Thoughts before I began Year 1....
"Am I ready? Am I READY? Heck YES, I'm ready! ... Or that's what I have to keep telling myself. If by "ready" you mean excited, the answer is 100% yes. If by "ready" you mean prepared, then I'm almost ready... kind of. If by "ready" you mean confident, then no, I'm not ready. I'm shaking in my boots! I'm terrified, absolutely terrified. But I'm never ready for anything. I am always absolutely petrified of every new adventure, but it always ends up being everything I could ask for and more. So I'm not ready, but I'm never ready, and that's just fine with me." "I'm most excited about getting the first two or three weeks over with. I'm excited to STOP being nervous and know exactly what it is like to have my own classroom with my own students. I'm excited to see what it means to teach 150 kids instead of 18, to be responsible for 100% of the work instead of 50% of it. I'm ready to know that it IS going to be okay - not just okay, but so awesome - and I won't know that until I experience it for real. That is what I'm most excited about." "I only have two real fears, and they're having poor classroom management and being a bad teacher. I want to strike the perfect balance as having total control over my room as well as having a fun and productive environment. Above all else, my fear is my kids performing poorly on the state test or not coming out of biology learning all that they should due to my inabilities. Of course, I'll do everything in my power to make sure this doesn't happen, but it is definitely my greatest fear." --- HOW CUTE! HOW NAIVE WAS I, Y'ALL? Thoughts on my first week... "Thursday I taught the same exact rules and procedures lesson to my B day classes. 2nd period was great. 4th period was great. Then, came my 6th period. I have these kids from 2:20 p.m. until 4:00 p.m. every other day, which is an insanely long time. I have been looking forward to this class since Monday. I met lots of their parents on Monday during Meet the Teachers Day and just KNEW it would be my favorite class. All the students I had met were great. It was a nightmare. First, about 7 students were added last minute and I had to get their names and assign them a seat at the door. This clogged up the line of kids and created all sorts of opportunities for the class to get loud. This is my biggest class. Every seat is full. About 10 of these kids are extremely rude. It was just an overwhelming start to the class and I was not expecting it at all. I managed to get them all quiet for a while, but it was not pretty. I was so disappointed. I was caught off guard with the amount of kids and the way they acted that I did not effectively shut down all of the bad behaviors like I had in every other class." ---This is when reality set in. Thoughts about trying to control my sixth period class consumed my life for the entire first year of teaching. And I knew I had to change for Year 2... "I’m not doing tickets. I’m not doing raffles. I’m not doing a bean jar. Again, these things work great for some people, but not for me. I still lay on the verbal praise THICK, and that’s good enough for my students. The tickets became a huge joke and just a source of embarrassment for me. The class rewards jar became a competition to see who could be the WORST class and get the least points. Since I’ve quit these things, I’ve had a lot less opportunity for disruption. Even consequences, like “that’s your warning” or “you have a writing assignment” became a hilarious thing to the kids and an opportunity to yell “OH, SHE SNAP!” Now, when a kid does something correct, I act like they are the best thing since sliced bread, and when they do something stupid, I give them the appropriate glare or shaming. Just basic human interactions work best for me." I’m going to be much harder next year. My classes will have weekly homework assignments due every Friday through USA Test Prep. I’m going to grade EVERYTHING immediately and make sure everything is on that first progress report. I will not accept excuses. I will not feel bad and be soft. I will not give second chances on behavior. My classroom is my castle and I am the queen, and yes you have to do that. Why? Because I said so, and I’m Ms. Quinn, and like I just told you, this is my castle. Now go sit down. And you’re not leaving this room until you can tell me the difference between the rough endoplasmic reticulum and the smooth endoplasmic reticulum. The thing I will keep doing is group work – every day. They love it. They can talk and it doesn’t drive me crazy, because I’m not talking. They hear me say it, they copy my notes, they answer questions, and then they get to show off to their friends how much they just learned. Games, projects, rotations, puzzles, anything, no matter how simple, that involves working as a group. Ninth graders love being the best and it is so easy to trick them into memorizing biology. Offer candy to the winners for maximum success." ---And I did those things. And it WORKED. What really transformed me as an educator was that I became a real person. I didn't do anything just because I thought it might look good during an evaluation or because I thought it was a cute "trick." I just acted like my teachers acted to me and like the old people teachers acted towards their students. "Hey, I'm your teacher, you have to do this, ok have a great day." I can't describe how much better my life got after I took off away the charades and cute fluff. I fell in love with teaching all over again. |
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