2 posts from August 2007

During Ann’s class in the summer I kind of scoffed at the whole concept of planning out every procedure in intimate detail for the kids. It struck me as insulting for them and boring for me. Then, about 36 hours before I started teaching, I freaked out and realized that I had to control five actual classes of 30 kids. So I cracked open Wong and Wong and started planning out procedures. I didn’t actually do them in as much detail as some people I’ve seen, but I had procedures for walking in the hall, fire drill, passing in papers, starting class, leaving class, asking a question, and going to the restroom. It’s amazing how slow some of these kids are to get a handle on the procedures. That being said, they’ve already made my life easier. The kids know how to pass in paper or go to the bathroom, and when they screw up I don’t have to correct them because one of their classmates does.

The first few days have been up and down. It’s kind of thrilling to have my own classroom and finally actually be a real teacher, but of course it’s also daunting. I also don’t know a lot of things about how the school functions that I probably should have been informed of. For instance, one of the five classes I have during the day is far and away the worst behaviorally. The first two days I though to myself, “Wow, it’s really strange how random class assignments can create such different classroom dynamics.” Maybe I should have figured that it couldn’t have been random, but whatever. Anyway, I just happened to hear another teacher say in passing that they assign all the behavior problems to the fifth section of every grade, and lo and behold, 7-5 is the section in question. If I hadn’t heard this at random I literally could have gone a whole year not knowing why one of my sections is so much more difficult than the others. That’s one example of several where my life would be made easier just by knowing things that I don’t even know I need to know.
I finally got the principal to explain the way they assigned sections and what he said was that they put all the “turds” in the same section. Because turds, of course, make everyone stink. That is literally what he said. I should admit now that I do actually like my principal.
The kids are pretty fun though. I had a bad day on Tuesday, mainly because I planned to fail, as they say. I failed to plan, because I couldn’t plan since the schedule is so unpredictable right now. I felt much better on Wednesday though. The kids had something to do and I didn’t have to stay on my feet all day.