The job called Teacher...

Well folks, the honey moons over. Over the last three weeks I have found myself teaching in an intercity school with Mrs. Dorsey as my mentor. She is fantastic, her organizational skills are amazing and her willingness to stick to her guns, so to speak, is inspiring. She has been teaching, overall, for 30 years and has discovered exactly what works best for her. I, however, have not been teaching for 30 years and I have no idea what works best for me.

When dealing with children I have learned that it is vital to be loving but firm. They need to see you as an authority figure and respect you if they are ever going to learn from you. I have taught for short periods of time in several other schools, some through volunteer work others through Brigham Young University. Throughout these experiences I have seen the difference that positive praise and encouragement can do. To often students feel like failures and create self-fulfilled prophecies. For example, a student might believe he/she sucks at math and than when they try to do math they don’t do well because they don’t try or they stress themselves out so much that they can’t think. However, when a teacher comes to a student with this perspective and compliments something they see in this individuals work or shares with the student that they believe in them it can make all the difference in the world. This principle still applies to the students I teach out here, however because I’ve never taught for longer than 6 weeks in one school I have never been put in a situation where sharing that positive praise and encouragement with a student must be maintained long term. This has proved to be a roadblock in my students development.

During my first week of “teaching” I mostly observed and had little to do. Consequently I chose to observe not just my teacher, but those students in her classroom that seemed to have difficulty behaving. I selected those students that I could see having real difficulty and began to watch closely for behavior that I could praise. For example, sitting correctly on the carpet, doing well on a worksheet, improvement in handwriting etc. This positive praise worked! The student that I had chosen to concentrate began to behave; once she was on track I moved to another student and continued this pattern. Giving those students that seemed to need it constant praise on what they were doing well and pointing out places where they could improve in gentle understanding tones. However, as time goes on I am teaching in front of the class more and more, and because I am a person that tends to imitate when it comes to teaching I began to imitate my teachers discipline style. This style focuses mainly on those students who’re misbehaving and giving them quick reminders to keep them on task. Because of this, my students who I had gotten to begin to behave really well started misbehaving to get my attention. That misbehavior, overtime, has begun to spread to those students who have always behaved who greatly desire my attention. In a matter of two and a half weeks my positive praise had gone out the window and, to get the attention they had previously enjoyed, many students in my classroom had begun doing out right silly things at inappropriate times so that I would speak to them. It took me awhile to understand all of this of course at first I was shocked. Why in the world would students who seemed to love me so much and had previously been perfect begin misbehaving during the lessons I taught? I was confused and frustrated because the style of teaching I had begun to adapt felt almost suffocating.

Those of you who know me, know I am a positive and happy person and the constant nagging students to do the correct thing seemed to be sucking away my soul. Something needed to change and so I began talking to my colleagues about the situation, looking for other ideas and tactics to keep my class under control. I wanted to use positive praise as a disciplining tactic and it was Joyce, my lovely roommate fellow first grade student teacher, who started me on the path to success. Halfway through this last week, when the class was beginning to get a little off task or out of control, I began to search for those students who were doing what they were supposed to and pointing it out. For example, “I love how Anisa’s sitting. Her legs are crossed, her hands are in her lap and she’s quiet waiting for directions”. By so doing, I gave those students who were doing well the attention they deserved and those students who weren’t fixed their behavior in order to receive the praise others were getting.

Now, although this tactic was excellent it wasn’t perfect. It took a couple days for the idea to catch on and for students to really begin to behave the way they should but this last Friday was GLORIOUS! I’m telling you I have stepford students, or at least I did for that one day. Than in a moment of inspiration, while taking the students for a restroom and water break, I told them we were having a competition to see who could do the best on our break: boys or girls. Ladies and gentleman I have never in my life seen a class behave better! They were all trying so hard to stand the way they should and not talk, they were absolutely silent in every hallway we walked through. One sweet little girl even got hurt in the hallway on the way back and stood quietly with one hand raised and one behind her back, waiting for me to come to her aid. Tears were streaming down her face but she didn’t make a single noise because she wanted to win this competition so bad. It was magic! (Don’t worry, I dealt with the situation and she was fine.)

The positive in my classroom doesn’t stop there either. I am instituting a STAR chart in the classroom for my students. Basically, when I see a student behaving well they get a checkmark next to their name. These check marks are not perfect and can be taken away for bad behavior. If the student has received 4 (S,T,A,R) checkmarks and kept them until the end of the day they get to take home a small star student award to show to their parents. If a student loses all their checkmarks and they are still not behaving, than we begin to go into strikes. The first strike means a timeout, the second strike means benched at recess, and the third strike is a call home. Its an idea my supervisor, Becky, gave me. I introduce it to the class tomorrow (10/3) so we’ll see how it works out.

I do not, by any means, anticipate that my students will be as well behaved tomorrow as they were on Friday. This is going to take constant work and I am still figuring out the best way to discipline my class. However, I feel like I am at least on the right track now and look forward to the challenges ahead. Wish me luck!