Student Behavior

In Chapter six of Early Career English Teachers in Action it talks all about student behavior and classroom management.

 http://www.adprima.com/managing.htm I absolutely love this website that I found a while back. It has helpful hints and tricks for new teachers, lesson planning, teaching methods and even classroom management. Under the classroom management tab on this website it gives new teacher’s tips on how to effectively manage a classroom and also how to manage students even when they miss behave. I think the tips on this website tie into the Student Behavior topic in chapter six.

This was by far my favorite chapter in this book. After reading the stories from the teachers I found a lot of advice that I could use in my career as a teacher.

In the first story called The Expectations by Adam Kennedy who is a middle school teacher, he states about half way through the first part of his story saying “we must be willing to meet them on their own terms”, I think this is a powerful statement for students wanting to become teacher to read. It shows how as teachers we can’t force student to learn the way we want and sometimes we have to change things to make sure every student understands and that sometimes that means meeting them half way. That really stuck out to me and I thought I was important to understand the concepts behind his meaning.

Along with the other stories these teachers put a huge emphasis on reaching out and connecting to students. Whether it is finding out what time of music they like or even movies and making connections through that. I think that giving up ten minuets during your night to listen to a couple songs or even watch a movie while grading your papers is well worth it if it helps you make a connection with students and keeping them engaged during class.

In the last story in this chapter Tracy Meinzer talks about how she had a student who refused to understand the importance to reading books. They student wouldn’t read anything during the silent reading time she gave them. So she took it upon her self to help this student understand. She found out his interests and went to the library to find a boy that would peek his interests and toward the end of the story she says that he sat silent during reading and actually read the book. This just shows that it is worth your time to find connections if it will help your students in the end.