Changes for Next Year

                  Do you want to know what one thing I will change for next year?  Most likely you don’t but I couldn’t help but write that lead in sentence as a question to grab my readers attention.  Or at least that’s what I thought after reading 35 of my student’s Mississippi State Writing Assessments.  About 90 percent of them started their essay by asking a question similar to the one above that did many things besides catching the reader’s attention. 

                  Without further adieu though one of the many things I will do differently though is make my expectations, rules, procedures and consequences CRYSTAL CLEAR.  Unlike many of the teachers at my school I cannot yell my kids into a state of quietness or hit them hard enough that they’ll be afraid to talk so I need to go the way of my roommate and have clear consequences and consistent consequences next year.  I am definitely getting better in my classroom but at the same time I am still making up for past transgressions as a teacher in not establishing clear enough rules and not boring my kids to death by always following through with writing assignments, phone calls home, referrals and detentions. 

                  I was sitting in my roommate’s and second year teacher – Mr. Curran’s this past week observing his third period class when I saw a student talk out of turn.  As soon as he did he was issued a warning, which immediately stopped the behavior.  The reason saying ‘Mr. ____________ this is your warning’ carried so much weight was because the student knew that the next step was a writing assignment.  If the writing assignment was not completed the punishment would be doubled until it eventually resulted in an office referral.  The kids knew what to expect. 

                  Without bragging too much, I am becoming much more consistent with following through with consequences but having a clean slate of students next year will hopefully result in kids that know exactly what to expect and know that if they don’t do a writing assignment they will eventually go to the office.  Right now I wouldn’t be totally confident if a visitor came in to observe my class.  Two weeks ago my fiancée came in and observed and I was incredibly nervous because class behavior is still spotty, however, next year hopefully anxiety will be much smaller because I am more consistent in the arena of classroom management.