Adjustments

Adjustments

What are you going to do differently this semester?

I started doing this in the weeks leading up to winter break, but I plan on continuing to try to give my students an impossible volume of work to do every day so that they don't have time to fool around. Grammar classes are super structured with tones of repetition, and they respond well to that. We've been doing ACT-focused almost exclusively since two weeks before break, and I've found that attaching the word "ACT" to something helps with motivation. Of course there are some students who have no desire to take the ACT and go to college, but I think there are a couple who are more confident and so more likely to consider taking it since they've seen so many ACT questions and they know they know how to answer them.

I am going to try to give students some structured choices more often regarding assignments and what we read, and with my honors class, I will have them take books home and do most of their reading outside of class (I did this with Their Eyes Were Watching God but we still read a lot in class) and do grammar/writing stuff in class.

What tools do you think you have acquired in your teacher tool belt?

I've gotten much better at finding resources and modifying them to suit my lessons. I

What are some issues that you are still struggling with?

I've been extremely consistent with warnings and consequences and I document EVERYTHING, but that doesn't mean my kids don't act out often. The biggest issue is disrespect and defiance when I correct a couple troublesome students, something our administration says they won't tolerate, but so far any students I've written up for continued and extreme disrespect and defiance have only gotten a talking to, and in the classes where there's one or two students that has happened with (1st and 6th) then things are worse because the troublesome students don't think they will get in trouble. If it weren't for one or two students in a class period, I wouldn't have a strict "no talking" rule since it's annoying to me and them, but I don't think I can loosen up on that account. I don't know exactly how to tackle the disrespect. Giving students zeros when they don't do work has helped with other issues - but I've tried everything with a handful of disrespectful students (hall conferences, calling parents, referrals etc and nothing seems to work).

Besides the handful of disrespectful students, I have two class periods that are still in revolt over hand raising/ no talking rules this far into the year (it didn't use to be my worst class, or even my second worst class - I broke those classes' spirits long ago). The problem is probably because I wasn't as hard on them as I should have been from the beginning.