christina elena.

where i’ve been for the past few weeks.

from my professional teaching blog:

So it’s my second full week of student teaching, and I already have “gotten the opportunity” to call home. As it was the first week of the new marking period, courses like art and music have all new students. It’s like starting the year over again, but it feels more like a blind date for me. You and the students are really feeling eachother out to see what kind of relationship is possible, and how you’re going to deal with one another for the remainder of your time together. This is especially escalated for me, as I know that these are the students with whom I will be observed interacting. 

Anyway, our last block class on one of the two rotating schedule days has started to gain a reputation among teachers in our hall as being the “hell class.” A few of the students are known as being rambunctious, to put it gently, and the class size is just absurd for the size of the classroom. There are 27 students currently, with two students seated at the teacher’s desk. Additionally, the school is currently having issues placing students in electives during that last block, because there are not enough electives for students to take something new — many of the 27 students have taken the class before, but either don’t want to take another elective, or can’t fit in another elective and are placed back in art. The sheer size of the class prevents us from being able to seat the difficult students any sort of distance from eachother, so they all feed off of one another and create an absolutely insane classroom atmosphere. Even good-natured, hardworking students are having trouble concentrating amongst all of the chaos. We have one special needs boy who has completely shut down because of the chaotic atmosphere — has spoken probably a maximum of five words since class began last week, and has not made any sort of progress on the current project. He has turned off entirely. Between sheer class size and the combination problematic students in the room, it’s the perfect storm.

Last class meeting, a number of the more rambunctious students were egging each other on, and generally being disruptive while the classroom teacher was working in the back of the room, tracing the silhouettes of other students so they could complete the project at hand. I approached the two tables that were the epicenter, hoping to calm them down a bit just by using proximity. They obviously didn’t get the hint, and continued speaking to one another using language not appropriate for respectful communication, let alone for a middle school environment. I cleared my throat to make my presence known, and they persisted. One student in the pair began to get out of hand, going so far as to call the other student a racial slur that starts with N… I’ll let you guess which one. I looked at him, and asked him if that was AT ALL appropriate for a school environment. He laughed at me, and claimed he didn’t say it, even though I saw the words coming out of his mouth. I called him on it, and he continued laughing, going so far as to stand up and announce, “Whoever is using that language, it’s apparently not appropriate for a school environment!” I told him that if he wanted me to stand next to him the entire period to keep him silent and on task, that I’d do so, but that I suspected he didn’t want that. I guess he could tell from the way I said it and the way I was looking at him that I meant it, and he sat down and started working. 

I made my way to the back of the room, and informed the teacher of what had just happened. She made a general announcement to the class that disrespect was not to be tolerated, and that any inappropriate language that she heard would result in a call home. The student remained rambunctious, but spent the rest of the class in his seat.

After class, I sat down with my teacher, and explained to her everything that I encountered, his actions and my own reactions. She told me that we would be calling his mother. The teacher placed the call, explaining the situation to the mother — her son was using language unbecoming of a respectful student and member of the middle school community, he was disrespectful to students and to myself, and that it would not be tolerated in the future. The student’s mother was extremely apologetic, even going so far as to offer to switch her son out of the class (he has already taken this course, and specifically asked the teacher if he could switch in for the semester — she made him promise to be well-behaved and productive because of the class size, but allowed him to join). My teacher said that she hoped it was just an isolated incident, and that she would give him another chance. I think that’s a pretty fair judgment, and that he deserves one more chance. He has now been warned by the teacher AND his mother, so we’ll see how he behaves tomorrow.

The only issue is that the regular classroom teacher is going to be out tomorrow, so it’s just going to be me and a sub. Granted, this sub is apparently very good with classroom management things, but I really believe that how I handle things tomorrow is going to set the tone for the rest of the time that I am in the classroom. I think I’m going to end up starting off acknowledging that they had a rough class last meeting, and give them an opportunity to start over, even though their regular teacher isn’t there. They’ve been warned that continued disruptive behavior will result in limitation of projects — they need to prove that they can handle more advanced materials and techniques. A good report from me will go a long way, and I need to remind them of that. We’ll see how things go, but I’m going in optimistic. With my battle armor on.