Thoughts on Discipline

Whenever I think about this I remember what happened to me back in Elementary School:

I believe it was 4th or 5th grade, and one think about myself back then, I was really, really, really messy. It was beyond anything that you could possibly imagine, one of those with papers hanging out from one of those hinged desks and the occasional smell of something down in the bottom that either I forgot about or just didn't care about. Looking back, it was disgusting, and I think that my teacher started to be annoyed by it.

She proceeded to make me sit out from recess everyday until my desk was in order, it took about 3 days for me to actually fight through my youthful revolt and do it, and then about a week later I needed to sit in again, and then probably once a week for the entire semester. Sure, I hated it. I resented my teacher for making me do all this work and keep me away from my friends. Back then I thought it was crazy. However, what it did do is got me to keep my desk clean, and I applied that to the rest of my life, to cleaning my room, to keeping papers and notes organized. It really did change the way that I was, and caused changed that I'm still huge into organization and being cleanly.

Even though a teacher has to discipline their students, just like my elementary teacher had to do, it it is something that is done for a reason and I think as future teachers we need to realize that how he treat our students is important for now they eventually develop into adults. Discipline isn't such a horrible thing, it can have lasting impressions on students if used the right way.

Classroom Management

This is what I dread:

I walk into a classroom and it is chaos, students are out of their seats, desks have all been turned around, and the class takes my entrance as little more than a blimp on their radar. I don't know what to do, I freeze, the students see this and jump in like a lion coming in for the kill. I walk out after the first day questioning my life choices and come back thinking about why the heck I thought this was a good idea.

Now, calming my fears, I get to learn about how to manage a classroom, how to keep my classroom both from erupting in anarchy but also how to create a positive place for students to learn where they actually want to come to class, and don't begin to dread me as "Mr. Lunger" with a boring tone and general apathy.

I found that there are ways to teach where even Social Studies doesn't become the sort of lecture and "Death by Powerpoint" that will be effective at the secondary level. Allowing students to guide their own education, to see what they are interested in and learn it themselves by their own free will is important. If a student can think in their mind that they came up with this conclusion all by themselves, that they learned a topic without the teacher telling them the answers, then they will gain the confidence that helps all of their classwork, not just my class. Those are the kind of things that help foster a life long love of learning and is really why I want to go into teaching.

As I had said before I took an education class while I was here as an Undergrad, along with that I had to sign up for the Florida Education Association and have been getting sent copies of "NEA Today" which is a newsletter/magazine for educators and aspiring educators. I never really took a huge interest in what they have to say until this last one got forwarded from back home and I took an interest in the website and some information about the issues that are affecting educators today. I took particular notice of this article about issues facing the new school year

http://neatoday.org/2010/09/13/top-eight-challenges-teachers-face-this-school-year/

Involving Parents in the Classroom

This entire section brought back great memories for me from when I was an Orientation Leader here at FSU in 2008. I know what parents of incoming freshman students are like, I remember helicopter parents, literally hovering over their students, not allowing them to breath. Not allowing them to get literally get outside of arms reach without bringing them back in. I know that despite the common idea that parents generally don't care about their child's education, but I feel like they just aren't given the opportunity to either get involved feel like public schools don't give them an opportunity.

I know that as a teacher I need to do my best to encourage parents to be involved in their students education, to ask how classes are going at the dinner table, giving them assistance with projects, making sure that they get up for classes in the morning, making sure that they are getting to bed, having a good meal every morning and every night.

I know that most families are either single parents or two-income, both parents working full time. The time of stay at home parents are over and it would be both ineffective and inappropriate for me to expect parents to have free time and availibility during the school year. Working would mean that I need to find ways to get parents involved in times and availibilty and working to get parents to know me as a teacher, and for them to know what their student is doing.

Founders Breakfast Stout

So, in keeping with this and on the lighter side of life, I give my weekly beer review.

Todays Brew: Founders Breakfast Stout.

Founders is a great little brewery out of Grand Rapids, MI that produces this absolutely delicious hybrid of an Imperial Stout, a Chocolate Stout, and an Oatmeal Stout that is so rich that I feel like it would be the perfect pick-me-up on a cold January day in Tallahassee. I picked up a 4-pack at Hop City in Atlanta and think they might all be gone in about 2 hours if not for the vicious looks of my girlfriends family. Pick up a 4-pack... or 10 4-packs... its that good, almost worth going to Michigan for.

Following on the NY Times.

So, I am a follower of the New York Times. Now, I have never lived in New York, I have never been to New York, nor do I have any interest in ever living north of the Mason-Dixon, but I find that it literally has "All the news thats fit to print". Even to the point that it used to be delivered to my home in Denver before moving day, and now I try and pick up a free student copy whenever I stop by campus. Read the news, read what's happening in the world and know that those events can be used as tender for classroom discussion and enriching the class discussion.

Wow, what a week it has been....

So my first few weeks of graduate school have been a whirlwind and I find myself in Atlanta at my girlfriends house attempting to write after losing epically at a game of Monopoly and Scrabble. School is both over and underwhelming, although what i've been doing and reading is challenging and time consuming, I feel like it is completely different than my previous educational experiences and with trying to balance work and personal time it is extremely challenging.

So my girlfriends mother is a former educator and now works for a NFP consulting firm working on integrating technology into schools and the growth of vocational education into general high schools. She gives me so much information about what I'm going to be doing, how to control my classroom that it is overwhelming when I've only been in the program for 2 weeks, only had minimal classroom work, and have yet to actually set into a school. Needless to say I am leaving Atlanta tomorrow with 2 extra books to add to the growing pile of future reading material. As fun as I find this I'm still apprehensive about how I will perform when I get into a school environment, Will I be able to control my classroom? Will I be able to copy the teaching styles of the teachers that were best for me? Will I fall flat on my face? Will I be able to find a teaching position?... Maybe they are questions for another time, right now I still have 18 months of training before I hop into the teaching world permanently.