"You look a lot different in real life"

Last week was kind of a rough week when it came to classroom management. Students are finally beginning to see how far they can push me, and are anxious to see how I will respond in regards to their attempts.

I have never been a fan of detentions or in school suspension. As a teacher, I feel that sending a student to detention or ISS is the sign of a teacher who can not handle his or her classroom. As a former student, I internally begged for my instructors to give some wanna-be class clown a size twelve in their rear end. In fact, I cheered for the teacher in nearly every situation when a student was giving them a hard time. So, the conflict of interests that I'm possessing has caused me to believe that classroom management will be my number one issue throughout this first year of teaching.

A young lady gave me an especially hard time in study hall last week. I have this student three times every day; once in morning study hall, once in social studies, and once in lunch study hall. Throughout the first week of school, she has been out of her seat an average of six times a class period. The students are fed up with her attempts to get out of class or desire for attention. I know this because I see at least four sets of eyes roll every time she walks toward my desk. Something needed to be done.

This young lady earned two detentions from my in the FIRST WEEK of school. I just couldn't handle it any more. The constant nagging, begging, and pleading for any sort of random thing made me longing for my days of substitute teaching in kindergarten and first grade classrooms. At least those little tykes said their pleases and thank yous.

I scheduled a meeting with the principal to see what sort of ideas he had when it came to dealing with young females such as this. I wanted to avoid any sort of lounge talk, fearing that I would be provided with unfair biases and unnecessary information that I do not need to know about her and her family.

The principal was very open and candid about how the situation should be handled. In fact, he scheduled a meeting involving me, him, this student, and the school's counselor to discuss her behavior (good cop/bad cop as he put it).
The meeting worked very well, and this girl has kind of backed off giving me a hard time. In fact, today she came up to me and stated, "Mr. Anderson, you should be very proud of me. I didn't get out of my seat today in study hall more than twice." I congratulated her and thanked her for her hard work.

I believe that it's a good thing that I worry about this stuff and I can honestly say that it keeps me up at night. It is a chess game with these kids... what move will they make next, and how can I block it from happening?

Not attempting to make stereotypes in any way, but typically the athletic kids (aka jocks) are students who give me the hardest time during class. They tend to talk out of turn way too much, make irresponsible comments, and cause the most problems for all of their teachers.

In order to keep these kids on my side, I decided to attend their football game this past Saturday. I asked the students where to meet and what time the game started. Many of them scratched their heads and seemed puzzled that a teacher was interested in attending a game; yet there was a buzz in the air on Friday afternoon about how their teacher was possibly going to be in attendance.

Whether or not it was a joke (I'm assuming that it was my mistake and not their's), the students gave me the wrong location as to where the game was going to be held (although I can easily see how it was confused... athletic complex versus athletic club). But I managed to attend the game and arrived at half time.

As soon as I arrived on the football field, the players started poking each other, and one by one, they were turning around and waving at me and yelling, "Mr. Anderson!" with big smiles on their faces. A couple of them ran over and gave me fist pounds. It was great! Big, brutish jocks in their football uniforms, yelling and waving at their teacher in the crowd!

Today in class, all the football players made sure to point out to their classmates that I attended their game. Everyone of them asked if I saw their "big play," and one of them even came up to me in the hallway, showed me his "battle scar" and bragged about how he had to go to the doctor to get checked for bruised ribs. Weird? Yes. But they thought it was the greatest thing that I was there to see the bloodbath happen.

One of the students even pointed out to the whole class that, "Mr. Anderson looks a lot different in real life!" I asked him to explain what he meant by "real life." He replied, "Well, here you dress all heighty-tighty; but at the game, you just looked just like a real person." I don't know what he meant by that, but I'll just take it as a compliment.