They're Against Me!

It’s hard to believe, but I’m four weeks into my student teaching, and things have been up and they’ve been down. The theme as of late has been classroom management. I have found that I am a horrible disciplinarian. Honestly, I hate the idea of being an authority. I don’t want to write students up, or use the fear of punishment to keep them in check. But lately I have found it necessary to be strict.

Today, for example, I was guiding one of my fourth year classes (10^th grade) through a brainstorming activity. The goal was to brainstorm characters, motivations, a conflict and resolution and a lesson for legends they will be writing. “Today we are brainstorming our legends, and in the classes following this I will give you all time to write them.” I said, thinking I was being quite clear. “You will need to outline these key things,” and I listed them on the board.

1. A character with a motivation
2. A conflict and a resolution
3. The lesson your story ends with

I thought this was clear, but I hadn’t realized how disruptive the few quiet conversations going on had been. When I wrote them on the board, the noise began to grow. I turned around after writing these things and told them to begin. It took me about a minute of walking around to realize that not a single student was really working – they were essentially looking busy, but when asked, none of them knew what to do. I got back in front of the class, “Ok, show of hands. Who has no clue what we are doing?” Nearly all the hands sky rocketed up, and I got a few cackles. “Not a clue!” one student yelled helpfully.

‘What!?’ I was thinking, ‘I literally gave you all the information you need. This was supposed to be easy. Are you working against me or something?’ Suddenly I became the stern authority I never wanted to be and said quite loudly, “You have no idea what we are doing because none of you are listening.” Hyperbole has always been a strong part of authoritative reprimands, “You are writing legends, today you are brainstorming ideas, the three categories on the board are what you should be focusing on . Who are your characters, what are their motivations. What is the conflict? And what lesson will be learned from your story?”

Keeping the class quiet the rest of the time was difficult enough. My painful realization today was, as much as I dislike the idea of it, I will have to get strict and direct and authoritative with my class from time to time. But I also remembered something important from my education classes, which is “Don’t take it personally.” Students aren’t against you, students are in a battle against the idea of school and you are a part of that idea. As a teacher I represent something more than myself , I represent an institution. So at the end of class, I approached the students that were rowdy during class and tried to show them me. “Hey guys.” I said, “I know you want to chat and have fun, and I can sympathize with that, I was in school too. But please realize that I have a job to do. I appreciated the moments you were attentive. I would like to ask you to do that more often instead of disrupting class. Any discipline measures are a last option for me, so please show me the respect I show you.” I will see if this works for me.