The third quarter of my first year of teaching ended today, and let’s just say it’s been by far the most challenging few months of my life. What eventually happened is my idealistic notions of teaching got washed away by the realism of all the problems I encountered.
Last semester was decent. I maintained a calm and friendly demeanor in front of all my students, and it worked. I had one problematic class and four generally positive ones. With the reshuffling of schedules this semester, the bad seeds infiltrated four of my classes and subsequently resulted in a much more difficult semester. I find myself getting more frustrated by the lack of effort by students, their misbehavior, as well as the lack of overall support of the administration to do my job. Some things that eventually woke me up to the realism of what I was facing were the following:
1) A student stealing money from another student’s purse during the course of a gallery walk. I told the class from that point on we would not do any more “movement” activities because I no longer trusted them.
2) The constant behavioral issues kept repeating. Even after being sent to the Dean’s Office, it took repeated and repeated referrals from various teachers to finally remove a behavior child (and send him to behavior school).
3) During a raffle, a student threw a fit when he didn’t win any prizes. I bought those prizes with my own money. The student didn’t do much during the quarter to deserve any raffle tickets, but when he threw a fit, several students felt “sympathy” for him and gave him a bag of chips. He littered in my room afterwards, to which I told him to pick it up and clean it. He refused, and I had to call his mom afterwards for his misbehavior.
4) This school definitely values sports for some reason over schoolwork. Even though various students have F’s on the basketball team, they are still allowed to play for some reason. Even if they have N’s or U’s in behavior, they still get to play. What’s the point of rewarding bad behavior? The administration needs to get their act together.
5) Finally, a student stole from me. He literally yanked a flash drive from my computer and put it in his backpack. He had the audacity to brag about it that day, and claim someone “planted” it in his backpack the next day. The administration’s response? NOTHING. or close to nothing.
There’s still some good elements, but they are few and in between because of the lack of value of academics at this school. I genuinely hope things are better at the school I work at next year.
There are good students at this school. The only problem is the behavioral students create so many problems I have to focus a majority of my efforts in redirecting them or discipling them. As a result, I’ve had to resort to creating a classroom dynamic where I threaten detention or bookwork if students don’t behave.
In summary, I went from a relaxed and optimistic teacher to a much more strict one. The takeaway is that I have to create a balance. At this school it just happens to be so difficult because if I don’t discipline the students myself, the administration most definitely won’t. We’ll see how the last quarter goes. Negative reinforcement seems to work better than positive reinforcement, contrary to what I learned in my student teaching.
The students don’t appreciate us. The teachers don’t appreciate us. The parents barely appreciate us. The only thing keeping me going is I can potentially make the difference in the life of at least one student.
