I think I need to keep a journal every single day. There are just way too many things happening on a daily basis, and everyday brings about new challenges and new experiences I cannot remember all of by the time this year is over. I’ve seen a lot now, and I know many of my other teachers have, too. Unlike recalling trivial events like what I did, as I did during my college years, I think this will be more about reflecting on events, at least the biggest ones, of each day.
I want to highlight a teenager who has caught my eye for negative reasons. Keion is one of the few bad kids I’ve met in my life. Almost all of the kids may dislike their teachers, but this kid honestly hates me, and I feel physically intimidated by this boy who is much smaller than me, simply because I know there will be repercussions if I strike back. I have gone over the event in my head over and over again. Getting beat up by him in front of everyone else in my class and unable to do anything about it. As a teacher, I’m unable to defend myself, because if I strike back, then I know some of my students who also dislike me (but do not hate) will come to his defense, lie and say that I hit him first, or that I instigated it, or that he was acting in self-defense and not me.
I don’t know how it got this bad. He has been more and more aggressive in his pursuit of hatred against me, all very, very small things, such as asking him to move seats. I’ve written him up now a couple times. First time because he disrespected me and was defiant. He was getting rowdy, so I asked him to quiet down, and he responded, “You quiet down.” I then asked him to gather his things, and he said, “You gather your things.” I asked him to go stand outside by the door, and he responded, “You go stand by the door.” More recently, he was sitting down, listening to some sort of music while I was instructing. It was loud enough for me to notice, and so I went to his desk and quietly, one-on-one, asked him to shut down his music. He then said, “You didn’t hear nothing!” By the notes on his paper, I assume that he was writing down his own lyrics to some beat he was listening to. I wonder if any of it is about me, since he is writing all of this down in my classroom as he’s staring at me. I wonder if there’s any death threats in the lyric, and I wonder what would happen if I took a picture of it while he wasn’t expecting it. Will he try to take my cell phone? Will he beat me up for not giving it to him? He’s truly the only person in the entire year that I’ve been teaching that I think will actually go down that path. I don’t think any of the 160 students I’ve taught so far will go that far, but I think he will.
I lost my first calculator on Friday as well. It was a TI-84 Silver Plus, School Edition, so stealing it would be unwise since it needs the entire dock to recharge it. I suspect it was him. Someone also stole my timer, and I also suspect it was him.
It’s funny how when I first got those calculators, I told my students not to steal it (and said not that you would, but in case you’re tempted to) and that it would be unwise since the entire dock is required to recharge the calculator. Otherwise it’ll last 2 weeks and it’ll be dead after that. Some students responded by saying, “We’re not gonna steal nothing.” But when I told them that it was taken on Friday, some students also responded with, “That’s stupid, why would you do that? You need the whole dock to recharge the thing.” So at least I know they were paying attention and that it was worth my time mentioning it to them.
Over this weekend, I noticed a job opening for a Christian Bible teacher at Christian Academy School Systems in Louisville, KY. I’m going to be applying, and I hope I get it. I don’t want to teach Math anymore. Now that I know that there are Bible teacher jobs in Middle/High School available, I want that so much now, more so than any other job I’ve ever wanted. Interesting how the wife of Dr. Tim Beougher (Sharon Beougher) also teaches at one of their campuses. And a few Bible teachers there appear to have taken Bible teaching jobs straight out of M.Div, and they only require a Bachelor’s and a minimum of 24 semester hours of education in the topic I want to teach, which I’ve well accomplished with 77 hours. I still hope to hear back from Carmel Christian School here in Charlotte, but it’s been a couple weeks now and nothing’s happened. I suppose no news is bad news, but I also suppose they can always choose to accumulate as many resumes as they can and call back later, though I doubt that would be the case if they had a candidate that they clearly wanted.
I think I’m becoming a better teacher. One student in particular I noticed doesn’t do anything if I tell her and watch her do it. So when I gave her a warning about her cell phone, and she still refused to put it away, I told her to put it in the small white basket that I held in front of her. She refused still. So I left the basket there and walked away, just testing out my hypothesis that she’ll do what is necessary only if I make her feel like she’s not being put on the spot and submitting to authority. I need to make her feel like she’s still doing what she wants to do, without me watching her or forcing her to do it. One of the most popular kids in my class was also grouped with her, and as I walked away, I could hear her tell her colleague that the basket’s there for her to put her cell phone into. Talk about heterogeneous grouping that worked not only for classroom content, but also for classroom management. When I came back around in a couple minutes, I saw the cell phone in the basket. This girl, though she may be distracted at times, has now outspokenly told the class on several occasions that I am her favorite teacher. And I imagine that I am for many of my students. This one in particular, though she may be receiving straight Fs in all her other classes and may end up receiving something bad in my class, is at the very least receiving a B in my class currently. I’ll take that as a win for that particular student. 1 down, 89 more to go.
If I could teach someone how to do classroom management, I would tell them to never get into a classroom argument. Some students will not respond to logic or reasoning and will find any excuse they can conjure up with, each one possibly more illogical than the last. Some things I’ve found to be extremely helpful: if a student that is always asking the irrelevant question or a distracting question raises their hand, tell them that you will come talk to them one on one in a minute. That way, not everyone in the classroom needs to hear what they are about to say and get into an argument about it. On other occasions, if student asks a question that will lead to a massive tangent, such as “why did you sit me here and not over there?” tell them that you can address them after class but that you have to continue with the instruction. I wish I knew about those two strategies in the beginning of the year when I started teaching. May have saved me a lot of trouble and established me as a point of authority, not as someone that a kid thinks can distract and derail the instruction of and therefore not taken seriously by the entire class.