells Point. This is an excellent middle school. The school follows the expeditionary learning model . This school is the way I wish my middle school had been. The culture of the school at first seemed so radically different from any school I attended and a world away from my current job. The students were actively engaged in so many things that my students are apathetic to. I saw students engaged in a discussion of how they could have resolved a conflict better. Group norms seem consistently well established. The students seemed very conscientious of the typical teacher language that is being used. Discipline and order were not something established din some mythical way.
The quality of work these students were capable off blew me away. The math class I observed had students engaged with the work and thinking about and discussing math. The class talked about why you have to switch an inequality sign around if you multiply or divide by a negative. That was a level of thinking going on with the students higher than simply having them memorize algorithms and much higher then what I am getting in my class.
My goals currently are to improve the structures in my classroom so that more order and learning can occur. One thing I took from today was the importance of making it clear to students what is expected of them in both behavior and in quality of work. More concretely I plan by Christmas break to have structures in place so that students will enter my room, begin there work and know what we are doing for the period. Additionally I am going to instill the habit of leaving the room clean and the desks ordered. I've got 10 and one half days....
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