Setting Expectations and Standing Your Ground
Week 3 is in the book.. which is completely wild in my opinion.
This is was my first full 5 day week of animal science with having a short week last week. The highlight of was that we had an Estrous Party for our cow that the class named Connie. We helped Connie prepared for pregnancy, lived through the "heartbreak" of her not getting pregnant, had to help reset her cycle (aka the party), and then celebrated Connie's pregnancy. The students loved the activity, they were super engaged and I think it helped them to understand the estrous cycle a lot better.
Some things I learned from this were setting clear expectations are important and sticking to them. For example, one student wrote BYOB on their invitation which he tried to convince me it just stood for bring your own beef, so I ripped up the invitation and said it is time to start again. This students have been pushing his limits since the beginning.
Fast forward to study hall coverage late that day, I find out the same student that wrote BYOB on his paper, took a noise maker from my class and got it during Math class. Which I told everyone that the noisemakers needed to be thrown away before leaving class. After finding this out I decided to give him a zero for the day and then talk to him the next day.
Fast forward again to the next day, I talked to the student during class and discussed why did you not follow directions and throw away the noise maker and then decide it was a good idea to get it out during math class. He claimed he forgot he had it and didn’t have much to say so then I said I gave you a zero for yesterday. I gave him a chance to advocate for himself if he felt he deserved a better grade but he just took the zero. Then at the end of class I talked to him again about his quality of work, what was going on, and how I could help him because truly I think he’s a kid just figuring for attention. He told me that he gets distracted easily and can’t focus so I’m gonna bring me a pop it to school and see if that will help.
How would you handle this situation? What techniques do you all have when dealing with students who push the limits?
The estrous party and situation were two of the main things this week but I also had more of a note based class and started to figure out how can I make it informational and note focused without lecturing the entire time.
Also, for this week’s club period we did all things FFA and teams began forming for CDEs. Which one thing that is different about Honesdale is typically there FFA meetings take place in club periods during school which I think could be a benefit to students. And on Thursday morning we had an officer meeting, where the officers started talking about what is coming up in the coming weeks. Kayla does an extremely good job of putting students in charge of different activities while still overseeing them.
Overall, this week was overwhelming but fun and another week is complete!
It sounds like a great week of teaching and learning at Honesdale! I look forward to seeing you next week (weather permitting!!). You are providing great hands-on opportunities the way it looks, and I encourage you to do so. As you mentioned, students will still test their boundaries, but I have found over the years that if you are engaging students in active learning the classroom management issues are "lessened". I think you are doing the right thing by talking with the student in a one-on-one manner. This should help the student see that you have expectations and consequences, and that you are willing to stick to them.
ReplyDelete-Dr. Ewing
Hey Miss Walker! I'm glad you were able to try some inquiry lessons in your classroom!
ReplyDeleteI too have had some students push the limits in class. On day 2 of vet science, we were doing a small lab using yard sticks, and one of my students wanted to hit stuff with the yard stick. I confiscated it that day, and then the next day when we were finishing up the lab, I made sure to set clear expectations. 1) our equipment is used for it's intended use only and 2) if we can't use it properly, we won't do the lab and we get a 0. It sounds like you're doing a great job so far, and I'm sure as you continue to grow with your students, you'll find they respect you more each day.