Teaching in 2nd Year at an Alternative School

So yesterday began my 2nd year teaching. We had a half day. About half of my first period showed up (government/economics – 3 students), most of my 2nd period students showed up (U.S. history – 4 students), and almost all of my 4th period students showed up (world geography – 9 students). All of my new students were in 4th block which has more freshmen in it. All of my students in 1st and 2nd block were students I had last year in one of my other classes. It makes it easier to deal with them that’s for sure. You know what you’re getting and they know what they’re getting and I got along pretty well with all of them. I was much more prepared for yesterday than I was last year. Last year I completely went off the cuff. This year I had slides prepped and it ran about 20-25 minutes which was perfect for the 30 minute shortened schedule.

I thought I was more prepared for the first week. I had such good intentions to do some “student skills” type lesson plans. HA! That didn’t happen. So I don’t know what I’m going to do on Monday.

The best part of starting this school year is that it is in a new building and a new classroom. Even better than that is that my expectations are not just imagined, but based on last year’s realities. I’m not nervous about anything regarding what’s coming. I think last year took away that nervousness. I realize that my military past has prepared me to be adaptive, flexible, and spontaneous. If I had to say I was nervous about anything, it’s my 4th block class. There are some strong personalities in that class and the middle school teachers had extreme difficulty with them last year. But 9th grade can be a long way from 8th grade. Additionally, I’m a man with prior military experience and they don’t necessarily know what to expect because of that. That can make a boy change his behavior. I’m a lot more permissible with cutting and acting up than those two teachers were/are.

I think the best piece of advice I can give any new teacher is: Relax. Things will fall into place. Just focus on maintaining control of the classroom.

Posters for the Classroom

These are some small “posters” I’ve made for my classroom.

The first one is to explain to students that teachers base their reality of student behavior and actions upon their perceptions of student behavior and actions. Therefore, the best thing students can do to make sure teachers don’t have a false perception of them is to not act inappropriate. My perception of you is my reality and until we can resolve that perception through either discussion or you acting appropriately that will continue to be my reality. This stays up in my room to remind students of that throughout the year.

The second one is to show students that when wanting to discuss something with teachers they need to consider the time, the manner, and the place of that discussion. Don’t confront teachers in public in the hopes of embarrassing them into doing something, don’t do it at a time during class when it will interfere with class time and do it in a respectful manner in hopes of “winning your case.”  I tell them that (bottom line) teachers will normally win in any confrontation between a student and a teacher. It usually doesn’t do either party any good. The teacher loses respect of one or more student and the student gets in trouble.

These are important lessons for students at an alternative school who usually were never taught necessary skills in talking to others or confronting authority figures in an appropriate manner.

The third one is one I made to celebrate U.S. history.

All of these posters are about 23″ x 19″ in size and 150dpi.

Hope you like them. I may start creating more posters for history and offering them for free. Not finding a lot of good FREE history posters.

Conversations with my Daughter…

Me: “I think I want to get a plant or two for the room.”
Daughter: “You should probably wait to get plants because you don’t want your room to be too crowded.”
Me: “You’re right. Maybe I should not allow any students in my room.”