Overall most kids believed I was fair and maybe not for the right reasons but for the most part – fair. Most of my kids said I was fair because I punished kids that were misbehaving and rewarding the kids that were behaving. Although my classroom management style is nowhere close to perfect or even where I’d like it to be, I do my best to reward kids that behave and punish kids that misbehave.
Some of the outlier responses came from kids that are consistently disruptive. A large majority of them said that I am not fair because I single them out and try to get them in trouble. This points to another important concept of teaching. Initially there are some kids that definitely will not like you. I’m hoping that over time I will be able to build relationships with the kids that misbehave and get them on my side.
I’d say that overall I was pleased with the survey although recently my classroom has been at a crossroads. One of the mentors for MTC observed me on Monday and said that my classroom was loosely managed and gave me a ton of great feedback on ways I can improve including have six disruptions during class result in a referral. Classes on Monday and Tuesday were awesome and my classroom was really quiet but for some reason Friday was absolutely awful. Some of my worst behaving kids were back from suspensions and everything but the almighty referral had any weight whatsoever. This left me to return to the drawing board over the weekend and although I’m not sure what exactly that will look like come Monday morning…some things will be changed. The beauty with teaching is that, as the observer told me on Monday, the classroom is basically a lab where you try all new experiments. Some work, some don’t but the important part is that you continue to try new things.
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