Succceesssssss

My Biggest Success

It would not be possible to pin down a single most successful moment in a year that was probably the most tumultuous of my life. My successful moments range from coaching soccer and basketball to learning the history of Mississippi and by second semester truly feeling like I was becoming a MS studies teacher. During most of first semester I truly felt like a glorified babysitter, struggling to keep half of my kids in their seat, while at the same time attempting to teach to the other half who wanted to learn. Thus I would say my biggest transformation and biggest success was the changes and results I saw between my first and second semester.

A major factor in this success was that I was able to start over with a completely new group of kids for second semester (MS studies is a semester course). This gave me the opportunity to reflect upon my first semester and make a significant amount of changes.

Changes

My classroom philosophy had to change. I began the first semester assuming that if I respected my students and encouraged them to become engaged in positive learning environment that I would be able to focus less on rules and procedures. This attitude might have worked in a classroom with older kids or possibly if I had averaged less then 33 kids on the first day. I quickly learned that if I wanted to survive my thinking would have to change.

I started second semester very strict from the beginning. I religiously took attendance and punished for tardies everyday. I also made a major change in my Do-Now policy. My new policy was to take attendance, pass out all materials for the day, and then give a zero to any student who was yet to begin the Do-Now, or was talking. The combination of these two simple changes drastically changed the beginning of all my classes. Students came in knowing there was a process for what they had to do at the beginning of class with the understanding that there would be punishments if they did not follow my procedures. This made me realize how important it is to set the tone from the beginning everyday in order to run a smooth classroom.

Another change I wanted to make in my second semester was to have everyday fully mapped out and planned with exactly what I wanted to do. This made my life easier in a number of ways. I had more time to relax in and out of class; specifically was able to focus less on discipline and more on teaching/ grading. This also allowed me to set a tone of constant work in every class period. In addition to providing constant work, I was also able to collect and return work on a daily basis.

As a coach with 180 kids you might think this would be impossible to do without taking loads of work home everyday. I found the answer to this problem in Teacher’s assistants. At Murrah we are fortunate to have an abundance of Seniors who need classes to fill and enjoy sitting in your class and grading papers. I had three TA’s who I would provide a key for each assignment, which allowed me to do almost no grading.

Results

Less stress, more learning, and more respect from the administration. The policy of my administrators on the 9^th grade wing was usually if the chaos in your classroom is not running out into the hallway you are doing your job. I accomplished this for the most part both semesters, but as we came into second semester I also began to feel that my classroom was becoming a peaceful learning environment.

I gave out anonymous surveys to my students about my classroom and a majority of them reported my class was the class they learned the most in all year. A majority reported I was their favorite teacher, and my classroom got ranked an average of 4 out of 5 by all of my students.

I have been moved to U.S. History for next year, which I am sure will be more pressure, but less classroom management issues. I look forward to embracing this challenge and being as prepared as possible from the beginning so I am ready for the surprises that will come.