Kathy's thoughts:
This week’s reading left me with a lot to think about and reflect upon.
It seems that school administrators are passionate about control. They take everything seriously – like test scores. Test score data is ambrosia to the calculating self. I see so many teachers (and me, too) who are simply trying to get to the end of the school year in order to breathe. Why? What are we taking too seriously? Have we abandoned our passion for teaching our subject to stay out of sight of the control freak wielding the evaluation rubric?
We have in our building a kindergarten class with a reputation of being full of discipline problems. Teachers who interact with this class settle for the way it is and expect bad behavior. Guess what they get? I was observed with this class and was told that when I told them to do something the look on my face showed that I didn’t believe they would do it. Whoa. Talk about low expectations! We all expected poor behavior and got it. OK. So we have a class of five year olds full of enthusiasm and energy. We need to throw away the reputation (the judgment), accept the way things are as a starting point and work to make things better. Next time I see this class, I will not think, “oh, no, not Mrs. G’s class, just let me get through without major incident,” but I will think, “here comes Mrs. G’s class, show them your passion for art and help them create.”
I agree completely with your thoughts on looking at "those" classes from a different perspective. I have had those reputable classes, who always seem to come from the same teacher, that you dread to see. Last year when I took over after the start of the year I was told by teachers and even the principal that one grade of students was a handful. I tried not to listen and make judgements for myself and at first they were ok. Then they picked up on the fact that I was a "nice" teacher and POW!!! Wow--what a learning experience! It is a great feeling though when you have classes like this and you find something that engrosses them completely which results in very few behavior issues. Good Luck the rest of the year!
Sunday, April 17, 2011 - 09:04 PM
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