Change of Pace

From the beginning, my period two class has presented me with plenty of challenges. The make up of the class is a challenge in itself. There is a clique of five chatty girls, another group of four that are friends one day and enemies the next, and three boys who are far from motivated. I have moved their seats so they are not sitting next to their friends, but they always tend to gravitate back to one another. The chattiness in the classroom, constant phone use, and disrespect is ridiculously hard to manage. After a really tough class with them at the end of the day on Thursday, I realized that it was time to change my demeanor in the classroom. I learned quickly that I could not teach and act the way I do in my period five class. The challenging classroom environment calls for a stricter demeanor.

However, I struggled with this. It's just not me. I enjoy smiling in my classroom, joking with my students, and making fun connections with them. With this bothering me, I went to talk to Jeanine Napolitano, the head of the English department. She gave me the advice to be the "mean teacher" for the day and give them an idea of what it could be like. Since they do not participate in the classroom activities that help them to understand Romeo and Juliet in a interactive way, she told me to have them read Romeo and Juliet by themselves and answer the questions that we would have talked about while reading. So, that is what I did. The students worked silently and struggled through the reading. They missed some of the big concepts and did not connect to the play like they would have if we talked about it as a class.

While I was disappointed, I would never chose to teach this way and hated the results, I will be able to go into class on Monday with hard evidence showing the difference between their understanding of the text when it is taught to them vs. when they teach it to their selves. Hopefully this along with me being a little more strict in the classroom with help to solve the problem.