- Rene Descartes
This week has not been a good week.
I write this blog reflection, because as much as I try to write about other things in a reflection blog, I simply cannot.
My first dilemma in my classroom is the relationship between my students, my co-teacher and me.
One class this year has been especially difficult in teaching this year. To put this in perspective I teacher about 440 students a year with 8 classes in fifth grade and 7 classes in sixth grade.
One class, we will call it class A, is not a bad class all together, but 3 students in it, actively try to disrupt the classroom. In class A, these students come in and immediately try to change their seats so that they sit next to each other. Then when asked to move back, they will argue with my co-teacher in a very aggressive tone.
I don't understand the exchange, but it is very loud and very angry sounding. When they do go back to their seats, they will then try to grab or slap any student who sits near them. When I move them away from others so they can't reach they will leave their seat and yell or insult me. ("You smell! Big nose!")
I wait for them to stop yelling and I give them a choice, they can either finish English time now, or at lunch or break time. They will agree to finish it now and then sit back down and listen for a few minutes before they try to hit or grab other students.
When they are trying to grab or yell at other students this riles up the class. I usually have the students put their heads down at this point and wait for them to be calm for 30 seconds before we resume.
From what my co-teacher says, this gets worse when I am not there. The 3 students take to insulting each other and the teacher. They also run to the open windows to scream out of them during class at other students.
From what my co-teacher has told me, they insult her appearance and her English ability, to the point of giving her a nick name that mixes the words b**** and her name together. They also ask her increasingly private questions and complain if she doesn't answer.
The reason I call it a dilemma is because at the moment I can only see two solutions: changing students relationship to the classroom and/or changing how I teach the classroom. (spoiler: the answer is probably both)
I have talked with other teachers in the school on how to best handle the situation with this class and these students, most of teachers just tell me they are a lost cause. Or that they are like that with every teacher in the school.
I had a meeting with my co-teacher. It was extremely productive, we talked about how we both viewed the student's actions, what we believe could be done about it and what options could be done immediatly.
She said that she didn't want to be a harsh teacher, so she wanted to open up to the students when they asked questions, but felt more and more upset when they asked things like "How much do you make?".
She also thought that if we reduced the amount of tests in the classroom we could make them stop complaining.
I discussed the tests we were doing with the students and why. We decided that the students level of writing was too low for the writing tests we had, so we decided to reduce the amount of questions and refocus what we emphasized in the lesson for writing.
Once we handled why, we then discussed what we could do.
I wanted a way to remove the most seriously offending students from the classroom when they got violent or started yelling insults. I offered two suggestions. The one I wanted was to have have student go to the counseling room and write a reflection or do some sort of written work to give them a chance to calm down and come back to the classroom.
The only problem was the fact that the counseling room, due to budget cuts, didn't have a counselor this year. So, the student would not be able to be attended to, and might destroy things in the room or leave the room and wander the school.
The second suggestion was to send them back to the homeroom teacher. I didn't want to bother the homeroom teacher too much, because most of them are extremely busy with other activities and wouldn't want to have one student to watch for a whole class period.
So, my co-teacher, the homeroom teacher and I all came to a compromise. We would send the student to the homeroom teacher with a little packet of material. (this is to be decided by my co-teacher for the lesson) Once the student finishes the material, they can come back to the classroom to try again.
As a teacher, I will be having a reflection time on Monday with the class. We will be discussing what is okay to ask and what is okay to say in class. We will also be discussing what is NOT okay to say in class and what is NOT okay to ask.
Most of the students probably know this, but this will eliminate the "I didn't know not to ask that." excuses.
I also plan on having a reflection time on bullying. We will watch a short video and have the students reflect on each character, what character they want to be like and why.
The biggest thing I am finding from this reflection is that I can be very forceful in what I believe to be right. I didn't know I could be, but my co-teacher was very passive when she talked to me and every time she suggested something, she would immediately back down from it if I even asked for clarification.
Some of the other teachers have said it is because of my "western voice" but I am unsure of how to change that. I want to be equal with my co-teacher in these decisions, but it feels as if I am taking charge of whole decisions and she just agrees with me.
How can I encourage her to take charge and build her own confidence in the classroom?
Those are the questions I will ponder this week because they are the heaviest on my mind.
A A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.
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Winston Churchill
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Very interesting. You have some ICC issues here, and some Meth issues, and they overlap. How about the students write a class constitution, using modal verbs and imperatives - brainstorm a list of thin gs that are OK not OK (the ideas mostly come from them) and everyone signs it?
ReplyDeleteThe one problem I am running into is I have 7 different classes. How can I justify to them and have them follow different rules than other classes? And what if some of the students don't want to agree to it?
ReplyDelete