This was the first week of my second semester Astronomy class. I got to start the class with the students and have been trying to introduce my own norms into the classroom procedures. We have covered the Big Bang so far and will be starting Celestial Bodies on Monday, for which I have a neat activity planned where the students have to develop their own classification schemes. In Physics, we will be finishing up Waves and Sound and moving towards Wave, Light, and Optics (my edTPA unit). In Forensics, we are finishing up our unit on Handwriting and about to start Drugs and Toxicology. In Biology, students just took their Evolution and Natural Selection exam and are moving on to classification. I am hoping to do a similar classification activity in Biology as I do with Astronomy.
This past week, student are getting used to seeing me in the halls, classrooms, and after school. I am a more permanent fixture and as such they are respecting me more and understanding that I enforce the same rules as other teachers. That being said, there are some students who want to push that. In my Forensics class on Wednesday, my mentor teacher had to step out towards the end of class to pick up photocopies. This was fine, it had happened before, and all students were working on their assignment (they were analyzing a ransom note and handwriting samples to determine who had stolen another teacher’s smartboard).
My mentor teacher coaches two sports, and as such, he is close with many of the athletes in school, even those who do not take his classes. Every day during the announcements, one of his baseball players comes in to see his girlfriend as his class is right next door. This isn’t a big deal, as the announcements follow the end of the period when no more instruction is happening.
This Wednesday, the student came in before the announcements, sat down at the teachers desk, scrolled through his email, and then turned to start talking to the group of students closest to the desk who were currently working on their assignment. As soon as I saw this, I walked over to him and quietly told him he needed to stand up and leave the room. He did. As soon as the bell rang signaling the beginning of the announcements, he came back it.
I asked him, “____, didn’t I just kick you out of this classroom?” to which he and other student responded that he always comes in here during announcements. I backed off, unsure if I had the authority to press the issue.
Now, I don’t know the student well, but I do know he is an athlete. I am sure I have some underlying assumptions about him that resulted in me being more concerned than I needed to be about him coming back during the announcements. If I had communicated to him why he was wrong to come in during class instead of rushing to get him out, I wouldn’t have as if he didn’t respect me or understand my reasoning for telling him to leave the first time. When he came back, I felt small.
I wish I had employed more of Needs Theory, understanding why he had come in to my classroom while he was still in another (AP!) class next door. In the future, I will look for underlying causes of these behaviors, especially for students I too easily consider trouble-makers. Additionally, I will consider how I hold students accountable for their behavior. What was the intention of this student? Was his class simply wrapping up and he figured ours was as well? Did he see that my mentor teacher was out of the room and as such he couldn’t get in trouble? Why did he come back? Was it because it was his routine? Or was it as an affront to my authority of removing him earlier?
In my life, I always try to assume best intentions, but this is a emotional/behavioral pattern adapted after high school. I am struggling to take it with me into the classroom, likely because I’ve never used it in a high school setting. I will continue to work at assuming best intentions of students and allowing that to influence my classroom management and disciplinary procedures.
