I daydream about the what-ifs of going into teaching and think about the ‘plus-minus’ factor.
This thread is very helpful and I would have loved to any any of the doper teachers teaching me as a kid or teaching my kids.
Just out of curiosity, Manda Jo or anyone, what form of non-Draconian Punishment do you incorporate.
I had an english teacher in High School who would not tolerate kids speaking in double negatives or slang. Anyone who did so had to write 500 times, * I will not say ain’t . or ( as a modern word) * F’shizzle is not a real word. and for each offense by the individual the number to write grew by 500 more lines. Naturally, there was one kid who spent the entire semester saying " ain’t" and a host of other words {“got” was another} and we would wince at his self induced punishment.
To this day, 20 years later, I have a hard time saying the words that she wouldn’t allow.
Wong is good, I recommend you read him. In the area of discipline, we have 5 rules on our team that all of us enforce. They are in effect the moment the student enters the classroom. They are 1-Silence, 2-Sharpen 3- Seats, 4-Planner (this is an agenda book all of our students have), and 5-Bellwork (refer to Wong). This of course means that the 1st thing they do is observe silence, then sharpen their pencils, then sit down and start working. It works very well.
If you have a student that commits an infraction, you just hand them what we call a discipline slip. This could be for tardies, unprepared, talking, out of seat, whatever. Ours states that they have 2 choices 1- fill out the slip and receive the conduct cut, or 2-don’t fill it out, receive 2 conduct cuts and a call home (this includes not returning the slip).
The slip states: What did you do?/What should you have done?/print name/sign name/date. It is usually given to the teacher the next time she/he walks by that desk. It works for us.
Good luck, don’t be afraid to be a hard ass the first few days.
I taught 5th grade my first year of teaching (with no experience in teaching elementary school) and the school expected each teacher to deal with most of the discipline–the child had to be out of control before you sent him or her to the office. I started by trying to create of sense of respect as the watchword for behavior, but that ended up being a bit too tenuous for 10 year olds. So I set up a reward jar–a mayo jar that I put marbles into when the class was going well and took marbles out of when it was getting out of hand. After the first week, I didn’t say anything when I started taking marbles out, that way, the kids learned to police themselves (somebody would notice and immediately start the “calm down, she’s taking marbles” litany–and if that got too loud, it meant even more marbles gone). When the jar was filled, they got a movie–a big treat at this particular school.
I always put in a handful of marbles and took them out one at a time, so they didn’t get discouraged. They also knew that if only one person was acting up, I’d discipline just that student, but if they reacted (laughed at the class clown, returned fire on the spitball, egged someone on, etc.) the whole class lost out. When the jar was almost full, I told them I’d put in a marble for each of them (almost 30 marbles) if the class average on the weekly spelling test was above 90%. Because they tutored each other on spelling words, this inspired them to work harder, and I had a few kids that rarely did well on tests do surprisingly well. I only used the jar one time, after that, they had gotten into the habit of acceptable behavior and I had learned how to head off trouble.
Good luck to you, and bright blessings to you for being willing to teach, I hope you are a great teacher and find much joy in it. That goes for the rest of you who teach, as well. I was only fair and so surrendered my chalk and red pen years ago.
Lots of good advice here.
I will only add a couple of things. Think back to when you were in school, and the teachers that you learned the most and the least from. Try like hell to be like the teachers you learned the most from. Be dramatic, be funny, be real, but get the kids involved.
One more vote for be prepared. Plan, plan, plan. If you don’t write a lesson plan you will run out of time, or subject, and probably will forget something that is on the test.
Look at your students when teaching. If they give you the same look as a golden retrevier, you lost them, ask them where they got lost, and go back.
Have rules, but don’t major in chicken shit.
Have fun.
That sounds like a really, well, bitchy thing to do. I mean, if a bad kid beats someone up during recess, and doesn’t get yelled at that first day, but a goody two shoes gets bitched out for forgetting to take his outside shoes off, well…I think that’s a bad example.
I mean, I’m all for corporal punishment (;)), but do it to the right people. I’m more or less of a goody two shoes (well, most people would call me that, I consider myself as someone who respects the teachers and talks to them like adults, I like having debates with them), but if I got yelled at more than a person who comes into class 20 minutes late, doesn’t have their homework done, and slacks off all class, then I’d be angry too.
I wouldn’t want an example made out of me for the sake of the crappy kids.
Maybe I’m just sick and tired of people who don’t go to high school to learn, and instead slack off and ruin it for the rest of us that would like that class discussion but are too immature to deal with it.