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| Wild Things, They Make My Heart Sting |
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Another week has passed. Quickly. Almost painlessly. Short and sweet.
Monday, November 11th, there was no school due to Veteran’s Day. Today there was no school because we had parent/teacher conferences. Three days of school a week isn’t too shabby.
Tuesday, as expected, was a bit crazy. The kids just came from a long weekend, it was windy, and there was anticipation of a long weekend to come. It all adds up to “crazy”. Then Wednesday came. I’m not sure what happened, but if I could bottle Wednesday up in a jar, I would put it on my shelf and sprinkle it over the students on a regular basis.
They were wonderful! They were well behaved. They raised their hands (for the most part) when they had a question. They worked quietly as they did seatwork. I was actually able to work with students on a one-on-one basis, helping them understand concepts that they weren’t getting. What the heck got into them? I was so proud of them, and I tried to encourage the behavior with positive reinforcements and rewards. I exclaimed my happiness to my colleagues, nearly dancing as I spoke.
That was a big mistake. You should never, never ever brag about good things happening because, like all children, the students will make a liar out of you every time!
Thursday was atrocious! They were back to being themselves, sadly. No incentive worked. Little negative reinforcement was effective (much less positive reinforcement – hah!). Again, I felt as if my teaching career was going up in smoke before my very eyes. I had visions of the teacher police marching in, slapping a straight-jacket on me, and dragging me out of the school, kicking and screaming, “I’m a good teacher! I love my job!” Then I’d have my usual trail of twohundredandfiftymillion students tugging on my sweater, bringing me rapidly back to reality.
It seemed like we did so very little. That’s what it’s like when the kids are so talkative and disruptive; we get very little done because I’m constantly drawing the attention back to my lesson. We did our morning work and we took a Social Studies test. That’s basically all that we did! At the end of the day, we had our first junior high cross-country invitational (which had been postponed from the windy Friday before) that we were all invited and encouraged to attend. That’s all we did! I can’t even fathom where all the time went.
Back to the drawing board on trying to figure out a solution. The new ticket system really does seem to be improving things a bit. I’ve had the ticket system since day one, but because of all the sticky fingers (read “thieves”) in my class, I had to ditch the plan and do something else with the tickets. Now we are doing a raffle. I am handing out a lot more tickets for good behavior and whatnot. The students are really into the drawing at the end of the day to find out who wins the little raffle gifts. The gifts consist of little things that I had for the classroom store, which had to be nixed after so many sticky fingers glomming onto the items “for sale” – pencils, pens, erasers, etc. I just have to remain consistent, and I think it will be one of the most effective strategies that I have implemented.
I want my Tuesday students back!
Thursday was also the last day for one of my favorite students. Oops! I don’t have favorite students. Ummm . . . It was the last day for one of my hardest working students. She and her family are moving to Nevada. This little girl is such a conscientious student, working hard to improve her grades and even coming in before school for some tutoring from me on some math concepts that she was having a hard time grasping. She’s sweet, always on task, raises her hand when she has a question, always has her homework done, and is so incredibly honest that she’ll tell me if I am “accidentally” letting her go to recess when she has work to finish. Oh man. Why is it always the good students who leave?
Today (Friday) is parent/teacher conferences. It actually went really well. It’s my fifth year of teaching, and I really feel like this was the most positive conference day that I have had. All the parents who came in were genuinely concerned with their child’s work and if there were some issues that I had with behavior or work, the parents really seemed to want to improve things. I am always so nervous when it comes to talking to the parents. I wonder if I’ll ever get over that.
The ideas and strategies that I offered were well received. That’s the best part. It felt like we were discussing things as a team. Parents and teachers should work together to teach their kids. I love when I am part of a team and not the only coach trying to bring these kids to an educational victory. I shouldn’t be the only one involved in a child’s education. Much of their education should be from their parents, I think. Unfortunately, that’s not the case for a big handful of my students.
Parent/teacher conferences are so indicative of the students’ success. The parents who bother to show up for conferences are the ones who are involved with their child’s education at home. The ones who don’t show up are, most often, the ones who are not involved. The parents I really needed to see were no-shows. The students who don’t bring in homework or things that need to be signed by their parents are the ones whose parents I need to talk with most. Unfortunately, their absence at the conference prohibits that. I can make only so many telephone calls. I can hear only so many excuses and promises. It’s one of the most frustrating things about teaching.
But I was talking about how positive the conferences were! And they were. I wasn’t surprised at the no-shows. In fact, I had set aside the report cards because I knew that they wouldn’t be coming in to get them.
One quarter has now passed. We are in the second quarter. The students are right on track and working well on improving their skills. Any teacher would be happy about that!
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