Not so proud moment...

During the first week I taught my seventh period class, which I had not officially taken over yet I was merely filling in for my absent teacher, I had one of my not so proud moments of my early teaching career. I had a student that I was continually reprimanding, and refused to let me get my work done. All of a sudden I found myself doing something that my cooperating teacher told me not to do-- arguing with the student. This eventually escalated into an argument in the class, and the student getting emotional, until I gave the student the option to either leave the class or sit down and be quiet.

There were several things that I could have done to prevent this action. First of all, I never should have argued with the student. Secondly, instead of calling the student out in front of the class several times, the first few times I should have just whispered in the student's ear asking her to pay attention and stop misbehaving. Thirdly, I should have either pulled her up to my desk and talked to the student quietly or talked to the student outside. I continuously tried applying close proximity to the student; however, that did not work. It seems to me that there were a lot more little actions that I could have taken to avoid this in retrospect; however, I did learn a lot from this. For example, how little things go a long way, and how little minuscule things could escalate in a classroom and as the teacher I have to control that. I've learned a lot about how I should encounter those situations, and luckily enough I have not had another instance since; however, I know that the time will come that something crazy will happen and I'll just have to take in mind how to handle the situation.

Classroom Management

The one solution that I liked to assist in my classroom management was for every minute I have to calm down my unruly class, which is seventh period, I will keep my students two minutes after the bell. This is rather clever, because it is the last class of the day and I think it will work well. However, it is not fair for the students that aren't doing anything, and I can get into a lot of trouble for a student missing his or her bus because of my disciplinary action. I can see this being a very good idea, or get me into a lot of trouble.

Follow up: I have implemented this action into my class, and I do not let my students know that I will only keep them for no more than two minutes. This eliminated my fear about getting in trouble for holding the students; however, has not solved the problem in the classroom, and is still unfair for my good students. Therefore, I have started dismissing students after the bell based on their behavior in class. If they are good during class, they will leave before the other students who were not. I have also had problems with students who claimed that they could not stay because of getting in trouble for being late to practice. This is something I can relate to in high school; however, individually holding students in their seats solves this problem, because now this is totally left up to the individual student's actions-- and would allow to have no sympathy for them being late for practice because it will be their choice not to act up in the classroom. After all, they are a student first before an athlete. I really do like this modification, for two reasons. It allows me to punish the misbehaving students without the non-misbehaving students, and it also allows me to talk to the very poorly misbehaving students individually after class.