What is one thing you will do differently in your classroom next year?

Wow, where do I start with this one?  Even with having friends teach in critical-needs schools before me, summer school, role plays, and endless advice from teachers with more experience than me, I did soooooo many things wrong my first year. Therefore, if you’ve taught your first year along with me this 2010-11 school year, or have taught before me, or even if you have never taught, you might be able to imagine how wrong I have done some things in my classroom. 

I suppose that if I had to start somewhere it would be that I would not be so nice. Don’t get me wrong, my kids have seen me get angry, but I have taken and accepted WAY too much disrespect. Maybe I’m just hard-headed, but it’s been a problem for me ever since last summer at Holly Springs. I remember JS, a member of the class of ’08, coming into my summer school room to observe me and afterward incredulously asking me why this or that kid was allowed to stay in the room for the duration of the lesson after they had talked to their friends the whole time and/or talked back to me when I asked them to be quiet. My explanation?... I really didn’t have one, and I still don’t.  Looking back on it, I almost salivate at the ability to send a child out of the classroom for misbehaving and knowing that the child will almost certainly receive a true consequence from the administration because they are competent and on my side. However, going back to my first summer, I now feel like it was (and to a certain degree still is) fear. Fear of incurring the child’s wrath, fear of confrontation, fear of being a leader. It’s almost comical looking back to before I was in the program and envisioning future, utopian endeavors as a parent. God! I would’ve been freaking terrible! I would’ve been such a pushover and would’ve been run over by their 4th birthday if I was even lucky enough to last that long. Thankfully, that fear has ebbed away to a large degree. I still experience it, but now that feeling just pisses me off and that anger helps to stave off any fear of reprimanding a child. However, in all honesty, I’m writing this after a particularly weak day of teaching. I was fully prepared, had everything set up and ready to go way before I had to teach, and even had a hit with my hit-or-miss 1st period, but simply came in soft and completely unprepared from 3rd - 6th period. Fourth period completely ran me over and it really felt reminiscent of my classes from back in September/October when chaos seemed to reign and wait on me around every corner. Of course, I am able to keep in mind that having a “particularly weak” lesson at this point is relative since I would’ve given my left arm to have a lesson like today’s back in the actual September/October of this school year. However, I felt that hesitation, that lack of initiative to stop the problems before they snowballed into something more, that... fear. I even apologized to my co-teacher after 4th period ended today. I was embarrassed at my lack of ability to control the classroom. You simply can NEVER, EVER become lax on this job.

Another thing that I will change for next year is that I will have more and better procedures when August rolls around. Maybe there is an upper limit to the number of procedures one teacher can have in a classroom, but I feel that if I keep them simple and am consistent with them, then I can fix just about all of my problems without coming close to that limit. Going to the bathroom, turning in calculators and homework, leaving class, writing assignments, going to lunch, passing up papers, grading work... God, what else am I missing? Probably a lot. All of these things have so much room for improvement in my classroom, and I cannot help but feel that tweaking or even completely changing how I do these things will be paramount in having a well managed classroom next year.

So in review, being fully prepared and having a classroom structure as planned out as possible is of the utmost importance in having a well run classroom. Also, kids are like angry dogs and wasps. They have a sixth sense for fear and will strike at the first opportunity