Thursday, August 17, 2006

The honeymoon's over.

Most of my classes (and kids) are great, and I really am happy.

But.

I have one class, one of my 7th grade classes, and they're BAD. Seriously. They're the reason I've been having nightly post-work drinks this week. As long as I'm up there teaching, they're relatively okay (not perfect but I can keep them quiet and listening, although they're particularly prone to shouting out comments instead of raising their hand. Still, at least they're calling out actual answers and class-related content). At the end of class, though, I have to give them time to work, since we don't have enough books for everyone, so they have to copy the homework out of the book and THEN bring it home--and today, I stupidly and naively gave them the whole class period to work--we're reviewing for our first test on Monday.

My other classes could handle this, and they actually used the time to work. Not this class, though. They talked.

Constantly.

This isn't the whole class, of course. There are about 9 kids who do what they're supposed to do. The other kids, though, make it impossible for them to really concentrate.

I'll quiet them down, they'll be quiet for about 2 minutes, then it starts up again. I've been hesitant to write anyone up for fear of looking like a first-year teacher who can't handle her class, but after talking to the other teachers I see that it's not just me dealing with this.

So tomorrow, I'm laying the smack down. I'm letting them know at the beginning of class that anyone who talks is getting written up. If they don't care about their own education, fine. But they WILL NOT disturb the education of the kids who ARE there to learn. This is a charter school, and if they aren't there to learn, they will be finding a different school. (See? I have my speech all ready and everything.)

By the way, the process is verbal warning (of which they've had plenty), write up with a phone call home, write up with a trip to the office--then I'm not sure. But I suspect I'm about to find out. I got a stack of 30 slips from the office today ("Let me guess--7th grade?" the secretary asked when I asked her for "a whole stack of discipline reports"), and I will use each and every one if I have to. And yes, I have better ways to spend my Friday afternoon, but if I have to spend it calling 30 parents to discuss their child's disrespectful and disruptive behavior, then so be it.

4 comments:

keesh said...

Well Damn girl, too bad. I was hoping for an all around easy first year for you. You are cool and you have warned, what else can you do. What about splitting them into groups? Of which you pick of course, and split up the talkers a little bit...just an idea girl. not like I have any idea what this is like. Get them girl!

Jen said...

Yeah, they're quite a ways away from being able to handle "group work." They have to earn that responsibility and they're no where close.

We have benchmark testing on Tues and Wed. I'm bringing in movies for the afternoon, but I'm not doing a movie in that class. I'm going to think of an assignment for them to do instead. I'll let them know that that's yet another priviledge they have lost. Seriously, it's ON now. The "nice Miss K" is gone. They pushed and now I'm pushing harder--cuz guess what. *I* have the power, not them, and they're about to realize that right quick.

HELL YEAH.

Fred said...

I'm pretty lucky; I don't have many problems because I have all honors and AP kids.

But, when I had regular students, I could have written the exact same post. Go get 'em, Jen!

JH said...

Sending kids to the office saved me last year. I thought the same thing that it would look like I was a bad/weak first year teacher without control, but each day would get worse and worse. Then I caved started sending them, and they started seeing that I wasn't a nice Holladay anymore, then you could see the fear in their eyes when I turned the bi*&h on. The rest of the year was great.