Classroom Management

Well, that was interesting.

My own class went...okay. I gave a great lesson on enzymes and my students made great cartoons describing enzyme-catalyzed reactions. But they bombed the exit ticket (average 40%). I learned that understanding the concepts and ideas is not exactly what is tested on the Regents, and my exit ticket was only Regents questions. If I want them to do well on tests, I have to practice test questions with them. But that takes time away from teaching concepts. What do I do? Teach for the test or teach for the knowledge? I'm pretty happy with their cartoons.

And then came substitute teaching. Oy gevalt. While most of the students were involved in the lesson, the classroom management was terrible. It started out with a student not taking notes. I told her she had to take notes. She said, "I don't gotta do sh*t."

Okaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay. What do I do now?

I turned around, and caught the other student teacher for that class block (i.e. the collab of the teacher we were subbing for) and asked her to take the student out of the class. Whew.

Overall, the students were generally chatty, sometimes shouting across the room at each other and saying not nice things. It was frustrating to not be aware of their established classroom management plan, and therefore not knowing what the right series of warnings and punishments would be.

I think I could do better. First, it would help to have someplace to send misbehaving students to, like a principal or dean, rather than requiring another teacher present to speak to them in the hallway. Next, I would like to have an established series of rewards and consequences. Also, I would plan my lessons for a larger class! We just used my collab's lesson that he had done with our small class earlier. Definitely possible, just more work.

Anyway, it was exhausting. I can understand what it is like to feel ineffective. However, the afternoon class, a planned three-hour session of learning, began with this Powerpoint slide: "Happy TFA Day! Go home. The bus is here."

I shall be playing games and working out and buying food until further notice.