This week was a good opportunity for me to exercise my new-ish and improving classroom management skills. On Monday, things were a bit hectic. The juniors were gone on a field trip, and I was once against asked to sub for the freshmen English classes. This meant that I spend all day with the same students, and I am proud to say that I stood my ground in the classroom management area! There were several times in which students were acting in ways that I felt inappropriate, and I had to follow through with consequences for their actions. It was an improvement over last week, that’s for sure!
Wednesday though Friday went well, again considering the fact that we are rapidly nearing the end of the school year! I have begun to modify my lessons to include less lecture and note-taking and more group work with some sort of assignment due at the end of the period to hold the students accountable.
One thing that I have continued to think about from last week’s reading is the fact that the students should be doing, essentially, more work than the teacher. As a result, I tried using different activities this week that gave students the opportunity to work together to learn while I walked around the room, keeping students on tasks and answering questions. I’ll admit that I enjoyed it very much; the students enjoy interacting with one another and I enjoy the fact that I am not at the front of the room the entire class period telling students what to do!
While last week’s readings were helpful, but I cannot exactly say I feel the same way about this week’s reading from The First Days of School. Quite frankly, I did not think it “the most important unit in the book for [me] personally.”[1] Many of the ideas either seemed like broad generalizations or rather restrictive categories. Either way, it is important to analyze our behavior and reasons behind our actions. I think much of that can be done through self-reflection and input from others around you. In addition, it is important for teachers (both old and new) to seek to better themselves through more education and keeping up with new information.
[1] P. 271
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