Week Three Journal Entry

This week I taught English 10 during Blocks 2 and 3. The week felt short because we were out of school on Monday for Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, and when the students returned to school on Tuesday, I devoted some instruction time to watching or discussing the inauguration. The unit I am teaching is Julius Caesar, so I was able to compare the murderous transition to power in the play to the United States' calm, democratic transition to power. The timing was good, and the connection was easy to make.

I am comfortable teaching the class, and I'm willing to admit that not everything is going perfectly. However, I am experiencing small victories sprinkled in among my difficulties, and the victories are keeping me going. Maybe the best thing to do here is to share a difficulty and a victory. Each of these incidents relates to classroom discipline.

On Tuesday, my first day to teach, I believe I handled a discipline problem badly. The situation involved a boy in the class. He was muttering comments under his breath constantly, slouched sideways in his desk, and talked openly to the students around him. I had asked him a couple of times to face forward in his desk, and he had ignored me. He was affecting the atmosphere of the entire classroom. I might add that this class has a high concentration of boys, and the classroom is full, so behavior problems escalate quickly. When this particular student continued to be disruptive, I basically had a "stare down" with him until Mrs. T. took him out into the hall to talk with him. The class was deadly silent. This student and I had created a bit of a spectacle. Hmmmm...not good. I am learning from Mrs. T's subtle manner of handling discipline situations. The lesson I took from this (and I'm not sure it would work in every situation) is that I should try to discipline students privately, without "disrespecting" them in front of their friends. We'll see. It's entirely possible that I will have a different theory next week.

So that was a difficulty. Thankfully, the next day, I had a small victory. I was cruising the room as students worked on their bellwork. One boy (L.) wasn't doing his work. I asked him why he wasn't working, but when he didn't offer me a substantial reason, I didn't press the issue with him. He knew, however, that I went to the podium and made a note. Later, while the students were reading their parts for Julius Caesar aloud, L. spoke out to let me know that he didn't know what in the world was going on in this play. I thanked him for letting me know that. I said, "L., this is my third time to study this play, and I'm glad you reminded me that this is your first time to read it." I slowed down my instruction and took extra pains to make sure everyone was getting it. After class, L. came up to me and apologized for not doing his bellwork. He said, "I will work for you in here--I don't know what got into me today." That was a great feeling, and maybe the lesson here is similar to the lesson I learned through the difficult situation. Subtle reactions and a hesitation to embarrass students in front of their friends can earn me a lot of credibility with these students in the long run.

I feel like 80% of my energy is going towards interpersonal relations, and about 20% is going towards English Language Arts. Maybe the balance is even more skewed than that. That's OK. I'm learning.