Hello new readers. This is my reflection blog. I'm a high school English teacher in the San Francisco Bay Area, and for the benefit of my students, I'm going to try to limit my identifying remarks to that. I will say that I teach only 9th grade, as that's likely to come out, and I don't want you to strain yourself trying to look for clues. I'm going to use this blog as a place to reflect on ways that my curriculum, my assessments, and my classroom management strategies work out. This will be a sounding board, and a place for those who wish to comment or give me useful feedback to do so. I hope you enjoy it.
Today I had a total squirrel mutiny in my English class. There were the usual squirrels--who always act squirrely--but there were also the other kids, non-squirrels, who were totally nutty. I'm used to it on bake sale day, but today there were no such sugary treats to blame.
Naturally, I blame myself. Were there some things I could have done differently? Yes. In brief, I would have waited to put the students into groups until later in the period. And I would have roamed more during the music, to keep them better on task. It was one of those days that felt like putting out little fires one and two at a time. Each one requires only a bit of energy, but the cumulative effect is exhaustion. And to make matters worse, I began to take it personally. I put two students on the "notice" board--which I have mixed feelings about--and that just shut the whole show down. After that, everyone was moving in lugubrious lockstep through what was supposed to be a fun and interactive exercise. That makes me look like a bad guy, a heavy. They know this, they're playing it, it's their ace.
Of course, blaming myself has limited utility. I should reflect on what went wrong, think about what to do in the future and move on. I know you think I'm going to say that next time I'll wait to put them into groups, or roam more during the music, but I actually think the best thing to take away from this is that I should relax a bit more. It was getting uptight that got me into trouble in the first place. They sensed that the activity was an invitation to play a bit--and they took it. And when they took it too far, I throttled back too hard. Very unDude.
1 comment:
I think that's a great insight--that there are the practical things that you can do differently, but there is also the larger issue of the way you handle things not going exactly as planned. I can relate to taking it to seriously and personally, and I think part of that is just getting used to this weird phenomenon of standing in front of and managing a group of 20- or 30-something teenagers who barely know you and may not want to be there. You will begin to feel more comfortable and confident when things don't go as planned.
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