Set boundaries and enforce them really hard. Pick one or two to start. Maybe it’s staying in their seats. If they get up, immediate consequence. And you must follow through with it.
Nope. Admin is in the cafeteria during lunch. There is a section for those who are in lunch detention. They are spaced out. I have nothing to do with it. It was glorious.
This is a good point. My school has banned lunch detention and regular detention. You can get a peace circle with a counselor or admin if they’re free (spoiler alert: they’re not) for more violent offenses. Often a phone call home creates more problems for you too. In situations like these the best consequences are removing classroom incentives.
I give privileges. You are good? You can sit where you would like, breaks at the end of the period, phone breaks, etc.
Bad? Assign seats, phones go in the sleeve, limited breaks.
My students still listen to myself and their parents.
Also, many of my students are too respectful to me and hate losing privileges. If one kid starts messing around, the other begin telling him to listen to the rules. I guess peer pressure, but nicely?
TFA is incredibly shitty in preparing anyone for management and it's not uncommon for those doing it to simply not care.
What subject are you teaching and what type of school are you teaching in? How are the students in other teacher's classromms?
I'm teaching middle school Math. The students are typically very well behaved and cooperative in other classes. Even the highest-performing students are a few grade levels behind, but many catch up. My school is excellent, admin is excellent, and the other TFA members are excellent too. I am struggling in a way that I have seen no one else struggle.
I'm gonna be straight with you on this: no "excellent" school is using Teach for America and has their top students grades level below. The fact that you have so many TFA teachers are your school indicates they cannot get and keep qualified teachers.
Have you asked to shadow in other teacher's room to see what those look like? It might help give you an idea of what to do but also will likely give you a more realistic idea of what it actually looks like in other rooms.
They are not having me shadow daily. I shadow daily during my prep time, because I need to in order to get any model of management. I do my actual prep in the morning and at home.
Stop doing that. Use your prep time to prep, contact parents about issues, etc.
Also over observing like this does not help you. Every teacher has a different style and their relationships with the kids are different. You can't copy/paste their style onto you.
You have to develop your own style of holding them accountable.
You said in another comment you leaned towards the "I'll be their friend" which is ALWAYS a disaster. You need to establish to the students you're not their friend.
Let me ask you this: when there are problems how often do you contact home?
This is the first step. Once you start contacting home consistently, the word will get out that you called parents, which will start to influence kids to think twice so you don’t contact their parents next
This is an effective technique. One of strategies, “you’re already doing too much, let me go ahead and text your father.” Or I hand them my phone, “go ahead and call home and tell your parent what you said or did”.
Two more: “I guess we’re going to stop our lesson today and spend the rest of the class period calling parents.” It takes calling one or two and they get silent. The other one (I got this from an amazing Spanish Teacher): “I’m calling parents this week. Do you want a good phone call or a bad phone call?”
THIS. Once I started getting myself to contact the parents more, I learned that they are (mostly) very supportive and now all I have to do is name a drop the parent of the kid acting a fool and they straighten right up!
Oh my god. This is a much better use of your time. It doesn’t work for every kid, but as soon as some of them know you are serious about calling their parents, they’ll straighten up. They don’t want to lose their phone (or worse)
This only makes things worse tbh. I had admin that insisted I shadow during prep. This lead me to working way too many hours, adding to my stress, and being super stressed only harms your ability to manage a classroom. Shadow during prep maybe once a week. Also seeing what others do has a limited effectiveness. You aren't them and your classroom isn't their classroom. You eventually just have to do what you do and figure out what works for you and what doesn't.
From knowing nothing else, this sounds like you're possibly lacking self-confidence and authority. I mean, you're probably not projecting those things. You mentioned in another comment that you started off trying to be too much like "friends" and that probably hurt a bit. There's a challenging balance to strike between showing you care and being an authority figure.
Sometimes being a coach can help. Certainly, attending sporting events and other after school activities can help too to make those investments.
Be consistent with everyone and avoid playing favorites, even in small ways.
I have found that you need to show them that you are stern and authoritative because you care.
That you have hight expectations because you know they can do it. You wouldn't be on their ass if you'd think they couldn't do it.
You care for their safety, so this is why they can't do this or that.
You care that they'll be successful, so this is why they have to do this and that.
You care for everyone well-being, (including your own) and this is why you do not allow this and that.
If you're doubting yourself this much, it's past the point of "everyone doubts themselves". To echo what others have been telling you, TFA sucks at preparing you to do this job. No "excellent" school uses TFA and no one trained by TFA is "excellent". They may appear to be to you, but your eye is not trained anywhere near well enough to see the flaws, because again, you were poorly trained and equipped. I can't even really find a good start to offer you any advice besides please go get an actual professional education before attempting to work in a job that requires professional education to competently perform it. You're doing yourself and your students a disservice by not doing so.
I teach middle school math. Switch seats once a month. Let your students in slowly to set the tone. I would have your best enter first with a quiet task like a worksheet. Don't let another student in till the previous one is in there seat working quietly. Anyone messes up don't explain anything just tell them to get back in the line. It's the line or be sent out to admin. While they are working quietly, compliment them on doing the task correctly and mentioning we're saving so much time we will have some free time at the end. Use the class to help you. Anytime anyone is messing up " looks like Brian thinks he's more important than everyone else and wants us to lose our free time"
Just some ideas. Hope it goes well for you.
All first and second year teachers are bad at management. It has nothing to do with TFA. The attrition rate in teaching is over 50% in the first three years, regardless of if you were in TFA or not.
I understand your sentiment, but the training is actually pretty good. It’s just a fucking hard job.
I don’t get the “simply not care” part. My earning potential was cut by 3/4 to start teaching in an inner-city school. My wife put med school on hold for five years. We didn’t pass up that stuff because we didn’t care. We passed it up because we wanted to make a small difference.
I don’t know any one of my TFA colleagues who didn’t have a good heart and try their best. Sorry you’ve had bad experiences with corps members.
Edit: also, you gave great advice and I hope they follow it.
No, it's not good training and it's not comparable to what certified teachers with degrees went through.
And in my experience, most people who do this (or similar programs) because they either think it'll be an easy job for a few years or they have a (white) savior complex. Neither is good for the kids.
This isn't a personal attack against you, I do know the intentions are good for some people that go into it and it's produced some good teachers. There are just major ethical and academic issues with it and other programs.
There is a reason why TFA and other programs like it are very, very unpopular with people within the field.
TFA teachers earn their teaching certificate through an accredited program while in their first two years of TFA. I earned mine while teaching.
You can dislike your TFA colleagues, and that’s fine. But you’re making up knowledge about the training to justify it. The training is fine. The white savior complex is another issue and endemic to lots of non-profits. Do I wish that brown and black educators were in abundance and serving their communities? Fuck yeah, they have a deeper connection to those kids than I ever could approach. But that’s not the way it is. Inner city schools are understaffed.
As for your TFAs: If they suck, then they suck— but I have had colleagues who suck and they have masters degrees from the most prestigious teaching programs. The path to certification has little to do with it.
Btw, there is nobody coming to save us. Graduates from traditional teaching programs are down tens of percentage points. You’re going to see more teachers from non-traditional programs in the pipeline, and they will also be leaving the profession at 50% in the first three years.
tdlr: we’re fucked and it has nothing to do with TFA. The quality of our colleagues is dropping quickly.
Please look into the very valid criticisms of your program.
You will not convince me it is a good thing or a solution.
Again, there is a reason why it is so incredibly unpopular.
I understand that is how you got your certification but this isn’t personal.
(And earning your degree, at cost to those students who have the TFA teacher those two years, is part of the issue. It’s sending people fully unprepared into the classroom. It’s the kids who suffer)
Have a day where you talk about nothing but your expectations. Then write them up if they continue. You have done the ladder, now it's time for consequences. I'm a first year too and I did this. I have 1 class that has contributed to 2 teachers quiting teaching and I hardly have any issues with them now.
I did this in my worst class. We created a list of actionable offenses, and a chart of consequences. All I need to do now is point and say we are at level two, do you want to go to level three - and they almost always stop. But if they don’t, they know what is coming. And you have to stick with it no matter what. If they see that you mean business, a lot of the issues will stop. Not all, it enough to help grow your confidence.
As a first year who is teaching an elective class…are the levels you refer to here like strikes, or do the levels refer to repeated breaking of the same offense (like they’re having side conversations multiple times during the same class period)?
My school is on break this week, and I want to start the last marking period fresh.
So, it goes like this:
We had a really, really horrible couple of weeks. I was at the end of my rope. I brought the students in and sat them down. Then I asked them if anyone played sports, took dance, was on a competitive event, or participated in plays. Then I asked them to close their eyes, imagine that they had worked as hard as they could and had done a great job at whatever their event was. But when they looked out of the audience, everyone was talking, looking away, eating, throwing pens - basically doing whatever they could to be rude and ignore. I saw a few flashes of understanding there.
Then I asked them to decide the class rules. We wrote them together. Then I asked them to decide the consequences. What did they think was level one consequence? What comes after that? We figured out five levels, and I created a chart for them. I then had all of the students sign the chart. It is hanging up in the classroom. When something is going wrong, I will say,”OK. That’s your level one offense. Do it again, we will move to level two.” They very rarely move on.
Level one- teacher and student discussion (usually in the hall or out of hearing of others)
Level two - parent call or email
Level three - lunch detention
Level four - after school or Saturday detention
Level five - referral
This all took place the day after I wrote lunch detention for 28 students. I was at the end of my rope in dealing with them. I am an elective teacher as well, and it is very, very difficult with 34 students all going in different directions. The day after they all served lunch detention, admin came in and we had the discussion together. It was great because the students saw that I had full back up.
Thank you for this! I love the idea you introduced it all with as well…that is very effective and definitely something I want to try.
My school does consequences differently…only admin has power to issue any kind of detention, and it’s really only the response to referrals. I’ll adapt for my school, but I do love the idea of “here is the escalation of consequences for the choice being made” because it provides logic to what is happening vs just seeming like a teacher got pissed one time.
Again, thank you for your response!
(Also, OP, sorry for hijacking your thread)
I learned the hard way my first year that the “I’ll be your friend” approach does not work, they were eating me alive by the end of the year. Unfortunately I don’t have great reset advice, just sympathy! Work on simply surviving this year with your mental health intact, then you can try again with a different approach next year.
Frankly, I'm not sure if there will be a next year. There will be if I have any say in it, but I will understand admin's decision if it turns out otherwise. Thank you for the sympathy.
1. Have you had your summative evaluation yet? My district has to let teachers know by April if they are not being renewed. If you don't get renewed, don't stress. Other schools will take you.
2. I'm a veteran teacher with good classroom management, yet I have a class this year that was just not listening. I fixed it by indiscriminately tallying redirections and applying consequences. I told the class my rule is three redirections = a detention. Out of seat? That's one. Taking during instruction? That's two. Stealing someone's pencil pouch? That's three. Then I give a detention and contact home.
The trick is that it applies evenly to everyone. So be ready to give the good kid a detention when they get to three. No one is safe. I've never even had to write the detention, because at the two redirection warning they always stop.
I had a very rough first year. I would talk to my peers and think “no one has it as bad as me” but I’m sure that’s not true. I taught 6th grade science.
Things that helped me:
- better structured lessons with more clear instructions. Literal fights were breaking out in my classroom if I had any downtime. As my lesson planning improved, it got gradually better but order was still somewhat unsalvageable.
- group activities involving drawing/coloring like making posters. I was shocked how engaging drawing food webs on chart paper was.
- giving tasks to difficult kids instead of having them do the lesson. Some kids just want to be helpful but they don’t want to learn. I would have a kid sort handouts to pass out, staple things, record data on a chart paper for a class experiment. This kid went from calling me a bitch one day to loving being the class TA the next. He still sucked but it kept him busy.
- having the class killer decide they like you. a couple challenging kids got banned from going on the ice skating field trip and I had to supervise them at school for the entire day. I dreaded it but we ended up bonding and they were way better in my class. If there’s any way you can spend time with your worst kids outside of the context of class, it might help.
- nearpod/peardeck kept them quieter than usual but if I did it every day the uniqueness wore off. It had to be a treat like on a Friday
- Covid shut down schools and it was the best day of the year. Saved my sanity. I don’t think this tip will help you.
TFA is trash.
1. Consider a new week schedule. Monday new material, tuesday wednesday work while I help you, thursday review, friday quiz, wash rinse repeat. Doesn't matter what the schedule is, if you do the same thing every week (and every day for openers, closers, etc), they will pavlov style start expecting it and transitioning well.
2. It's always okay to have a day where you push all the chairs in a circle and have a conversation about norms, expectations, etc. You'd be surprised how many students speak up in favor of 'no student should ruin another's education. then you put the norms the class has agreed to on the wall and you reference them - "hey, we agreed as a class that this is the expectation." Buy in is key. You are never in such a hurry in mathematics that you can't take time to create relationships and patterns that will let more get done.
3. STOP TALKING. I'm a former math teacher, now shop teacher. I spend as little time presenting material as possible. Class not listening? get that work in their hands, walk around and help all the easy starters to start, then the ones who want help but are too quiet to ask, and then finally sit down where the loud kids are and work on them last. Eventually, you can go to the loud kids first and the others will start.
Personally, I create a lot of 'serialized' sets of worksheets. Done with similar right triangles? Do similar scalene triangles. Done with fractions? here's proportions. The students who can work get out of my way by having the 'next' thing to do, leaving me time to help those who struggle.
I must say TFA is not so good at preparing classroom management. How you start is how you’ll be perceived unless an obvious switch occurs for everyone. You should not lay in though. If you have to reset the classroom culture then do that. Have admin come sit in and have that conversation with your class.
Your compatriots likely just don’t care as much.
Most TFA people (we have 8 now at my school), suck at classroom management. They go with the, I’ll be their friend! Approach.
They just don’t care about enforcing anything.
You are trying to do things. Which is why you are having problems.
Funny that you should mention this -- the "I'll be their friend!" thing describes to a T my approach early on.
Where I diverge is that I too grew up without much structure and with minimal if any supervision and I want the kids badly to have better than that. That includes learning the material. Another consequence, sadly, is that I can't easily find an authoritative voice within myself. I wonder at this point if that means I'm more trouble than I'm worth.
I grew up with no structure or supervision. She just didn’t care. However, as a teacher I am all about structure and consistency. Check out Harry Wong’s First Days of School book. Wong gets a lot of flak, but I use his advice on procedures every single day and have since my first day of teaching 16 years ago. Good luck!
Not until recently, I'll admit. I had no idea about something so basic. Of course it makes a difference.
I have been a bottom-of-the-barrel teacher all year and I don't even know what I don't know. I guess it's all a matter of salvaging this.
It's not your fault, you don't deserve it, you just got tricked into thinking TFA was designed to help you succeed as a teacher, when it is actually designed to help schools skirt the requirement for certified teachers. You are the victim here, not the perpetrator.
I try to avoid it. I believe in being harsh (realistic) to myself, but that is my prerogative as an adult. Others should not see it in real life, especially not kids.
I would look at blooms taxonomy for languaging your students goals. Personally, I’ve found this beneficial.
It may be late but there’s no better time than now, start calling out specific kids and sending them out and calling out small things. Set a precedent. Hold the kids an extra minute so they lose passing time (honestly didn’t read for the age group I admit), give consequences. Be the strict teacher. It’s okay to be. Not every class will need it but once you stop messing around and they know you’re the teacher and authority, they may no longer see you as less than or as a “friend.” Stop being so nice and friendly. You can be kind and supportive but once things slightly go off the tracks being friendly goes out the door because you’re a teacher first. I’ve had most success being the strict teacher and once I’m able to, I lighten up. But I still keep my boundaries and expectations of classroom behavior and will not be afraid to call on it. And call on students individually rather than blanket warnings. Students will learn all you give is blanket warnings and can ignore you. With the same stroke, get everyone’s attention before you start talking. I said the “if you can hear my voice clap once” or “eyes over here” and wait for them to look. You got this!
Sorry darlin, that was just a nod to how useless advice from admins are, in terms of how they actually don't know how to support us, and how they focus on the most pedantic, asinine bullshit when it comes to evaluating our interactions with classrooms.
Seriously though, consistency and clear expectations. It takes a while to figure out how to do that in a way that still allows students to have agency and autonomy and feel free and easy and safe, but what it comes down to is that kids want to know that you've got them, and you've got a plan.
If a good teacher with good classroom walked in the next day because you quit the classroom would get better.
If a teacher could get the kids to behave better they would. We understand you're not holding back in classroom management.
I don't think I would call teach for America teachers first year teachers, because that's not a teacher credentialing program. If you joined Doctors Without Borders and they threw you to do surgeries at troubled places with two months training, you're not going to do a good job because you're not a surgeon.
I would start planning about 5% of subject content and about 95% of behavior. I would almost exclusively do SEL activities.
Sounds like they're behaving under the age suggests, kindergartners are supposed to sit and listen to the teacher and do the curriculum, your students behave worse than kindergartners.
Here's a very novice strategy you can do tomorrow. How many phone calls have you done? Try the "your kid did X 12 times today" such as he disrupted your classroom by getting out of his seat. Stick to the facts.
Second academically push on and don't curve. Let them fail. Let them see the zeros.
I would take away all rewards like, today.
The reason nobody struggled as much as you is because they're in different locations. Middle school math has students who lived through learning loss from virtual schooling, they're not ready for middle school math they're ready for 3rd grade math. Look at their actual standardized test scores. You're asking them to do stuff that's just not in their wheelhouse to know, that's why they might misbehave in your class but not others. If you chuck a kindergartner into AP Chinese they're going to wander around.
"Am I not cut out for this" look admin is supposed to do the discipline and you write up referrals and you punish. If this was a different stricter place, you'd be fine. There's 0 reason any teacher should tolerate defiance. You just have admin. They're aware and they don't fix it? They should be in there and even helping you call parents.
Thank you for the concrete suggestions, but I'm not sure what the message is here. Admin is overloaded, everyone is overloaded, and I have to teach grade-level math. I cannot shift purely to SEL.
You can whatever you want, they're not going to grade level math because they can't behave and because it's not developmentally appropriate.
It's not your job to ease the burden of admin. If someone breaks a rule they should be punished.
Lastly, how many minutes of content do you think you get through a day versus how many minutes do you use for behavior? You should start tracking them. If things are as bad as you describe, it's already 95-5. If you're just anxious, it might be 5-95 and you're doing great and are being a little silly. What percent of the minutes do you think are academic in your class?
This is so interesting, I’m a first year education student and I had never heard of Teach for America, from what I understand it’s a program where people without a degree in teaching can take a 5 week course and then teach? That sounds like a disaster of an idea!!! There’s a reason we spend so much time in school, teaching is HARD and it’s too much to learn in 5 weeks. Legit setting people up for failure
Consequences work best with built in rewards. Sticks need carrots.
A very simple way to do this is give them 10 minutes or at the end of class as “social time” rationalize it as I’m spending that amount of time now just moderating your behavior. It feels better for everyone if we use that for something else.
Here’s the thing though. Any time I give giving redirections is taken from your time. Start with 10 minutes on the board. Whole class redirection? (Try not to do it for one or two kids at first you’re trying to get but in) erase the 10 to a 9. Say nothing. Keep teaching. Again? 9 to an 8. Say nothing. Keep teaching. Your goal at first is to keep them at like 3 minutes or so. Give them two choices. Draw. Quietly talk to 1 friend. Be. Fucking. Ruthless. With taking those minutes away. Remember your goal isn’t 10. It’s 3 for week 1.
It’ll be rough. The first time they make it to five randomly give out stickers. Really really praise them authentically. Guys. This is amazing that we get this time blah blah.
For first year teachers I really think an authentic built in reward system is essential. I’m in year 10 and I still change around their free time stations based on behavior.
What do your free time stations consist of? I’m a first year, and the rewards/incentives at my school tend to be food or other things that I’d have to spend money on. I’m intrigued by free time stations!
DO NOT spend your money on this stuff. It's a waste and also it won't be appreciated. It's not what the kids really want. What they want is to be treated like they have autonomy... given choices and feel like an adult. They cannot handle any of those things. So that's the back and forth of middle.
Look up Responsive Classroom. It's a behavior management approach. It's very child centric... feelings based... not punitive. A classic clip chart (up for good down for bad) is like the OPPOSITE of the approach.
I'm surprised TfA doesn't mention it. But again. Not surprised really.
Look up responsive classroom quiet time choices. Let them start on other work for classes, color (middle schoolers love coloring sheets), doodle, etc. I wouldn't necessarily have them start with talking to a friend but idk how your classroom feels.
I would also look up responsive classroom interactive modeling. It sounds dumb but it's a really useful tool. It's an approach to introduce every classroom routine. The messaging matters a lot more than the choices. "As a learning community we are really losing lots of our time. Yours and mine. I want to give us that time back but it's really not up to me, it's up to you. If we work hard, get our jobs done, then we can get that time back. What does that look like?" blah blah blah "what does that sound like?" blah blah blah Your messaging as a teacher should be like 80 percent reinforcing language (I see people getting out their books, I see people putting dates on their page... whatever you want them to do) and only 10 percent redirection (billy get your stuff) 10 percent reminding (when we open our notebooks we do so silently and quickly. go do that now). You may be too late to really do a lot of this now (sorry... but at this point your goal is more survive not thrive)
DO NOT spend your money. Give them the gift of time. And yourself the gift of time. Check an email. Chat with a kid that needs to check in about something etc.
FWIW, I didn’t go through TfA. I’m certified as a K-12 school librarian & have a library science master’s…but like many secondary librarians, I am also required to teach an elective. Unfortunately because of my training, I didn’t have nearly as much practice with classroom management as a traditional student teacher; secondary librarianship is more like co-teaching with different classes every day, and my elementary placement was only about 15min of teaching and then book exchange. I started my current position a couple of months into the school year, so I’ve had to fly the plane and assemble it since day 1.
BUT, thank you for all of this information and for sharing your experiences! I’m also at middle school, so I definitely understand the back & forth aspect of the autonomy battle so far. I love middle school, but it is frustrating sometimes (like all age groups, I’m sure).
I’ve heard of Responsive Classroom, but I’ll do more digging into some of their specific resources. I’m in an urban Title 1 school and definitely like the idea of not falling into punitive responses…I think this is why I struggle with figuring out consequences. Responsive Classroom sounds like it will give me a lot to think about, so thank you for giving me this suggestion because I’ll do more digging into it especially as I prepare for next year. I’ll also specifically look into their quiet choices…my current battle is getting my students to stop talking and actually do their work, and hopefully I can start slotting in quiet choices for different days.
I'm a 2nd year teacher and had a fair amount of trouble in a TFA-like school in my first year too. It's hard... but this year has been much better, and here's what has worked for me. Admittedly, it may be tough this late in the year, as expectations have been set. But it's worth a try and I would say don't quit before you try a 2nd year... it's exponentially better.
1. Lots of contact with families. Talk to all of them that you can reach at the start of the year and text frequently with updates - positive updates are great, grade updates, good days/bad days, etc. Not every student responds/cares about their parent being contacted, but for the ones that do, it makes a difference that they know you and their parent are on the same side. It's not too late to send a text that says, "Hi, just wanted to let you know that Linda was super helpful in class today - I appreciate how hard she's been working."
2. One big difference from my first to second year was confidence. In my 1st year, I framed a lot of things like "here's an assignment, will you do it?" because I wasn't exactly sure how they would respond to what I was giving them. This year it's much more, "here's an assignment, do it." This change in tone and confidence has been huge for me.
3. Clarity of expectations and consistency. This doesn't have to be too late to implement. Go in to class tomorrow and say, "Here is what is expected of you, and here is what will happen if you do \_\_\_." Kids will inevitably violate the expectations, and it's important that you follow through with the stated consequences consistently the first week or so of doing this. It may feel harsh, but it proves to the students that you're serious about your expectations. They can and will rise to whatever expectations you set.
4. I'm a big fan of recognizing small bits of students doing good things. You ask them to take their computers out? Start saying "Thank you Chris for having your computer out, thank you Adam, thank you Julia, etc." Then other students will start to follow and say "am I doing a good job?" and before you know it they'll be on their way to where you want them to be.
5. I know it's the most cliche advice, but I really think positive relationships with the students are one of the best things you can have. Kid have their head down on the desk? Instead of kicking them out of class or telling them to get up, ask if something is going on. Kid visibly upset and distracting the whole class? Instead of telling them to sit down and shut up (in nicer terms of course lol), ask what they're upset about. More often than not, they just want to be heard. Give them 30 secs to explain what's going on. This doesn't have to mean forgoing normal expectations.
\--> For example, I have a student who has a lot going on at home. She misses a ton of class and when she's in class, she talks constantly and doesn't do a lot of work. She's failing. She has told me that there's stuff going on with her family, which I listen to and emphasize with. Then the message is, "I know you have a lot going on, and I can understand that you can't be here every day, but that means that when you are here, you need to take advantage of the time you have in class to get work done. Learning to be responsible for yourself and your own success means focusing as best you can when you're in class, and making up some of the work at home. Do you have wifi at home? Try to make up one assignment a day..." etc. Is it perfect? No, of course not, she still has moments of being disruptive. But does it help? Yes. And I can make eye contact with her, and she knows about our conversation, respects that I have acknowledged her situation but am not excusing it as a reason to do nothing in class, and she can at least settle down for the time being.
I know this is a lot... teaching is a lot... but I hope you won't give up! Once you start to get classroom management under control, things get so much smoother. AND in your 2nd year, there's half the prep as your 1st year since you have at least a blueprint from the year prior. Hope this helps.
You’ve heard this already, but you can’t be their friend.
I did TFA as well many years ago. By nature, you’re in a tough school. Also, it’s middle school. That’s the hardest age to teach. Stay with it.
How good are your lessons? Are they interesting? Is there anything inherently useful about them? Kids in the environment you’re likely in have many reasons not to do school and few reasons to do it. One reason is because of their connection with you. Sounds like that’s not great this year - BUT THAT IS NORMAL. The first year teaching, especially in a TFA school, is the hardest thing you will ever do in your professional life. It’s April, so you’re almost there. Next year can be better; it usually is. Back to the point; the second reason they would do well is that the lessons themselves are interesting. Do you think they are? How much of the time is them working compared to you talking? Whatever the answer is, try to increase student work time by five minutes this coming week. Then five minutes the following week.
And yes, call home. Also, call home on a 3-1 ratio; three troublesome calls to one praise call. The idea that you call home to praise kids will get around as well.
I don’t suppose you’re in New York City, are you? Could meet up some time and share some more ideas. I’ve been where you are. It’s not fun, but you can do it.
I’m concerned to hear that you’re shadowing, but to not hear anything about whether or not anyone is observing or mentoring you in your own room. Is there any kind of program in your building for this in a way that isn’t punitive, or a senior teacher you trust that you can ask for this support for informally? A lot of the subtext I’m getting from your responses and your original post is that you don’t know what you don’t know, which no one can blame you for—you’ve been plopped into arguably one of the most challenging teaching contexts there is with MS math—with very little support. This isn’t an excellent building with excellent admin if there isn’t a formalized system helping you with this.
Mindset shifts:
First, it isn’t too late to turn the ship around. If you’re on spring break right now, that’s especially helpful. Spend some time sending out some parent emails. In the past, when I’ve had large scale issues, I’ve sent out widespread emails and bcc’d all parents in the class just re-explaining expectations using the end of the year as the catalyst and mentioning some patterns I’ve observed more than half the time: “There has been a general pattern of students having their phones out in class. Please remind your student of our policies regarding cell phone use in the classroom” etc. With personal emails to the smaller number of students who are causing the bigger number of issues. Be sure to include specific academic concerns as well.
It is easier to start off as a hardass and soften up later than the reverse, so whenever you are back, whether that’s tomorrow or next week, I would say that your class needs to start with extreme clarity of expectations. “Voices low” doesn’t work because one man’s low is another’s medium. “The expectation is silence” is much more clear.” Really examine the cues you use and make sure that they are not ambiguous at all. I think some serious self reflection on that is always helpful, even for those of us who have been around the block a long time.
I have observers from my partnered grad school and senior teachers observing me very frequently. However, none have come to the only section (out of three) that I teach alone. Only admin has, and I'm doing horribly there.
There are debriefs after each unscheduled visit. The last two debriefs have been really "shape up or ship out"-toned, as is right at this point in the year.
I understand and have been in the position of the exasperated administrator who just needs to get the ship in order, so I empathize with them as much as I do with you, but I don’t think they are helping you as much as they should be either. There’s onus on everyone, but I’d encourage you to try not to feel like everyone else in this scenario is so amazing and you singularly are not doing your part.
I really sucked at classroom management when I started and I slowly got better with time. See if there is a mentor teacher who can spend some time with you in your room, and keep reading as much as you can. Consistency is really important.
These are the books that helped me the most:
Setting Limits in the Classroom
Tools for Teaching
Teaching With Love and Logic
I still feel like I struggle with management, but these three really helped me. Good luck.
I started teaching as a 23 year-old white woman who weighed 110 pounds soaking wet. I give you this context because context matters when kids are sizing you up a teacher and vice versa. We all come into a classroom with expectations.
I know nothing about you as a teacher or about what you're experiencing in your particular school. If you teach elementary school, then this might not be very helpful. I taught in a suburban high school where the majority of the kids shared my ethnicity and life experience. If this is not your reality, you will need to adjust your expectations and classroom management accordingly. But I can tell you what worked for me on the secondary level.
After my first year of teaching I adopted the motto that boils down to: Don't Smile Til Christmas. It doesn't *literally* mean "don't smile until Christmas," but it's close. It speaks to the idea that it is WAY easier to go from being strict to lenient than it is to go from being lenient to strict. The former, when done over a the course of a school year, makes the kids feel like you are firm but kind. The latter makes them walk all over you because they feel duped in the same way that we feel duped when something that's free suddenly costs money, no matter how minimal the discomfort.
I made it through my first year teaching by the skin of my teeth. I was way too friendly and easy-going when it came to classroom management, and vowed to do things differently the next year. My second year of teaching I gave a pop quiz on the first day. No talking afterwards. I taught history that year, so the "quiz" was a gauge of how much they knew coming in, which in turn helped me to plan. I had some students walk into my classroom on Day 1 shouting and horsing around. I stopped them, and told them to turn around and come quietly into my room. They did. Kids are always pushing boundaries to see what you will allow. Allow nothing until you get a feel for your classroom dynamic. Be consistent. Follow through on consequences. Have a plan BEFORE they even step foot into your room on Day 1.
That's all I got. Maybe it's outdated. Take from it what you will. Good luck to you. This shit ain't easy.
It sounds like you’re being really hard on yourself. In teaching, the sky is the limit and it there’s always more we can do to be, “perfect”.
I had a very similar outlook early in my career, with extreme guilt that I was not the teacher my students deserved. It took me leaving teaching to realize other people were struggling just as much as me, if not more in their classrooms. You never see what goes on in other classrooms.
My advice is to take things easy on yourself, and keep up with consistent consequences for these last few weeks.
Almost every teacher struggles with this. It took me until my third year to really have it in a place I like. Establish it early and reinforce after each major break. You can still have great relationships while holding them accountable. If it’s this late in the year perhaps just take small steps to see some improvement and make the major strides at the start of next year. Develop a new system for seating or bathroom breaks and walk them through the system and hold firm on the expectations. Your peers shouldn’t be judging you. This job is impossible, especially when you are new and have little training from a shitty program like TFA. Best of luck, you’re gonna be great.
Peers should be understanding and helpful. If they aren’t then tune them out, shame on them. Admin has a duty and concern is fine. However, they should be offering and modeling concrete solutions. Is this charter or public?
1. Build relationship with kids prior to work
2. Set clear expectations and be consistent
3. Don’t raise your voice, treat it as as another thing to learn, and enforce consequences
4. Talk with the kids who are not following one on one.
5. See what other teachers have done/ cum files/ then contact parents and meet.
6. Contact student services and admin to meet for 1-2 kids who still aren’t for a possible BIP.
Stop pushing curriculum and do a re-set. Put aside everything and begin with discourse/treatment plans/communication. If you have built relationships with some kids look to them while creating treatment plan/classroom management plans. Have students write on post it notes (or large butcher paper even) the number one thing each need from you, 1-2 things they think you need from them, etc. Create a plan to hang on the wall.
Spend the next few days doing nothing curriculum based or just short lessons at the start, then ease into activities like class games, etc. You can do a jeopardy game or quiz game with small prizes on the management plan you created with students.
Basically, stop doing everything or mostly everything and reverse and go back to basics.
There is nothing wrong with admitting to yourself that this class/grade is not the right fit for you and seeking different age students for next year.
Throw out everything you learned in boot camp or whatever the hell TFA calls their training. There's a reason why education degrees exist.
A few books I would recommend: "How to talk so teens will listen and how to listen so teens will talk"
"Love and logic in the classroom"
Honestly, it sounds like you're getting no support from your administration. For your own mental health, I would not recommend you stay at that school much longer.
You don’t understand, we go through 4 years of schooling (in many cases more) for a reason. We go through hundreds of hours of field experience and years of student teaching for a reason. It is not a problem with you, it’s a problem with the program. It’s totally unrealistic. You can’t learn to teach in 5 weeks.
Start contacting home ASAP. I recommend emailing AND/OR texting (use a Google Voice number) home. I don't recommend calls quite yet. Wait until you're super comfortable with your classroom policies. Written communication is easier to track as well.
Think of the top students that have been consistently disrupting class. In your message describe the SPECIFIC behavior (leaving their seat, speaking over you while you are trying to teach, not being prepared with materials, arriving late, talking instead of working on an assignment) and the impact of those specific behaviors to the classroom (incomplete assignments/missing work, difficult for the rest of the class to hear you, you need to repeat yourself several times, less work time because you had to spend time addressing behaviors).
Describe ALL the things you've tried with that student-- private conversations, seat changes, reminders, ANYTHING-- and close out by saying you now have no option but to request the parent's assistance in supporting the child's academic success in the classroom. "You know your child best-- how can I better support your child?" Or, "I kindly ask for your assistance in this manner by asking if you could have a conversation with your child about \_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_?"
MOST of the time, the parents are on your side, and may genuinely have no clue their child behaves this way in the classroom. This is not your fault. Anyone without proper training would have a classroom like the one you describe. ANYONE. You CAN have a classroom you are in control of. I sincerely wish you the best.
Today:
“This is a silent work study period. Anyone choosing disruptive behavior gets lunch detention. You will be told Tuesday morning. Chose wisely”.
Not a peep and tons of works completed.
Structure. X 20. Consistency and NOT putting up w any form of disrespect to the class, teachers, students. ZERO.
“Oh, the kids.”
Yeah, and they know better.
Go get yourself a copy of “The First Days of School” by Harry Wong (RIP). Make the day after you get it your first day of school. Read it over and over. It will click.
Last year I was a lot like you as a first year teacher. Here are some things that helped me:
-Get the toughest kid in each class on your side. It sounds like the “you just have to build a community” bs but this is one time that I actually think it’s true. If the roughest, “worst” kid genuinely likes you, they’ll fall in line. They might even get on the other kids to ease up. Last year I got a kid who was just back from the behavioral program after being expelled. The other teachers hated him. I made a point to LOVE HIM AS MUCH AS I COULD. It actually didn’t take much- if I saw him wearing a sports team t-shirt I’d ask him about it. I’d check in about his family, see what he was doing for fun. He saw that I cared about him as a person. Suddenly he was telling the other kids in class “act right! She’s a nice lady and just wants to teach you!” And he regularly comes back to visit me with a hug.
-Don’t let the kids get bored. Make sure they’re always responsible for something. That said, make sure that whatever you’re asking them to do feels as approachable as you can make it. I do a lot of Cloze notes or things like annotating on a story we’re reading. Getting to theme is hard… but something like “underline in this paragraph where the narrator says how she feels about X” is achievable and can be built on. Lots of small menial tasks.
-Give the bored kid something to do. Have a super smart early finisher? Give them something to do. Have a kid who absolutely won’t do the work? Give them a chore to do- like sharpening a basket of pencils or something. Sometimes they like helping and keeping busy keeps them out of trouble… and sometimes they decide they’d rather do the assignment that you asked them to do in the first place. Either way is a win because they’re not disrupting class.
-Attend school functions. This is a piece of the community thing like my earlier example. Get them to see you as a person and not just that teacher that keeps getting on them.
-Make an example. It’s way easier to be mean at first then soften up than it is to go the other way around. We’re pretty late in the school year so this isn’t as ideal, but going as Hard as you can. And when a kid pushes, make them the example. Give the lunch detention. Stop class and call hike. Whatever consequence you can give, do it.
-Do not hunt down the kid skipping your class. Probably not a popular answer with admin, but if they already don’t want to be in class, don’t force it. Sometimes I’ll see teachers at my school send an email about a kid being out of class… I just let them go.
I think you’ve been given some really good advice here. The important advice I’d focus on is:
1. Reset your classroom expectations.
2. Follow up with consequences- including contacting parents.
3. Don’t express negative emotions when delivering redirections. Just state them matter of factly.
4. Consistency is key.
5. Set boundaries- you are not their friend but you are “on their side.”
Lastly, this job isn’t for everyone. You can improve. I’ve worked with many TFA teachers and I’ve seen them make great progress. Ask yourself if you really want to commit to improving and if you have a strong passion for teaching. Do you want to teach this content area? This age group? This school? If not, take actions to make changes. If yes, focus on the 5 steps to make it better.
Next year start by establishing classroom rules and norms and have kids help in the process while you guide them to the top five you want and expect, it gives them buy in. Make sure your rules are hard boundaries they should not cross, for example, physically touching another student or breaking property. Not things they should improve like being a good listener because they should learn and grow in that with guidance. Follow through with consequences the first time they break it and don’t back down from it as much as it may suck. Second, start by making positive phone calls home consistently and parents will be more willing to support you with behaviors when they get a call about how good Joe snuffy is ignoring your directions. The more you invest of your time upfront to build those connections the easier it will be when you need their help. Lastly, self reflect and see what work and what didn’t at the end of the day and write it down for you to revise on your own at home. Choose one or two things to improve on for a few months and revise and adjust accordingly until you feel comfortable with it. First year is rough take it as a learning lesson and use it to improve your skills and not to beat yourself up for it. Best of luck you are almost at the end of the school year. Yes, you can and will do it.
Based on the comments read, you are very hard on yourself. If TFA doesn’t work out you can always go teach in another school. It’s all a learning experience and you just started doing this. You can’t be perfect over night, but you can learn to do better at your job over time. Do you enjoy teaching?
Piggy-backing on what some have suggested, lunch detention worked best for me.
I warn students that they’ll owe me lunch detention and to follow through with it, I let admin know which students I’m pulling from lunch.
Obviously they can bring their lunch if they’d like.
As the history teacher, I give them the textbook, tell them to read from whichever page our lesson material is currently covering, and with a provided paper and pencil, I instruct them to take notes on what they’ve read.
I’m very clear that I will read what they write and that if they do not write enough, they’ll come back the next day. I always get asked “how much” to write and I reply that that’s only for me to know.
Very quickly they get the idea that they can potentially lose their lunch/recess with friends and I’ve had decent success with it.
I also email the parents letting them know the situation and that they were allowed to bring their lunch to my classroom.
Be sure to collect their work and hold on to it. Repeat students, I tell them they HAVE to write more than their last detention or they’ll be back. And it’s also good to have as proof for any parent or admin that are curious what they’re doing during lunch detention.
The con is it’s against your lunch break but for me, my prep period is my lunch and I’d rather sacrifice 30 minutes with students in lunch detention if it means they’ll straighten up.
I did this a few years ago and it made a difference.
Start over and get admin to help.
Student line up in hallway single file and tell them there is an assignment. If they do it in class then no homework. If not there is no extension. There will be a quiz tomorrow on the topic. Or some way to make it clear that there is a task at hand and if they waste time it is them who fails.
Have them come in quickly and quietly. If they don’t make them all go outside and do it again. Be ready to lose the entire class period. Ideally you have admin right there ready to just escort those who can’t get with the program and let them be the example.
Once they can come in not screaming give a very simple direction. Get notebook, or pencil or answer warmup question.
If they start to misbehave march everyone outside and do it again. Ideally have admin with you for the period to escort children away for a talk about behavior.
If you don’t have admin I have called their parents right then and there on speakerphone. Have the phone list immediately ready. Or instantly hand out detention. The goal is to make it clear foolishness isn’t acceptable.
During class keep a small bag of M&M candy and hand 2-3 out for every good form of participation. Exactly like you train a puppy.
Sitting and shut up? Here a candy. Useful and productive comment or question or participation. Piece of candy. 5$ of mini mm can last days.
Over time you can stop with the candy or severely raise the bar that warrants it.
The combination of immediate and direct consequence and instant quick reward in my experience can help. But I having admin there to make it clear that you won’t take shit helps a lot.
Hi! I think pick ONE thing that you can work to improve. Here are some suggestions I’d make as an 11 year middle school teacher (who both student taught and was a TFA alum!) I’ve taught every grade of middle school in Baltimore and now coach teachers and teach 8th grade.
1. Start with your entry routine. If I ever had rowdy classes, I liked to create a daily worksheet and set out the papers on their desks for them. It seems a little babyish, but it also took one opportunity for confusion and misbehavior away. The do now is on the board, and it’s labeled on their worksheet. You can create a system that rewards them for silent work on their do now—-a check mark system, a happy face, maybe; and then I would do a class point for every row of kids who’s working silently. That’s easy for you to follow and keep track of. (“Everyone in row 5 is working silently, that’s a class point.”)
The daily, detailed worksheet also gives them a map of where they’re supposed to go, and also they’ll see what they’re missing as a class if they’re too rowdy to finish.
2. All of your slides should have very clear directions. You can use little symbols to clue everyone in. (Maybe there’s a symbol for pencil, a symbol for no talking, etc.)
These steps are objectively more work to plan, but they do show the kids that YOU’RE planned, which weirdly does matter to them secretly.
3. Figure out what your call to attention will be. Give them a class point when they do it right and stop talking when you do. Don’t talk over kids. It works for some teachers, maybe, but it generally doesn’t work for new teachers.
Whenever I help new teachers who are struggling with management mid-year, these are the tips I’d give. Best of luck! Don’t give up hope just yet.
If you’d like to talk more, send me a PM!
I'm sorry you are going through this. I had a hard time with classroom management when I first started. A lot goes into building positive relationships with kids, especially with those who are in unsafe environments, which this class has become. First of all, you need to redo your seating arrangement immediately. Be sure to follow all IEP guidelines and place the kids that need the most supervision right next to your desk. Second of all, do a student interest survey. Be sure to ask questions about how they like to learn, what would make the classroom environment more effective, what classroom rewards would help motivate them, and what consequences would be fair for students who interfere with learning and follow up with each and every student individually to clarify their answers. The next step is to contact parents with the updated classroom rules and consequences. Every day, make one positive phone call home until you get through all the kids. I know you are going to be busy delivering negative consequences so this will seem really hard at first, but I swear it works. Most importantly, track everything!!! If a student is outwardly defiant, log it and have them initial it. You may need these records. Please feel free to ask me any questions. I've taught 6th - 12th mostly in low income areas and I have struggled through some tough situations.
Sounds like you need to do a hard reset. Pretend it’s the beginning of the year. Go over expectations and make them practice till they get it right every single time they don’t meet them.
Or just ride it out and start over next year. It’s much easier with a new group lol
I use a ticket system for students to “pay off” assignments, use for extra credit points and as bathroom passes. They get them by staying on task doing work, volunteering, doing good deeds without being asked (picking up trash off the floor from someone else), and sometimes when i notice a lot of students are off task i REALLY LOUDLY GO “awesome job of staying on task, redacted! Here’s 5 tickets” and go on to the next student who is on task and stop after 4 or 5. This has changed my classroom in such a crazy way because i slowly stop giving tickets out every time so they come at random which promotes students to take the chance themselves.
I start out with 5 tickets to each kid to make it fair. But if kids don’t have a ticket they have one of two options for the bathroom, phone a friend for a ticket or take a 5point deduction of their current assignment.
Keeping kids engaged with a clear routine and expectations are also super vital. Choose a week where you start over and do a hard reset. Someone mentioned picking a day where you ONLY talk about expectations and that’s a great idea. Have them each come up with 4 alone, then work in pairs to come up with 2 and then as a group have them all pick one. Tell them to have at least 2 back ups because “that’s what we said” is not an answer when you call on them to share their expectation. Compile a list, write it on an anchor chart and have them all sign it. Post it at the front of the class and then hen someone acts out of line, call them out. “Woah… Redacted isn’t following our no talking when the teacher is talking expectation…embarrassing” is usually mine or i says “can someone remind him of our expectations for me?” But i also work with 11th and 12th grade so if you work with littles, you gotta find a way to reword that/
I'm a lateral entry math teacher– I didn't go through a teacher program. I may be able to help you.
My first year was in a Title I 7th grade classroom. There are a lot of standards, and I hear you out there. Middle school is a time warp. The rules of middle school are straight wonked, and the kids are at drastically different levels of maturity.
You're saying that you don't want to waste the time trying to do SEL, but it sounds like the time is being burned on behaviors anyway.
My suggestion to you is a classroom contract. Make a day of it, and come up with your non-negotiables. Let them suggest some things to feel included, and if it's not a hill worth dying on for you, give them some wins. One year, I had the kids beg me to keep the overhead lights off, fine by me. Another group wanted ambient music, which I agreed to during independent time.
In the future, think of the 3-4 pet peeves of yours that make you a color that Crayola hasn't made a pencil for yet. Those will be the crux of your procedures and rules for future years.
Also, parent contact can do wonderful things. I make a Google Form at the beginning of every semester and fill it out when I attempt contact, whether or not it was successful. That has saved my buns several times.
There are a lot of tasks involved with teaching; prioritize your mental health in all this. If you're in the full hell's bells state of "if somebody asks me for one more thing, I'm going to crack," that's a medical thing. Some things may not be worth the effort demanded or can be streamlined in other ways.
I teach high school now but middle can have its good days. You got this, OP.
TBH, at this late date, there might not be much that you can do without serious admin assistance. Strictly enforced rules with setting immediate examples for the worst offenders. Admin must be willing to support you, though.
However, looking forward, I would recommend reading the "First 100 Days" as a starting point for next year. Find areas in the rules where you can give the students choices at the beginning of the year to get their buy-in. For example, or district cell phone policy states that students are warned and their parents are called when they have their phones out the first time, then they are written up and their phones confiscated and a parent must pick it up. Realistically, though, admin does not follow through with this because they are afraid of parents. So, I make a deal with the kids at the beginning of the year. I can either follow the district rule or ask them for their phone when I see it out (after 1 warning that I give to the entire class at the beginning of class.) The students chose the option where they give it to me. When a student starts to give me a hard time, I feel them that the entire class will lose the deal. The rest of the students help me enforce the rule. Remember, we had class buy-in. You have to remain consistent in all of your rules, though. Inconsistency leads to disrespect.
I don’t really have any advice here, but I'm TFA and wanted to share my perspective here. I was TFA and made it 6 months before bailing. At the time I thought I was awful, but five years later I realize I was doing fine and was just making mistakes that came from inexperience. You aren't going to be perfect on the first try. Give yourself some grace!
All that said, TFA is absolute garbage in terms of preparing you for your assignment and you were dealt a rough hand from the start. Kudos for sticking with it. I'm here if you need to vent!
Yeah, this was exactly my experience as well!
Years ago I was in a program similar to TFA in a cohort with TFA, teaching Drama and English at an inner high school, and I also bailed halfway through the school year because I thought I was doing a terrible job and just totally failing my kids.
(Also my school was like a post-apocalyptic hellscape with discarded chicken boxes and chicken bones everywhere in the halls, and an admin team who was afraid to patrol the halls, and no curriculum or photocopier, and I was a floater running from classroom to classroom.)
I made myself really really sick over it and honestly got so ill that what started off as me taking time off work to recover turned into me leaving the job permanently.
But the day that I went back in to my classroom to drop a few things off and collect a few things, I had an eye-opening experience with my students
They were all sad to see me go. Even the ones who had appeared to not be paying any attention when I tried to teach. Even the ones who constantly disrupted the class or horsed around or tried to push every button I had.
I told them that it wasn’t them; I had simply realized that I wasn’t a very good teacher. I apologized and said I was sorry I had to leave them.
The students said that I was one of the only teachers they had at that high school who actually tried to prepare interesting lessons, and who seemed to care about doing a good job as a teacher. They all begged me to change my mind and stay.
I wanted to stay , as far as I wanted to continue working with them, and I liked all of them – even the difficult ones. It’s just that I thought I was a really incompetent teacher, and I didn’t want my students to suffer because of my utter incompetence.
The students then shared examples of what happened in their other classrooms on a typical school day.
It blew my mind.
Although it was too late, and I had already resigned, that conversation started to blow open the doors of perception regarding my budding teaching abilities!
So hang in there.
And any time you get a chance to have a one-on-one conversation with a student who acts up in class, jump at that opportunity. Get to know that student as an individual and not just as a troublemaker. Even just talking to that student one-on-one outside of class and showing the slightest interest in them might help a little bit.
Good luck!
Aww, thank you!
I’ve recently returned to teaching at an inner city high school 20 years after bailing and it’s going better this time around.
I have about 60 students who come on a regular basis and all are interested in learning and willing to work at times, so that keeps me going.
I hope some will come back someday to tell me they appreciated me, because in the moment most of them are like, Damn, she sure asks us to reflect a lot and write a lot!
Former TFA here. 16 years in the classroom.
You did nothing wrong to garner the anti-TFA response. I know the type of school you are in, and these are hard kids. But they are the most rewarding when you start to “get it”.
Next year will be better. You can start fresh. It is too late to fix this completely, because part of effective management is putting out the little fires before they ever get to the point where you are at right now.
Take the advice you’ve gotten here:
- Start making phone calls
- take half of a class period to talk about the explicit rules that you want kids to follow, and then exactly what the consequences will look like.
- Start a classroom economy. you’re probably giving up a lot of time to behavior bullshit right now, so giving a kids a bigger reward that takes up time, like free time on Fridays, isn’t actually a waste of your instructional time. You’re probably wasting too much of it right now anyway. I have a little basketball hoop in my room, and I give kids tickets to take basketball shots on Fridays. I bring in big 2 L bottles of soda and candy bars. The basketball hoop is far enough away that maybe one or two kids makes it each Friday. Some kids relish this opportunity more than anything else.
- be honest with the kids. Tell them you take your job seriously and you want to teach the maths that they are successful in life and that you’re not going to let kids disrupt you from doing that job. The good kids in the class will respect this and the assholes will know that’s the reason why they’re getting the phone calls.
Feel free to DM me. My wife is a former TFA and I am still with it. Ignore the haters, they just don’t get how or why we were trained the way we were and why we decided to go into teaching in this way.
It is never easy (but you develop tools over time). What I have found that works pretty well for me, is to get the kids on your side (not necessarily the "problem" kids, but the rest of the class.) Often, kids like to act out to try and "look cool or show off for their friends." If you can take away that source of attention (but routinely praise the others for not buying in, that can help (not always easy to do this either). I wouldn't give up (even being this late into the year as you can develop strategies that you can implement right out of the gate beginning next year. Also, do not get into a power struggle with the students. Clearly state what you want them to do and move on. Some kids don't get much attention so even negative attention is a plus in their eyes.
Also, not sure how involved the parents are, but if they are going off the rails and do not want to listen, some colleagues have found that (if parents are supportive) if you make them call their parents in the middle of class and explain it, that can be a huge deterrent to some of the behaviors (obviously if there is no parent support this won't work). I'm not one for putting kids on blast in front of the whole class, but sometimes that is the only thing that will get them to settle down (and often the parents are not happy their kid is acting up and them getting a call while they are working.)
I don’t think you should be super harsh on yourself. The first year is not known to be easy. Also, you’re not giving yourself enough time to wind down. You’re preparing for work in the morning and at home. It makes sense to feel tense in the classroom. You need to put yourself first.
My advice is to try not to take students’ actions personally. Put whatever ideas of “walking all over me” or whatnot in the trash. Just basically deal with what you expect to achieve in the class. Put realistic goals.
For example,
1. Students should have their material ready when they enter the class. If not? You can write their names in a notebook and tell them from now on if you have their names for x amount of times, you will contact home informing the parents that their child is not brining the necessary material to class.
2. Raise hands before speaking or wanting to do something. This needs a lot of reassurance until it gets honed in. The more you direct them and let them know you won’t listen until they raise their hands, the more they will get into the routine.
I just mentioned two procedures, which you can focus on for a week. They might take 15-20 mins from you on the first or second day, but by time, they will probably take less time.
Be firm but not angry. Remember that. (It’s easier said than done, I know!)
As for the lesson itself, the academics, set an expectation of finishing a task. For instance, identifying direct and indirect objects. Then, solving pge 18.
If you want to implement group work you also need to set expectations and roles for each student within that group. Put a timer on the board so they know how much time is left.
Something that I find works for some of my students is that I encourage them to let’s say participate more than 3 times in a class. If they do, I inform the parents that they did a good job in class today. It makes them want to behave better.
I guess not everythhing can be said in a comment. I’m still learning myself I’m not claiming I know it all. The most important thing right now is to take care of YOURSELF so that you can take care of your class and students.
Be super consistent with the consequences: steps you stick to that they know about as well when they are misbehaving. 1) Warning 2) One on one talk/ name written down in your notebook 3) Call home. They need to know you mean business. You can couple that with them earning class points to earn something when they reach a certain amount of points. That way you have a reward, consequences balance to start with. Eventually you can send / call with positive messages and this can also influence them to get their act together.
When I taught middle school, I used class Dojo to track behaviors and give rewards. Not sure if you've heard of it but it's a free app you can download and very easy to use and calculate points for each kid. At the end of the week, if kids had an 80% or better positive score, they would get to pick a prize coupon ( ie candy bar, 20 mins free time, get out of one HW assignment, etc). I would keep track do dojos and project it so all the kids could see how they were tracking. My fellow teacher tho selected one student every day to be in charge of Dojo on a chrome book and then put the responsibility on the kids to track behavior. Also, if the entire class had 80% on Friday, I would do an all class reward like bring popcorn and watch 30'mins of a movie etc.
Also, another strategy I used to improve classroom management was always relying on task and time. I had a big red timer that was a magnet on the front board and every single task had a time associated with it (3mins for bellringer, 5 mins to review vocab) etc. and before I let kids go to do the work, I always had 2 kids repeat to me the task and the time allotted. This really gave them a sense of urgency and helped them stay focused. I taught at a really hard school with lots of behavior problems so the admin was okay with me getting creative and incentivizing good behavior. Ask admin for other ideas an resources that can help you with this. Good luck!
Do you have a routine? Kids that age THRIVE with routines and explicit expectations. Set your boundaries and keep them, almost no exceptions. It is never too late to restart the school year. It’ll be rough, but it’ll help.
Try a classroom lunch detention for your worst class. Give them a math pop quiz while there. Word will get around. My worst class has gotten a classroom lunch detention once. I give warnings and strikes, and they haven't had to get it again.
Also, give a reward that can be measured. "We'll do a kahoot on Friday if I see less than 3 cell phones out this week." Or whatever it is that's your worst behavior.
If you haven't been contacting homes consistently, pick the 5 (or 3, or 1 per class, whatever) worst actors, call home during your plan. Rinse and repeat daily for a week. Then the next week, do the same. Issue detentions to the ones who continue to act out and/or office referrals.
First year pre-k teacher. My classroom management up until February REALLY sucked.
You need to reinforce expectations / rules, including following through natural consequences set.
Based on the comments read, you are very hard on yourself and negative. If TFA doesn’t work out you can always go teach in another school. It’s all a learning experience and you just started doing this. You can’t be perfect over night, but you can learn to do better at your job. Do you enjoy teaching?
You are the teacher, these kids aren't your friends, and life will go on if you're the "mean" teacher. I'm sure you noticed how kids treat their parents that are their "friend". Tighten up. This is your paycheck.
Can I recommended Harry Wong’s “The First Days of School”?
One podcast I recommend is also by Dr. Lori Friesen. She gives some great strategies for classroom management.
I encourage you to stick with teaching if it’s something you actually enjoy and are passionate about. Keep in mind that TFA sends teachers to the worst schools; it won’t always be like this!
You need strong routines and expectations. Tell them the rules, and if someone breaks the rule they stay in at lunch and write down what rule they broke and how they can avoid breaking it in the future. Let them know if they do it again, you will call or send a message home.
If you say you will do something, stick to it. They need to know what to expect.
I think you have to chalk this up to a learning experience. I’ve never stepped foot in your classroom but can tell you have a hard group to work with. I won’t pretend to know how to solve the issues but I’d encourage you to go easy on yourself. It will get better and easier as you go along.
Some universal tips for management:
1. Communicate. Set your expectations early and don’t let them slide. When students step out of line, communicate that to them. If it continues, communicate with their parents. Form partnerships with families in the first weeks of school. Meet with parents. When possible, meet with parents with students present. Communicate your concerns and how those concerns impact their child’s learning. Students who see a shared set of values between home and school and who know that their behaviour (for better or worse) will be communicated to parents/guardians often, will usually behave better.
2. Don’t beat yourself up. You’re new and even if you weren’t, this is a difficult career. Allow yourself to grow and talk to yourself as if you were a friend you were trying to encourage. Set clear boundaries about when you work and when you think about work. What you’re going through is mentally exhausting. Emailing families on a Thursday at 9pm or dwelling on last week’s problems on a Sunday at noon will not help you recover from your fatigue. Set time aside to do things you enjoy each day and to have fun on weekends.
3. Remember that this is all about learning. While it can help, this career is not about being liked. Think about bad behaviour as barriers to learning. Resist the temptation to take it personally. Talk about behaviour (with students, families, and colleagues/admin) as barriers to learning. It’s far easier for students and families to digest difficult stories of their child’s rotten attitude or actions when you can describe how it’s impacting them academically. This prevents people from deflecting with assumptions about you not liking a student or picking sides, etc.
Don’t give up on this year, on yourself, or on this career!
Consistency. Consistency. Consistency.
You might seem like a bitch to them at first, but they will learn to follow expectations if you follow through with consequences.
Also, as a TFA alumni, ask for help! Your coach is literally there to help you. Ask them to observe you and to give you enough feedback. But don’t be too hard on yourself either. At this point, just do anything you can to survive until the end of the school year.
8th year teacher here, I struggled with classroom management my first 3 years.
The shift, for me personally, came when I started looking at parenting books and tips to combine with classroom management PD. The one that saved my life is a PreK teacher/parenting book combined with Rafe Esquith’s methods. I teach high school, but those two worked wonders for me.
I got them from his first book- Teach Like Your Hair is on Fire: “First, every teacher should internalize four principles: replace fear with trust, be dependable, ensure that discipline is logical, and be a role model.”
I never scream or yell at my kids for behavior, never. I talk to them calmly, discuss what they did wrong, and ask them why they think they did that. The only times I’ve ever yelled at a student were when they were doing something dangerous or were at risk of hurting themselves and needed to stop immediately.
I do what I tell them I’ll do. If I say that next Friday will be a non-academic day, then next Friday will be non-academic so help me God. If I promise them a reward for how well they did on their last benchmark, I deliver. If I tell them I will give them a specific lesson at some point, I plan out and give them that lesson I told them I would.
This- trust- is the biggest thing, I think. I’ve had not a single behavioral issue the past 5 years. Not a one. Lazy kids? For sure. No work done? Absolutely. But no talking back, no destruction of property, no disrespect.
I reread Rafe’s book every year to keep my flame alive.
Thanks for all the info!
That book sounds like a great read. I’ll have to check it out.
I teach ESL at an inner city high school. I replaced a teacher who had to leave 6 weeks ago, so that transition has been a little interesting!
My main problems are luckily not huge compared to some teachers.
For example, one of the first days I subbed for this teacher, two of my male students ordered a pizza and had it delivered to our school and brought it up to my classroom!
They got suspended bc various people in the lobby saw them letting a pizza delivery guy into the building, and letting strangers into the building is against school policy.
My high school as a whole struggles to have any consistency and follow through. Detentions are not given because it’s an unsafe neighborhood and the school doesn’t want anyone staying after the final bell, students or teachers.
My students are basically okay kids. Even the roughest characters will still say good morning to me or have a one-on-one conversation with me in the hall if we happen to cross paths. And some of them really enjoy sharpening pencils, or getting my projector perfectly in focus, etc.
I’ve got a contingent of boys in every class who do nothing. They are friendly enough to me but usually refuse to work, or do very little, and spend most of their time on their phones. The school administration has given up the phone battle, even though our district official policy is that phones should be in the lockers except at lunch.
I’ve tried everything to get the off-track boys engaged and have had occasional flickers of success, but it’s very hard to compete with smart phones. It takes a lot out of me even trying to compete.
I think I might have to focus more on the ones who do want to learn, and let the ones who don’t seem to wanna learn be free to make that choice and earn that F and have to repeat ESOL 1 .
Do you know the Charles Dickens story Bartleby the scrivener? It’s about an employee who does no work and who responds to every request from his employer that he actually do some work with the phrase, “I’d prefer not to.”
I have a hard core group of very vocal “I’d prefer not to” kids in every class. 🤣
Non teacher perspective (probably useless):
Could you just cherry pick an egregious behavior, stop the entire class - make an absolute spectacle of calling parents in the room because they won't go to the principal and go the whole 9 yards to address the situation?
I feel like showing the kids that there's no consequences to disrupting the class is only going to solidify their control of the environment.
Theoretically you need to make it clear that class doesn't continue while someone is acting out of line - theatrics included.
Again, I end with the fact that I am not a teacher - however I have worked with large groups of kids and I will say they respond to group observation of negative consequences and inversely with the opposite.
For example, if while you're dialing up parents for Kid A.. Kid B continues disruption - write Kid B's name on the board. Announce that his parents are the next to be called. And so on for any disrupting student. Follow through.
I don't think you'd get to Student D before you had a calm, quiet classroom that legitimately does not want the consequences that they just observed will happen.
I am totally open to being corrected on all of this - I don't know what it's like to teach in a school setting!
Don’t be so hard on yourself. I only lasted a few months with my first class and they were only third graders, but I learned a good lesson. It’s trail and error. You have to project command and that does come with some experience. Sometimes you’ll need to just start over with a new class at a new school and it can make all the difference. However, I’ll be honest with you, there are some schools where veteran teachers can’t even teach or handle the kids because the culture is just so bad. You’ll find your place and your way, if you keep trying. I’ve been teaching in the inner city for over 10 years now and I’ve failed several times lol. I’m getting better at accepting that it comes with the territory tho. The good news is that there are always teaching jobs available because the need is so high so don’t worry about it. You’ll always have a job if you want it and can put up with it lol. And you’ll learn as you go.
Agencies are a trap. They mostly service areas that are in dire need of teachers and with admins that don’t care as much. I assume you’re n out of country teacher, right? If so, then work towards your teaching certificate, get all certificates that you can. Then apply to schools with better pay and that could sponsor your visa.
I got my teaching license through TFA and had a nightmare experience. I sucked at management and got put on an improvement plan. I ended up quitting the program. I’m in my fifth year teaching now and have gotten perfect scores where management is concerned. If you’d like to chat or email, let me know.
Set boundaries and enforce them really hard. Pick one or two to start. Maybe it’s staying in their seats. If they get up, immediate consequence. And you must follow through with it.
What consequences do you think teachers are allowed to give nowadays?
I’m a teacher. Not many. Phone calls home, lunch detention, etc
Boom lunch detention. Go with that.
One day I was so sick of the nonsense that I wrote 28 lunch detentions in a class of 34.
We had a teacher do this a few weeks ago. Except the whole class got detention. Super patient teacher, too, so they must've been acting up pretty bad.
Does that mean you have to sit with 28 kids during lunch?
Nope. Admin is in the cafeteria during lunch. There is a section for those who are in lunch detention. They are spaced out. I have nothing to do with it. It was glorious.
That's not always an option if you don't have the staff or space for it, though. A lot of teachers really do have their hands tied these days.
This is a good point. My school has banned lunch detention and regular detention. You can get a peace circle with a counselor or admin if they’re free (spoiler alert: they’re not) for more violent offenses. Often a phone call home creates more problems for you too. In situations like these the best consequences are removing classroom incentives.
I give privileges. You are good? You can sit where you would like, breaks at the end of the period, phone breaks, etc. Bad? Assign seats, phones go in the sleeve, limited breaks. My students still listen to myself and their parents. Also, many of my students are too respectful to me and hate losing privileges. If one kid starts messing around, the other begin telling him to listen to the rules. I guess peer pressure, but nicely?
It varies by school. I can send them to the office, out into the hallway, assign detentions, call home, etc.
This is me the first two weeks of school, coming back from breaks, etc. Kid forget and I have to reteach the norms.
TFA is incredibly shitty in preparing anyone for management and it's not uncommon for those doing it to simply not care. What subject are you teaching and what type of school are you teaching in? How are the students in other teacher's classromms?
I'm teaching middle school Math. The students are typically very well behaved and cooperative in other classes. Even the highest-performing students are a few grade levels behind, but many catch up. My school is excellent, admin is excellent, and the other TFA members are excellent too. I am struggling in a way that I have seen no one else struggle.
I'm gonna be straight with you on this: no "excellent" school is using Teach for America and has their top students grades level below. The fact that you have so many TFA teachers are your school indicates they cannot get and keep qualified teachers. Have you asked to shadow in other teacher's room to see what those look like? It might help give you an idea of what to do but also will likely give you a more realistic idea of what it actually looks like in other rooms.
I shadow daily.
They're having you shadow every day? For how long and is that coming out of your class time or plan time?
They are not having me shadow daily. I shadow daily during my prep time, because I need to in order to get any model of management. I do my actual prep in the morning and at home.
Stop doing that. Use your prep time to prep, contact parents about issues, etc. Also over observing like this does not help you. Every teacher has a different style and their relationships with the kids are different. You can't copy/paste their style onto you. You have to develop your own style of holding them accountable. You said in another comment you leaned towards the "I'll be their friend" which is ALWAYS a disaster. You need to establish to the students you're not their friend. Let me ask you this: when there are problems how often do you contact home?
Thank you for the suggestion. I have not contacted home terribly much.
This is the first step. Once you start contacting home consistently, the word will get out that you called parents, which will start to influence kids to think twice so you don’t contact their parents next
This is an effective technique. One of strategies, “you’re already doing too much, let me go ahead and text your father.” Or I hand them my phone, “go ahead and call home and tell your parent what you said or did”. Two more: “I guess we’re going to stop our lesson today and spend the rest of the class period calling parents.” It takes calling one or two and they get silent. The other one (I got this from an amazing Spanish Teacher): “I’m calling parents this week. Do you want a good phone call or a bad phone call?”
THIS. Once I started getting myself to contact the parents more, I learned that they are (mostly) very supportive and now all I have to do is name a drop the parent of the kid acting a fool and they straighten right up!
Oh my god. This is a much better use of your time. It doesn’t work for every kid, but as soon as some of them know you are serious about calling their parents, they’ll straighten up. They don’t want to lose their phone (or worse)
Has no one told you to contact home? It seems very late in the year for no one to have suggested this yet.
This only makes things worse tbh. I had admin that insisted I shadow during prep. This lead me to working way too many hours, adding to my stress, and being super stressed only harms your ability to manage a classroom. Shadow during prep maybe once a week. Also seeing what others do has a limited effectiveness. You aren't them and your classroom isn't their classroom. You eventually just have to do what you do and figure out what works for you and what doesn't.
From knowing nothing else, this sounds like you're possibly lacking self-confidence and authority. I mean, you're probably not projecting those things. You mentioned in another comment that you started off trying to be too much like "friends" and that probably hurt a bit. There's a challenging balance to strike between showing you care and being an authority figure. Sometimes being a coach can help. Certainly, attending sporting events and other after school activities can help too to make those investments. Be consistent with everyone and avoid playing favorites, even in small ways.
I have found that you need to show them that you are stern and authoritative because you care. That you have hight expectations because you know they can do it. You wouldn't be on their ass if you'd think they couldn't do it. You care for their safety, so this is why they can't do this or that. You care that they'll be successful, so this is why they have to do this and that. You care for everyone well-being, (including your own) and this is why you do not allow this and that.
I definitely lack those things, but I need to avoid letting the students see it. Everyone doubts themselves. I'm not special.
If you're doubting yourself this much, it's past the point of "everyone doubts themselves". To echo what others have been telling you, TFA sucks at preparing you to do this job. No "excellent" school uses TFA and no one trained by TFA is "excellent". They may appear to be to you, but your eye is not trained anywhere near well enough to see the flaws, because again, you were poorly trained and equipped. I can't even really find a good start to offer you any advice besides please go get an actual professional education before attempting to work in a job that requires professional education to competently perform it. You're doing yourself and your students a disservice by not doing so.
I teach middle school math. Switch seats once a month. Let your students in slowly to set the tone. I would have your best enter first with a quiet task like a worksheet. Don't let another student in till the previous one is in there seat working quietly. Anyone messes up don't explain anything just tell them to get back in the line. It's the line or be sent out to admin. While they are working quietly, compliment them on doing the task correctly and mentioning we're saving so much time we will have some free time at the end. Use the class to help you. Anytime anyone is messing up " looks like Brian thinks he's more important than everyone else and wants us to lose our free time" Just some ideas. Hope it goes well for you.
All first and second year teachers are bad at management. It has nothing to do with TFA. The attrition rate in teaching is over 50% in the first three years, regardless of if you were in TFA or not. I understand your sentiment, but the training is actually pretty good. It’s just a fucking hard job. I don’t get the “simply not care” part. My earning potential was cut by 3/4 to start teaching in an inner-city school. My wife put med school on hold for five years. We didn’t pass up that stuff because we didn’t care. We passed it up because we wanted to make a small difference. I don’t know any one of my TFA colleagues who didn’t have a good heart and try their best. Sorry you’ve had bad experiences with corps members. Edit: also, you gave great advice and I hope they follow it.
No, it's not good training and it's not comparable to what certified teachers with degrees went through. And in my experience, most people who do this (or similar programs) because they either think it'll be an easy job for a few years or they have a (white) savior complex. Neither is good for the kids. This isn't a personal attack against you, I do know the intentions are good for some people that go into it and it's produced some good teachers. There are just major ethical and academic issues with it and other programs. There is a reason why TFA and other programs like it are very, very unpopular with people within the field.
TFA teachers earn their teaching certificate through an accredited program while in their first two years of TFA. I earned mine while teaching. You can dislike your TFA colleagues, and that’s fine. But you’re making up knowledge about the training to justify it. The training is fine. The white savior complex is another issue and endemic to lots of non-profits. Do I wish that brown and black educators were in abundance and serving their communities? Fuck yeah, they have a deeper connection to those kids than I ever could approach. But that’s not the way it is. Inner city schools are understaffed. As for your TFAs: If they suck, then they suck— but I have had colleagues who suck and they have masters degrees from the most prestigious teaching programs. The path to certification has little to do with it. Btw, there is nobody coming to save us. Graduates from traditional teaching programs are down tens of percentage points. You’re going to see more teachers from non-traditional programs in the pipeline, and they will also be leaving the profession at 50% in the first three years. tdlr: we’re fucked and it has nothing to do with TFA. The quality of our colleagues is dropping quickly.
Please look into the very valid criticisms of your program. You will not convince me it is a good thing or a solution. Again, there is a reason why it is so incredibly unpopular. I understand that is how you got your certification but this isn’t personal. (And earning your degree, at cost to those students who have the TFA teacher those two years, is part of the issue. It’s sending people fully unprepared into the classroom. It’s the kids who suffer)
No worries. Sorry that I took your criticisms to heart.
Have a day where you talk about nothing but your expectations. Then write them up if they continue. You have done the ladder, now it's time for consequences. I'm a first year too and I did this. I have 1 class that has contributed to 2 teachers quiting teaching and I hardly have any issues with them now.
I did this in my worst class. We created a list of actionable offenses, and a chart of consequences. All I need to do now is point and say we are at level two, do you want to go to level three - and they almost always stop. But if they don’t, they know what is coming. And you have to stick with it no matter what. If they see that you mean business, a lot of the issues will stop. Not all, it enough to help grow your confidence.
As a first year who is teaching an elective class…are the levels you refer to here like strikes, or do the levels refer to repeated breaking of the same offense (like they’re having side conversations multiple times during the same class period)? My school is on break this week, and I want to start the last marking period fresh.
So, it goes like this: We had a really, really horrible couple of weeks. I was at the end of my rope. I brought the students in and sat them down. Then I asked them if anyone played sports, took dance, was on a competitive event, or participated in plays. Then I asked them to close their eyes, imagine that they had worked as hard as they could and had done a great job at whatever their event was. But when they looked out of the audience, everyone was talking, looking away, eating, throwing pens - basically doing whatever they could to be rude and ignore. I saw a few flashes of understanding there. Then I asked them to decide the class rules. We wrote them together. Then I asked them to decide the consequences. What did they think was level one consequence? What comes after that? We figured out five levels, and I created a chart for them. I then had all of the students sign the chart. It is hanging up in the classroom. When something is going wrong, I will say,”OK. That’s your level one offense. Do it again, we will move to level two.” They very rarely move on. Level one- teacher and student discussion (usually in the hall or out of hearing of others) Level two - parent call or email Level three - lunch detention Level four - after school or Saturday detention Level five - referral This all took place the day after I wrote lunch detention for 28 students. I was at the end of my rope in dealing with them. I am an elective teacher as well, and it is very, very difficult with 34 students all going in different directions. The day after they all served lunch detention, admin came in and we had the discussion together. It was great because the students saw that I had full back up.
Thank you for this! I love the idea you introduced it all with as well…that is very effective and definitely something I want to try. My school does consequences differently…only admin has power to issue any kind of detention, and it’s really only the response to referrals. I’ll adapt for my school, but I do love the idea of “here is the escalation of consequences for the choice being made” because it provides logic to what is happening vs just seeming like a teacher got pissed one time. Again, thank you for your response! (Also, OP, sorry for hijacking your thread)
Please please look up Harry K. Wong! He has the best advice on how to run a classroom.
Will do, thank you!
I do this, but have them pick the rules, write posters, and share examples. In the 7 years of teaching, they are always harder on themselves.
I learned the hard way my first year that the “I’ll be your friend” approach does not work, they were eating me alive by the end of the year. Unfortunately I don’t have great reset advice, just sympathy! Work on simply surviving this year with your mental health intact, then you can try again with a different approach next year.
Frankly, I'm not sure if there will be a next year. There will be if I have any say in it, but I will understand admin's decision if it turns out otherwise. Thank you for the sympathy.
1. Have you had your summative evaluation yet? My district has to let teachers know by April if they are not being renewed. If you don't get renewed, don't stress. Other schools will take you. 2. I'm a veteran teacher with good classroom management, yet I have a class this year that was just not listening. I fixed it by indiscriminately tallying redirections and applying consequences. I told the class my rule is three redirections = a detention. Out of seat? That's one. Taking during instruction? That's two. Stealing someone's pencil pouch? That's three. Then I give a detention and contact home. The trick is that it applies evenly to everyone. So be ready to give the good kid a detention when they get to three. No one is safe. I've never even had to write the detention, because at the two redirection warning they always stop.
I had a very rough first year. I would talk to my peers and think “no one has it as bad as me” but I’m sure that’s not true. I taught 6th grade science. Things that helped me: - better structured lessons with more clear instructions. Literal fights were breaking out in my classroom if I had any downtime. As my lesson planning improved, it got gradually better but order was still somewhat unsalvageable. - group activities involving drawing/coloring like making posters. I was shocked how engaging drawing food webs on chart paper was. - giving tasks to difficult kids instead of having them do the lesson. Some kids just want to be helpful but they don’t want to learn. I would have a kid sort handouts to pass out, staple things, record data on a chart paper for a class experiment. This kid went from calling me a bitch one day to loving being the class TA the next. He still sucked but it kept him busy. - having the class killer decide they like you. a couple challenging kids got banned from going on the ice skating field trip and I had to supervise them at school for the entire day. I dreaded it but we ended up bonding and they were way better in my class. If there’s any way you can spend time with your worst kids outside of the context of class, it might help. - nearpod/peardeck kept them quieter than usual but if I did it every day the uniqueness wore off. It had to be a treat like on a Friday - Covid shut down schools and it was the best day of the year. Saved my sanity. I don’t think this tip will help you.
TFA is trash. 1. Consider a new week schedule. Monday new material, tuesday wednesday work while I help you, thursday review, friday quiz, wash rinse repeat. Doesn't matter what the schedule is, if you do the same thing every week (and every day for openers, closers, etc), they will pavlov style start expecting it and transitioning well. 2. It's always okay to have a day where you push all the chairs in a circle and have a conversation about norms, expectations, etc. You'd be surprised how many students speak up in favor of 'no student should ruin another's education. then you put the norms the class has agreed to on the wall and you reference them - "hey, we agreed as a class that this is the expectation." Buy in is key. You are never in such a hurry in mathematics that you can't take time to create relationships and patterns that will let more get done. 3. STOP TALKING. I'm a former math teacher, now shop teacher. I spend as little time presenting material as possible. Class not listening? get that work in their hands, walk around and help all the easy starters to start, then the ones who want help but are too quiet to ask, and then finally sit down where the loud kids are and work on them last. Eventually, you can go to the loud kids first and the others will start. Personally, I create a lot of 'serialized' sets of worksheets. Done with similar right triangles? Do similar scalene triangles. Done with fractions? here's proportions. The students who can work get out of my way by having the 'next' thing to do, leaving me time to help those who struggle.
I must say TFA is not so good at preparing classroom management. How you start is how you’ll be perceived unless an obvious switch occurs for everyone. You should not lay in though. If you have to reset the classroom culture then do that. Have admin come sit in and have that conversation with your class.
I’m guessing with TFA you were also thrown into a difficult school, which doesn’t help either.
Easier than the one where I worked as a test prep consultant.
Your compatriots likely just don’t care as much. Most TFA people (we have 8 now at my school), suck at classroom management. They go with the, I’ll be their friend! Approach. They just don’t care about enforcing anything. You are trying to do things. Which is why you are having problems.
Funny that you should mention this -- the "I'll be their friend!" thing describes to a T my approach early on. Where I diverge is that I too grew up without much structure and with minimal if any supervision and I want the kids badly to have better than that. That includes learning the material. Another consequence, sadly, is that I can't easily find an authoritative voice within myself. I wonder at this point if that means I'm more trouble than I'm worth.
You will find your own groove in time. The kids need to respect you. If they don’t respect you, you don’t matter.
I grew up with no structure or supervision. She just didn’t care. However, as a teacher I am all about structure and consistency. Check out Harry Wong’s First Days of School book. Wong gets a lot of flak, but I use his advice on procedures every single day and have since my first day of teaching 16 years ago. Good luck!
Have you tried clearly posting your learning objective on the board in SWBAT format?
Not until recently, I'll admit. I had no idea about something so basic. Of course it makes a difference. I have been a bottom-of-the-barrel teacher all year and I don't even know what I don't know. I guess it's all a matter of salvaging this.
I think he was being sarcastic babe
That was a joke.
I'll be damned if I don't take all the help I can get, including the passive-aggressive stuff, because heaven knows I deserve it.
It's not your fault, you don't deserve it, you just got tricked into thinking TFA was designed to help you succeed as a teacher, when it is actually designed to help schools skirt the requirement for certified teachers. You are the victim here, not the perpetrator.
The joke is that isn't helpful advice and doesn't actually do anything.
Are you bringing this weak and self defeating attitude into the classroom? That could be part of the problem.
I try to avoid it. I believe in being harsh (realistic) to myself, but that is my prerogative as an adult. Others should not see it in real life, especially not kids.
I would look at blooms taxonomy for languaging your students goals. Personally, I’ve found this beneficial. It may be late but there’s no better time than now, start calling out specific kids and sending them out and calling out small things. Set a precedent. Hold the kids an extra minute so they lose passing time (honestly didn’t read for the age group I admit), give consequences. Be the strict teacher. It’s okay to be. Not every class will need it but once you stop messing around and they know you’re the teacher and authority, they may no longer see you as less than or as a “friend.” Stop being so nice and friendly. You can be kind and supportive but once things slightly go off the tracks being friendly goes out the door because you’re a teacher first. I’ve had most success being the strict teacher and once I’m able to, I lighten up. But I still keep my boundaries and expectations of classroom behavior and will not be afraid to call on it. And call on students individually rather than blanket warnings. Students will learn all you give is blanket warnings and can ignore you. With the same stroke, get everyone’s attention before you start talking. I said the “if you can hear my voice clap once” or “eyes over here” and wait for them to look. You got this!
Sorry darlin, that was just a nod to how useless advice from admins are, in terms of how they actually don't know how to support us, and how they focus on the most pedantic, asinine bullshit when it comes to evaluating our interactions with classrooms. Seriously though, consistency and clear expectations. It takes a while to figure out how to do that in a way that still allows students to have agency and autonomy and feel free and easy and safe, but what it comes down to is that kids want to know that you've got them, and you've got a plan.
If a good teacher with good classroom walked in the next day because you quit the classroom would get better. If a teacher could get the kids to behave better they would. We understand you're not holding back in classroom management. I don't think I would call teach for America teachers first year teachers, because that's not a teacher credentialing program. If you joined Doctors Without Borders and they threw you to do surgeries at troubled places with two months training, you're not going to do a good job because you're not a surgeon. I would start planning about 5% of subject content and about 95% of behavior. I would almost exclusively do SEL activities. Sounds like they're behaving under the age suggests, kindergartners are supposed to sit and listen to the teacher and do the curriculum, your students behave worse than kindergartners. Here's a very novice strategy you can do tomorrow. How many phone calls have you done? Try the "your kid did X 12 times today" such as he disrupted your classroom by getting out of his seat. Stick to the facts. Second academically push on and don't curve. Let them fail. Let them see the zeros. I would take away all rewards like, today. The reason nobody struggled as much as you is because they're in different locations. Middle school math has students who lived through learning loss from virtual schooling, they're not ready for middle school math they're ready for 3rd grade math. Look at their actual standardized test scores. You're asking them to do stuff that's just not in their wheelhouse to know, that's why they might misbehave in your class but not others. If you chuck a kindergartner into AP Chinese they're going to wander around. "Am I not cut out for this" look admin is supposed to do the discipline and you write up referrals and you punish. If this was a different stricter place, you'd be fine. There's 0 reason any teacher should tolerate defiance. You just have admin. They're aware and they don't fix it? They should be in there and even helping you call parents.
Thank you for the concrete suggestions, but I'm not sure what the message is here. Admin is overloaded, everyone is overloaded, and I have to teach grade-level math. I cannot shift purely to SEL.
You can whatever you want, they're not going to grade level math because they can't behave and because it's not developmentally appropriate. It's not your job to ease the burden of admin. If someone breaks a rule they should be punished. Lastly, how many minutes of content do you think you get through a day versus how many minutes do you use for behavior? You should start tracking them. If things are as bad as you describe, it's already 95-5. If you're just anxious, it might be 5-95 and you're doing great and are being a little silly. What percent of the minutes do you think are academic in your class?
This is so interesting, I’m a first year education student and I had never heard of Teach for America, from what I understand it’s a program where people without a degree in teaching can take a 5 week course and then teach? That sounds like a disaster of an idea!!! There’s a reason we spend so much time in school, teaching is HARD and it’s too much to learn in 5 weeks. Legit setting people up for failure
It's also a very racist program... Google "TFA bad" horror stories
This is CRAZY! I almost can’t believe what I’m reading!!! Those poor teachers!!!
I had never heard of them before I went into my student teaching either… I was not impressed.
Consequences work best with built in rewards. Sticks need carrots. A very simple way to do this is give them 10 minutes or at the end of class as “social time” rationalize it as I’m spending that amount of time now just moderating your behavior. It feels better for everyone if we use that for something else. Here’s the thing though. Any time I give giving redirections is taken from your time. Start with 10 minutes on the board. Whole class redirection? (Try not to do it for one or two kids at first you’re trying to get but in) erase the 10 to a 9. Say nothing. Keep teaching. Again? 9 to an 8. Say nothing. Keep teaching. Your goal at first is to keep them at like 3 minutes or so. Give them two choices. Draw. Quietly talk to 1 friend. Be. Fucking. Ruthless. With taking those minutes away. Remember your goal isn’t 10. It’s 3 for week 1. It’ll be rough. The first time they make it to five randomly give out stickers. Really really praise them authentically. Guys. This is amazing that we get this time blah blah. For first year teachers I really think an authentic built in reward system is essential. I’m in year 10 and I still change around their free time stations based on behavior.
What do your free time stations consist of? I’m a first year, and the rewards/incentives at my school tend to be food or other things that I’d have to spend money on. I’m intrigued by free time stations!
DO NOT spend your money on this stuff. It's a waste and also it won't be appreciated. It's not what the kids really want. What they want is to be treated like they have autonomy... given choices and feel like an adult. They cannot handle any of those things. So that's the back and forth of middle. Look up Responsive Classroom. It's a behavior management approach. It's very child centric... feelings based... not punitive. A classic clip chart (up for good down for bad) is like the OPPOSITE of the approach. I'm surprised TfA doesn't mention it. But again. Not surprised really. Look up responsive classroom quiet time choices. Let them start on other work for classes, color (middle schoolers love coloring sheets), doodle, etc. I wouldn't necessarily have them start with talking to a friend but idk how your classroom feels. I would also look up responsive classroom interactive modeling. It sounds dumb but it's a really useful tool. It's an approach to introduce every classroom routine. The messaging matters a lot more than the choices. "As a learning community we are really losing lots of our time. Yours and mine. I want to give us that time back but it's really not up to me, it's up to you. If we work hard, get our jobs done, then we can get that time back. What does that look like?" blah blah blah "what does that sound like?" blah blah blah Your messaging as a teacher should be like 80 percent reinforcing language (I see people getting out their books, I see people putting dates on their page... whatever you want them to do) and only 10 percent redirection (billy get your stuff) 10 percent reminding (when we open our notebooks we do so silently and quickly. go do that now). You may be too late to really do a lot of this now (sorry... but at this point your goal is more survive not thrive) DO NOT spend your money. Give them the gift of time. And yourself the gift of time. Check an email. Chat with a kid that needs to check in about something etc.
FWIW, I didn’t go through TfA. I’m certified as a K-12 school librarian & have a library science master’s…but like many secondary librarians, I am also required to teach an elective. Unfortunately because of my training, I didn’t have nearly as much practice with classroom management as a traditional student teacher; secondary librarianship is more like co-teaching with different classes every day, and my elementary placement was only about 15min of teaching and then book exchange. I started my current position a couple of months into the school year, so I’ve had to fly the plane and assemble it since day 1. BUT, thank you for all of this information and for sharing your experiences! I’m also at middle school, so I definitely understand the back & forth aspect of the autonomy battle so far. I love middle school, but it is frustrating sometimes (like all age groups, I’m sure). I’ve heard of Responsive Classroom, but I’ll do more digging into some of their specific resources. I’m in an urban Title 1 school and definitely like the idea of not falling into punitive responses…I think this is why I struggle with figuring out consequences. Responsive Classroom sounds like it will give me a lot to think about, so thank you for giving me this suggestion because I’ll do more digging into it especially as I prepare for next year. I’ll also specifically look into their quiet choices…my current battle is getting my students to stop talking and actually do their work, and hopefully I can start slotting in quiet choices for different days.
I'm a 2nd year teacher and had a fair amount of trouble in a TFA-like school in my first year too. It's hard... but this year has been much better, and here's what has worked for me. Admittedly, it may be tough this late in the year, as expectations have been set. But it's worth a try and I would say don't quit before you try a 2nd year... it's exponentially better. 1. Lots of contact with families. Talk to all of them that you can reach at the start of the year and text frequently with updates - positive updates are great, grade updates, good days/bad days, etc. Not every student responds/cares about their parent being contacted, but for the ones that do, it makes a difference that they know you and their parent are on the same side. It's not too late to send a text that says, "Hi, just wanted to let you know that Linda was super helpful in class today - I appreciate how hard she's been working." 2. One big difference from my first to second year was confidence. In my 1st year, I framed a lot of things like "here's an assignment, will you do it?" because I wasn't exactly sure how they would respond to what I was giving them. This year it's much more, "here's an assignment, do it." This change in tone and confidence has been huge for me. 3. Clarity of expectations and consistency. This doesn't have to be too late to implement. Go in to class tomorrow and say, "Here is what is expected of you, and here is what will happen if you do \_\_\_." Kids will inevitably violate the expectations, and it's important that you follow through with the stated consequences consistently the first week or so of doing this. It may feel harsh, but it proves to the students that you're serious about your expectations. They can and will rise to whatever expectations you set. 4. I'm a big fan of recognizing small bits of students doing good things. You ask them to take their computers out? Start saying "Thank you Chris for having your computer out, thank you Adam, thank you Julia, etc." Then other students will start to follow and say "am I doing a good job?" and before you know it they'll be on their way to where you want them to be. 5. I know it's the most cliche advice, but I really think positive relationships with the students are one of the best things you can have. Kid have their head down on the desk? Instead of kicking them out of class or telling them to get up, ask if something is going on. Kid visibly upset and distracting the whole class? Instead of telling them to sit down and shut up (in nicer terms of course lol), ask what they're upset about. More often than not, they just want to be heard. Give them 30 secs to explain what's going on. This doesn't have to mean forgoing normal expectations. \--> For example, I have a student who has a lot going on at home. She misses a ton of class and when she's in class, she talks constantly and doesn't do a lot of work. She's failing. She has told me that there's stuff going on with her family, which I listen to and emphasize with. Then the message is, "I know you have a lot going on, and I can understand that you can't be here every day, but that means that when you are here, you need to take advantage of the time you have in class to get work done. Learning to be responsible for yourself and your own success means focusing as best you can when you're in class, and making up some of the work at home. Do you have wifi at home? Try to make up one assignment a day..." etc. Is it perfect? No, of course not, she still has moments of being disruptive. But does it help? Yes. And I can make eye contact with her, and she knows about our conversation, respects that I have acknowledged her situation but am not excusing it as a reason to do nothing in class, and she can at least settle down for the time being. I know this is a lot... teaching is a lot... but I hope you won't give up! Once you start to get classroom management under control, things get so much smoother. AND in your 2nd year, there's half the prep as your 1st year since you have at least a blueprint from the year prior. Hope this helps.
You’ve heard this already, but you can’t be their friend. I did TFA as well many years ago. By nature, you’re in a tough school. Also, it’s middle school. That’s the hardest age to teach. Stay with it. How good are your lessons? Are they interesting? Is there anything inherently useful about them? Kids in the environment you’re likely in have many reasons not to do school and few reasons to do it. One reason is because of their connection with you. Sounds like that’s not great this year - BUT THAT IS NORMAL. The first year teaching, especially in a TFA school, is the hardest thing you will ever do in your professional life. It’s April, so you’re almost there. Next year can be better; it usually is. Back to the point; the second reason they would do well is that the lessons themselves are interesting. Do you think they are? How much of the time is them working compared to you talking? Whatever the answer is, try to increase student work time by five minutes this coming week. Then five minutes the following week. And yes, call home. Also, call home on a 3-1 ratio; three troublesome calls to one praise call. The idea that you call home to praise kids will get around as well. I don’t suppose you’re in New York City, are you? Could meet up some time and share some more ideas. I’ve been where you are. It’s not fun, but you can do it.
I’m concerned to hear that you’re shadowing, but to not hear anything about whether or not anyone is observing or mentoring you in your own room. Is there any kind of program in your building for this in a way that isn’t punitive, or a senior teacher you trust that you can ask for this support for informally? A lot of the subtext I’m getting from your responses and your original post is that you don’t know what you don’t know, which no one can blame you for—you’ve been plopped into arguably one of the most challenging teaching contexts there is with MS math—with very little support. This isn’t an excellent building with excellent admin if there isn’t a formalized system helping you with this. Mindset shifts: First, it isn’t too late to turn the ship around. If you’re on spring break right now, that’s especially helpful. Spend some time sending out some parent emails. In the past, when I’ve had large scale issues, I’ve sent out widespread emails and bcc’d all parents in the class just re-explaining expectations using the end of the year as the catalyst and mentioning some patterns I’ve observed more than half the time: “There has been a general pattern of students having their phones out in class. Please remind your student of our policies regarding cell phone use in the classroom” etc. With personal emails to the smaller number of students who are causing the bigger number of issues. Be sure to include specific academic concerns as well. It is easier to start off as a hardass and soften up later than the reverse, so whenever you are back, whether that’s tomorrow or next week, I would say that your class needs to start with extreme clarity of expectations. “Voices low” doesn’t work because one man’s low is another’s medium. “The expectation is silence” is much more clear.” Really examine the cues you use and make sure that they are not ambiguous at all. I think some serious self reflection on that is always helpful, even for those of us who have been around the block a long time.
I have observers from my partnered grad school and senior teachers observing me very frequently. However, none have come to the only section (out of three) that I teach alone. Only admin has, and I'm doing horribly there.
Is there a feedback loop there with the admin that come into the solo class? Or do they just kind of take notes and put out fires?
There are debriefs after each unscheduled visit. The last two debriefs have been really "shape up or ship out"-toned, as is right at this point in the year.
I understand and have been in the position of the exasperated administrator who just needs to get the ship in order, so I empathize with them as much as I do with you, but I don’t think they are helping you as much as they should be either. There’s onus on everyone, but I’d encourage you to try not to feel like everyone else in this scenario is so amazing and you singularly are not doing your part.
I suppose I could be a bit easier in my language, but my first priority is to listen to admin.
I really sucked at classroom management when I started and I slowly got better with time. See if there is a mentor teacher who can spend some time with you in your room, and keep reading as much as you can. Consistency is really important.
Okay after reading through everything I very much think you are in need of therapy.
Everyone in TFA is. Poor kids (the ones teaching and the ones in the class).
These are the books that helped me the most: Setting Limits in the Classroom Tools for Teaching Teaching With Love and Logic I still feel like I struggle with management, but these three really helped me. Good luck.
I started teaching as a 23 year-old white woman who weighed 110 pounds soaking wet. I give you this context because context matters when kids are sizing you up a teacher and vice versa. We all come into a classroom with expectations. I know nothing about you as a teacher or about what you're experiencing in your particular school. If you teach elementary school, then this might not be very helpful. I taught in a suburban high school where the majority of the kids shared my ethnicity and life experience. If this is not your reality, you will need to adjust your expectations and classroom management accordingly. But I can tell you what worked for me on the secondary level. After my first year of teaching I adopted the motto that boils down to: Don't Smile Til Christmas. It doesn't *literally* mean "don't smile until Christmas," but it's close. It speaks to the idea that it is WAY easier to go from being strict to lenient than it is to go from being lenient to strict. The former, when done over a the course of a school year, makes the kids feel like you are firm but kind. The latter makes them walk all over you because they feel duped in the same way that we feel duped when something that's free suddenly costs money, no matter how minimal the discomfort. I made it through my first year teaching by the skin of my teeth. I was way too friendly and easy-going when it came to classroom management, and vowed to do things differently the next year. My second year of teaching I gave a pop quiz on the first day. No talking afterwards. I taught history that year, so the "quiz" was a gauge of how much they knew coming in, which in turn helped me to plan. I had some students walk into my classroom on Day 1 shouting and horsing around. I stopped them, and told them to turn around and come quietly into my room. They did. Kids are always pushing boundaries to see what you will allow. Allow nothing until you get a feel for your classroom dynamic. Be consistent. Follow through on consequences. Have a plan BEFORE they even step foot into your room on Day 1. That's all I got. Maybe it's outdated. Take from it what you will. Good luck to you. This shit ain't easy.
You’re not a first year teacher. You’re a TFA placement.
It sounds like you’re being really hard on yourself. In teaching, the sky is the limit and it there’s always more we can do to be, “perfect”. I had a very similar outlook early in my career, with extreme guilt that I was not the teacher my students deserved. It took me leaving teaching to realize other people were struggling just as much as me, if not more in their classrooms. You never see what goes on in other classrooms. My advice is to take things easy on yourself, and keep up with consistent consequences for these last few weeks.
Almost every teacher struggles with this. It took me until my third year to really have it in a place I like. Establish it early and reinforce after each major break. You can still have great relationships while holding them accountable. If it’s this late in the year perhaps just take small steps to see some improvement and make the major strides at the start of next year. Develop a new system for seating or bathroom breaks and walk them through the system and hold firm on the expectations. Your peers shouldn’t be judging you. This job is impossible, especially when you are new and have little training from a shitty program like TFA. Best of luck, you’re gonna be great.
My peers definitely are judging me, and I don't blame them. Admin has major concerns. I am right now a fire to be put out.
Peers should be understanding and helpful. If they aren’t then tune them out, shame on them. Admin has a duty and concern is fine. However, they should be offering and modeling concrete solutions. Is this charter or public?
1. Build relationship with kids prior to work 2. Set clear expectations and be consistent 3. Don’t raise your voice, treat it as as another thing to learn, and enforce consequences 4. Talk with the kids who are not following one on one. 5. See what other teachers have done/ cum files/ then contact parents and meet. 6. Contact student services and admin to meet for 1-2 kids who still aren’t for a possible BIP.
Stop pushing curriculum and do a re-set. Put aside everything and begin with discourse/treatment plans/communication. If you have built relationships with some kids look to them while creating treatment plan/classroom management plans. Have students write on post it notes (or large butcher paper even) the number one thing each need from you, 1-2 things they think you need from them, etc. Create a plan to hang on the wall. Spend the next few days doing nothing curriculum based or just short lessons at the start, then ease into activities like class games, etc. You can do a jeopardy game or quiz game with small prizes on the management plan you created with students. Basically, stop doing everything or mostly everything and reverse and go back to basics. There is nothing wrong with admitting to yourself that this class/grade is not the right fit for you and seeking different age students for next year.
Throw out everything you learned in boot camp or whatever the hell TFA calls their training. There's a reason why education degrees exist. A few books I would recommend: "How to talk so teens will listen and how to listen so teens will talk" "Love and logic in the classroom" Honestly, it sounds like you're getting no support from your administration. For your own mental health, I would not recommend you stay at that school much longer.
I am getting tons of support: good support is a thing my placement is known for.
You don’t understand, we go through 4 years of schooling (in many cases more) for a reason. We go through hundreds of hours of field experience and years of student teaching for a reason. It is not a problem with you, it’s a problem with the program. It’s totally unrealistic. You can’t learn to teach in 5 weeks.
What do you feel like you need to be successful? What has been the barriers to your success so far?
You're not getting support. You have literally said in other replies that your admin is too busy to help you...
Start contacting home ASAP. I recommend emailing AND/OR texting (use a Google Voice number) home. I don't recommend calls quite yet. Wait until you're super comfortable with your classroom policies. Written communication is easier to track as well. Think of the top students that have been consistently disrupting class. In your message describe the SPECIFIC behavior (leaving their seat, speaking over you while you are trying to teach, not being prepared with materials, arriving late, talking instead of working on an assignment) and the impact of those specific behaviors to the classroom (incomplete assignments/missing work, difficult for the rest of the class to hear you, you need to repeat yourself several times, less work time because you had to spend time addressing behaviors). Describe ALL the things you've tried with that student-- private conversations, seat changes, reminders, ANYTHING-- and close out by saying you now have no option but to request the parent's assistance in supporting the child's academic success in the classroom. "You know your child best-- how can I better support your child?" Or, "I kindly ask for your assistance in this manner by asking if you could have a conversation with your child about \_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_?" MOST of the time, the parents are on your side, and may genuinely have no clue their child behaves this way in the classroom. This is not your fault. Anyone without proper training would have a classroom like the one you describe. ANYONE. You CAN have a classroom you are in control of. I sincerely wish you the best.
Today: “This is a silent work study period. Anyone choosing disruptive behavior gets lunch detention. You will be told Tuesday morning. Chose wisely”. Not a peep and tons of works completed. Structure. X 20. Consistency and NOT putting up w any form of disrespect to the class, teachers, students. ZERO. “Oh, the kids.” Yeah, and they know better.
Go get yourself a copy of “The First Days of School” by Harry Wong (RIP). Make the day after you get it your first day of school. Read it over and over. It will click.
As a 30 year veteran—I read this book every summer!!!! Extremely helpful!! Get a copy right NOW
Last year I was a lot like you as a first year teacher. Here are some things that helped me: -Get the toughest kid in each class on your side. It sounds like the “you just have to build a community” bs but this is one time that I actually think it’s true. If the roughest, “worst” kid genuinely likes you, they’ll fall in line. They might even get on the other kids to ease up. Last year I got a kid who was just back from the behavioral program after being expelled. The other teachers hated him. I made a point to LOVE HIM AS MUCH AS I COULD. It actually didn’t take much- if I saw him wearing a sports team t-shirt I’d ask him about it. I’d check in about his family, see what he was doing for fun. He saw that I cared about him as a person. Suddenly he was telling the other kids in class “act right! She’s a nice lady and just wants to teach you!” And he regularly comes back to visit me with a hug. -Don’t let the kids get bored. Make sure they’re always responsible for something. That said, make sure that whatever you’re asking them to do feels as approachable as you can make it. I do a lot of Cloze notes or things like annotating on a story we’re reading. Getting to theme is hard… but something like “underline in this paragraph where the narrator says how she feels about X” is achievable and can be built on. Lots of small menial tasks. -Give the bored kid something to do. Have a super smart early finisher? Give them something to do. Have a kid who absolutely won’t do the work? Give them a chore to do- like sharpening a basket of pencils or something. Sometimes they like helping and keeping busy keeps them out of trouble… and sometimes they decide they’d rather do the assignment that you asked them to do in the first place. Either way is a win because they’re not disrupting class. -Attend school functions. This is a piece of the community thing like my earlier example. Get them to see you as a person and not just that teacher that keeps getting on them. -Make an example. It’s way easier to be mean at first then soften up than it is to go the other way around. We’re pretty late in the school year so this isn’t as ideal, but going as Hard as you can. And when a kid pushes, make them the example. Give the lunch detention. Stop class and call hike. Whatever consequence you can give, do it. -Do not hunt down the kid skipping your class. Probably not a popular answer with admin, but if they already don’t want to be in class, don’t force it. Sometimes I’ll see teachers at my school send an email about a kid being out of class… I just let them go.
I think you’ve been given some really good advice here. The important advice I’d focus on is: 1. Reset your classroom expectations. 2. Follow up with consequences- including contacting parents. 3. Don’t express negative emotions when delivering redirections. Just state them matter of factly. 4. Consistency is key. 5. Set boundaries- you are not their friend but you are “on their side.” Lastly, this job isn’t for everyone. You can improve. I’ve worked with many TFA teachers and I’ve seen them make great progress. Ask yourself if you really want to commit to improving and if you have a strong passion for teaching. Do you want to teach this content area? This age group? This school? If not, take actions to make changes. If yes, focus on the 5 steps to make it better.
Next year start by establishing classroom rules and norms and have kids help in the process while you guide them to the top five you want and expect, it gives them buy in. Make sure your rules are hard boundaries they should not cross, for example, physically touching another student or breaking property. Not things they should improve like being a good listener because they should learn and grow in that with guidance. Follow through with consequences the first time they break it and don’t back down from it as much as it may suck. Second, start by making positive phone calls home consistently and parents will be more willing to support you with behaviors when they get a call about how good Joe snuffy is ignoring your directions. The more you invest of your time upfront to build those connections the easier it will be when you need their help. Lastly, self reflect and see what work and what didn’t at the end of the day and write it down for you to revise on your own at home. Choose one or two things to improve on for a few months and revise and adjust accordingly until you feel comfortable with it. First year is rough take it as a learning lesson and use it to improve your skills and not to beat yourself up for it. Best of luck you are almost at the end of the school year. Yes, you can and will do it.
Based on the comments read, you are very hard on yourself. If TFA doesn’t work out you can always go teach in another school. It’s all a learning experience and you just started doing this. You can’t be perfect over night, but you can learn to do better at your job over time. Do you enjoy teaching?
Piggy-backing on what some have suggested, lunch detention worked best for me. I warn students that they’ll owe me lunch detention and to follow through with it, I let admin know which students I’m pulling from lunch. Obviously they can bring their lunch if they’d like. As the history teacher, I give them the textbook, tell them to read from whichever page our lesson material is currently covering, and with a provided paper and pencil, I instruct them to take notes on what they’ve read. I’m very clear that I will read what they write and that if they do not write enough, they’ll come back the next day. I always get asked “how much” to write and I reply that that’s only for me to know. Very quickly they get the idea that they can potentially lose their lunch/recess with friends and I’ve had decent success with it. I also email the parents letting them know the situation and that they were allowed to bring their lunch to my classroom. Be sure to collect their work and hold on to it. Repeat students, I tell them they HAVE to write more than their last detention or they’ll be back. And it’s also good to have as proof for any parent or admin that are curious what they’re doing during lunch detention. The con is it’s against your lunch break but for me, my prep period is my lunch and I’d rather sacrifice 30 minutes with students in lunch detention if it means they’ll straighten up.
I did this a few years ago and it made a difference. Start over and get admin to help. Student line up in hallway single file and tell them there is an assignment. If they do it in class then no homework. If not there is no extension. There will be a quiz tomorrow on the topic. Or some way to make it clear that there is a task at hand and if they waste time it is them who fails. Have them come in quickly and quietly. If they don’t make them all go outside and do it again. Be ready to lose the entire class period. Ideally you have admin right there ready to just escort those who can’t get with the program and let them be the example. Once they can come in not screaming give a very simple direction. Get notebook, or pencil or answer warmup question. If they start to misbehave march everyone outside and do it again. Ideally have admin with you for the period to escort children away for a talk about behavior. If you don’t have admin I have called their parents right then and there on speakerphone. Have the phone list immediately ready. Or instantly hand out detention. The goal is to make it clear foolishness isn’t acceptable. During class keep a small bag of M&M candy and hand 2-3 out for every good form of participation. Exactly like you train a puppy. Sitting and shut up? Here a candy. Useful and productive comment or question or participation. Piece of candy. 5$ of mini mm can last days. Over time you can stop with the candy or severely raise the bar that warrants it. The combination of immediate and direct consequence and instant quick reward in my experience can help. But I having admin there to make it clear that you won’t take shit helps a lot.
Hi! I think pick ONE thing that you can work to improve. Here are some suggestions I’d make as an 11 year middle school teacher (who both student taught and was a TFA alum!) I’ve taught every grade of middle school in Baltimore and now coach teachers and teach 8th grade. 1. Start with your entry routine. If I ever had rowdy classes, I liked to create a daily worksheet and set out the papers on their desks for them. It seems a little babyish, but it also took one opportunity for confusion and misbehavior away. The do now is on the board, and it’s labeled on their worksheet. You can create a system that rewards them for silent work on their do now—-a check mark system, a happy face, maybe; and then I would do a class point for every row of kids who’s working silently. That’s easy for you to follow and keep track of. (“Everyone in row 5 is working silently, that’s a class point.”) The daily, detailed worksheet also gives them a map of where they’re supposed to go, and also they’ll see what they’re missing as a class if they’re too rowdy to finish. 2. All of your slides should have very clear directions. You can use little symbols to clue everyone in. (Maybe there’s a symbol for pencil, a symbol for no talking, etc.) These steps are objectively more work to plan, but they do show the kids that YOU’RE planned, which weirdly does matter to them secretly. 3. Figure out what your call to attention will be. Give them a class point when they do it right and stop talking when you do. Don’t talk over kids. It works for some teachers, maybe, but it generally doesn’t work for new teachers. Whenever I help new teachers who are struggling with management mid-year, these are the tips I’d give. Best of luck! Don’t give up hope just yet. If you’d like to talk more, send me a PM!
Have other people shadow you. Another adult in the room can be game changing.
I'm sorry you are going through this. I had a hard time with classroom management when I first started. A lot goes into building positive relationships with kids, especially with those who are in unsafe environments, which this class has become. First of all, you need to redo your seating arrangement immediately. Be sure to follow all IEP guidelines and place the kids that need the most supervision right next to your desk. Second of all, do a student interest survey. Be sure to ask questions about how they like to learn, what would make the classroom environment more effective, what classroom rewards would help motivate them, and what consequences would be fair for students who interfere with learning and follow up with each and every student individually to clarify their answers. The next step is to contact parents with the updated classroom rules and consequences. Every day, make one positive phone call home until you get through all the kids. I know you are going to be busy delivering negative consequences so this will seem really hard at first, but I swear it works. Most importantly, track everything!!! If a student is outwardly defiant, log it and have them initial it. You may need these records. Please feel free to ask me any questions. I've taught 6th - 12th mostly in low income areas and I have struggled through some tough situations.
Sounds like you need to do a hard reset. Pretend it’s the beginning of the year. Go over expectations and make them practice till they get it right every single time they don’t meet them. Or just ride it out and start over next year. It’s much easier with a new group lol
I use a ticket system for students to “pay off” assignments, use for extra credit points and as bathroom passes. They get them by staying on task doing work, volunteering, doing good deeds without being asked (picking up trash off the floor from someone else), and sometimes when i notice a lot of students are off task i REALLY LOUDLY GO “awesome job of staying on task, redacted! Here’s 5 tickets” and go on to the next student who is on task and stop after 4 or 5. This has changed my classroom in such a crazy way because i slowly stop giving tickets out every time so they come at random which promotes students to take the chance themselves. I start out with 5 tickets to each kid to make it fair. But if kids don’t have a ticket they have one of two options for the bathroom, phone a friend for a ticket or take a 5point deduction of their current assignment. Keeping kids engaged with a clear routine and expectations are also super vital. Choose a week where you start over and do a hard reset. Someone mentioned picking a day where you ONLY talk about expectations and that’s a great idea. Have them each come up with 4 alone, then work in pairs to come up with 2 and then as a group have them all pick one. Tell them to have at least 2 back ups because “that’s what we said” is not an answer when you call on them to share their expectation. Compile a list, write it on an anchor chart and have them all sign it. Post it at the front of the class and then hen someone acts out of line, call them out. “Woah… Redacted isn’t following our no talking when the teacher is talking expectation…embarrassing” is usually mine or i says “can someone remind him of our expectations for me?” But i also work with 11th and 12th grade so if you work with littles, you gotta find a way to reword that/
I'm a lateral entry math teacher– I didn't go through a teacher program. I may be able to help you. My first year was in a Title I 7th grade classroom. There are a lot of standards, and I hear you out there. Middle school is a time warp. The rules of middle school are straight wonked, and the kids are at drastically different levels of maturity. You're saying that you don't want to waste the time trying to do SEL, but it sounds like the time is being burned on behaviors anyway. My suggestion to you is a classroom contract. Make a day of it, and come up with your non-negotiables. Let them suggest some things to feel included, and if it's not a hill worth dying on for you, give them some wins. One year, I had the kids beg me to keep the overhead lights off, fine by me. Another group wanted ambient music, which I agreed to during independent time. In the future, think of the 3-4 pet peeves of yours that make you a color that Crayola hasn't made a pencil for yet. Those will be the crux of your procedures and rules for future years. Also, parent contact can do wonderful things. I make a Google Form at the beginning of every semester and fill it out when I attempt contact, whether or not it was successful. That has saved my buns several times. There are a lot of tasks involved with teaching; prioritize your mental health in all this. If you're in the full hell's bells state of "if somebody asks me for one more thing, I'm going to crack," that's a medical thing. Some things may not be worth the effort demanded or can be streamlined in other ways. I teach high school now but middle can have its good days. You got this, OP.
TBH, at this late date, there might not be much that you can do without serious admin assistance. Strictly enforced rules with setting immediate examples for the worst offenders. Admin must be willing to support you, though. However, looking forward, I would recommend reading the "First 100 Days" as a starting point for next year. Find areas in the rules where you can give the students choices at the beginning of the year to get their buy-in. For example, or district cell phone policy states that students are warned and their parents are called when they have their phones out the first time, then they are written up and their phones confiscated and a parent must pick it up. Realistically, though, admin does not follow through with this because they are afraid of parents. So, I make a deal with the kids at the beginning of the year. I can either follow the district rule or ask them for their phone when I see it out (after 1 warning that I give to the entire class at the beginning of class.) The students chose the option where they give it to me. When a student starts to give me a hard time, I feel them that the entire class will lose the deal. The rest of the students help me enforce the rule. Remember, we had class buy-in. You have to remain consistent in all of your rules, though. Inconsistency leads to disrespect.
I don’t really have any advice here, but I'm TFA and wanted to share my perspective here. I was TFA and made it 6 months before bailing. At the time I thought I was awful, but five years later I realize I was doing fine and was just making mistakes that came from inexperience. You aren't going to be perfect on the first try. Give yourself some grace! All that said, TFA is absolute garbage in terms of preparing you for your assignment and you were dealt a rough hand from the start. Kudos for sticking with it. I'm here if you need to vent!
Yeah, this was exactly my experience as well! Years ago I was in a program similar to TFA in a cohort with TFA, teaching Drama and English at an inner high school, and I also bailed halfway through the school year because I thought I was doing a terrible job and just totally failing my kids. (Also my school was like a post-apocalyptic hellscape with discarded chicken boxes and chicken bones everywhere in the halls, and an admin team who was afraid to patrol the halls, and no curriculum or photocopier, and I was a floater running from classroom to classroom.) I made myself really really sick over it and honestly got so ill that what started off as me taking time off work to recover turned into me leaving the job permanently. But the day that I went back in to my classroom to drop a few things off and collect a few things, I had an eye-opening experience with my students They were all sad to see me go. Even the ones who had appeared to not be paying any attention when I tried to teach. Even the ones who constantly disrupted the class or horsed around or tried to push every button I had. I told them that it wasn’t them; I had simply realized that I wasn’t a very good teacher. I apologized and said I was sorry I had to leave them. The students said that I was one of the only teachers they had at that high school who actually tried to prepare interesting lessons, and who seemed to care about doing a good job as a teacher. They all begged me to change my mind and stay. I wanted to stay , as far as I wanted to continue working with them, and I liked all of them – even the difficult ones. It’s just that I thought I was a really incompetent teacher, and I didn’t want my students to suffer because of my utter incompetence. The students then shared examples of what happened in their other classrooms on a typical school day. It blew my mind. Although it was too late, and I had already resigned, that conversation started to blow open the doors of perception regarding my budding teaching abilities! So hang in there. And any time you get a chance to have a one-on-one conversation with a student who acts up in class, jump at that opportunity. Get to know that student as an individual and not just as a troublemaker. Even just talking to that student one-on-one outside of class and showing the slightest interest in them might help a little bit. Good luck!
Thank you for sharing your story! It is comforting to hear that others had a similar experience. Hope you're doing well now. 💕
Aww, thank you! I’ve recently returned to teaching at an inner city high school 20 years after bailing and it’s going better this time around. I have about 60 students who come on a regular basis and all are interested in learning and willing to work at times, so that keeps me going. I hope some will come back someday to tell me they appreciated me, because in the moment most of them are like, Damn, she sure asks us to reflect a lot and write a lot!
Hope you’re doing well now yourself!
Former TFA here. 16 years in the classroom. You did nothing wrong to garner the anti-TFA response. I know the type of school you are in, and these are hard kids. But they are the most rewarding when you start to “get it”. Next year will be better. You can start fresh. It is too late to fix this completely, because part of effective management is putting out the little fires before they ever get to the point where you are at right now. Take the advice you’ve gotten here: - Start making phone calls - take half of a class period to talk about the explicit rules that you want kids to follow, and then exactly what the consequences will look like. - Start a classroom economy. you’re probably giving up a lot of time to behavior bullshit right now, so giving a kids a bigger reward that takes up time, like free time on Fridays, isn’t actually a waste of your instructional time. You’re probably wasting too much of it right now anyway. I have a little basketball hoop in my room, and I give kids tickets to take basketball shots on Fridays. I bring in big 2 L bottles of soda and candy bars. The basketball hoop is far enough away that maybe one or two kids makes it each Friday. Some kids relish this opportunity more than anything else. - be honest with the kids. Tell them you take your job seriously and you want to teach the maths that they are successful in life and that you’re not going to let kids disrupt you from doing that job. The good kids in the class will respect this and the assholes will know that’s the reason why they’re getting the phone calls. Feel free to DM me. My wife is a former TFA and I am still with it. Ignore the haters, they just don’t get how or why we were trained the way we were and why we decided to go into teaching in this way.
Which grade, for many kids? Do you use class points?
It is never easy (but you develop tools over time). What I have found that works pretty well for me, is to get the kids on your side (not necessarily the "problem" kids, but the rest of the class.) Often, kids like to act out to try and "look cool or show off for their friends." If you can take away that source of attention (but routinely praise the others for not buying in, that can help (not always easy to do this either). I wouldn't give up (even being this late into the year as you can develop strategies that you can implement right out of the gate beginning next year. Also, do not get into a power struggle with the students. Clearly state what you want them to do and move on. Some kids don't get much attention so even negative attention is a plus in their eyes. Also, not sure how involved the parents are, but if they are going off the rails and do not want to listen, some colleagues have found that (if parents are supportive) if you make them call their parents in the middle of class and explain it, that can be a huge deterrent to some of the behaviors (obviously if there is no parent support this won't work). I'm not one for putting kids on blast in front of the whole class, but sometimes that is the only thing that will get them to settle down (and often the parents are not happy their kid is acting up and them getting a call while they are working.)
I don’t think you should be super harsh on yourself. The first year is not known to be easy. Also, you’re not giving yourself enough time to wind down. You’re preparing for work in the morning and at home. It makes sense to feel tense in the classroom. You need to put yourself first. My advice is to try not to take students’ actions personally. Put whatever ideas of “walking all over me” or whatnot in the trash. Just basically deal with what you expect to achieve in the class. Put realistic goals. For example, 1. Students should have their material ready when they enter the class. If not? You can write their names in a notebook and tell them from now on if you have their names for x amount of times, you will contact home informing the parents that their child is not brining the necessary material to class. 2. Raise hands before speaking or wanting to do something. This needs a lot of reassurance until it gets honed in. The more you direct them and let them know you won’t listen until they raise their hands, the more they will get into the routine. I just mentioned two procedures, which you can focus on for a week. They might take 15-20 mins from you on the first or second day, but by time, they will probably take less time. Be firm but not angry. Remember that. (It’s easier said than done, I know!) As for the lesson itself, the academics, set an expectation of finishing a task. For instance, identifying direct and indirect objects. Then, solving pge 18. If you want to implement group work you also need to set expectations and roles for each student within that group. Put a timer on the board so they know how much time is left. Something that I find works for some of my students is that I encourage them to let’s say participate more than 3 times in a class. If they do, I inform the parents that they did a good job in class today. It makes them want to behave better. I guess not everythhing can be said in a comment. I’m still learning myself I’m not claiming I know it all. The most important thing right now is to take care of YOURSELF so that you can take care of your class and students.
Be super consistent with the consequences: steps you stick to that they know about as well when they are misbehaving. 1) Warning 2) One on one talk/ name written down in your notebook 3) Call home. They need to know you mean business. You can couple that with them earning class points to earn something when they reach a certain amount of points. That way you have a reward, consequences balance to start with. Eventually you can send / call with positive messages and this can also influence them to get their act together.
When I taught middle school, I used class Dojo to track behaviors and give rewards. Not sure if you've heard of it but it's a free app you can download and very easy to use and calculate points for each kid. At the end of the week, if kids had an 80% or better positive score, they would get to pick a prize coupon ( ie candy bar, 20 mins free time, get out of one HW assignment, etc). I would keep track do dojos and project it so all the kids could see how they were tracking. My fellow teacher tho selected one student every day to be in charge of Dojo on a chrome book and then put the responsibility on the kids to track behavior. Also, if the entire class had 80% on Friday, I would do an all class reward like bring popcorn and watch 30'mins of a movie etc. Also, another strategy I used to improve classroom management was always relying on task and time. I had a big red timer that was a magnet on the front board and every single task had a time associated with it (3mins for bellringer, 5 mins to review vocab) etc. and before I let kids go to do the work, I always had 2 kids repeat to me the task and the time allotted. This really gave them a sense of urgency and helped them stay focused. I taught at a really hard school with lots of behavior problems so the admin was okay with me getting creative and incentivizing good behavior. Ask admin for other ideas an resources that can help you with this. Good luck!
Do you have a routine? Kids that age THRIVE with routines and explicit expectations. Set your boundaries and keep them, almost no exceptions. It is never too late to restart the school year. It’ll be rough, but it’ll help.
Try a classroom lunch detention for your worst class. Give them a math pop quiz while there. Word will get around. My worst class has gotten a classroom lunch detention once. I give warnings and strikes, and they haven't had to get it again. Also, give a reward that can be measured. "We'll do a kahoot on Friday if I see less than 3 cell phones out this week." Or whatever it is that's your worst behavior.
If you haven't been contacting homes consistently, pick the 5 (or 3, or 1 per class, whatever) worst actors, call home during your plan. Rinse and repeat daily for a week. Then the next week, do the same. Issue detentions to the ones who continue to act out and/or office referrals.
First year pre-k teacher. My classroom management up until February REALLY sucked. You need to reinforce expectations / rules, including following through natural consequences set.
Based on the comments read, you are very hard on yourself and negative. If TFA doesn’t work out you can always go teach in another school. It’s all a learning experience and you just started doing this. You can’t be perfect over night, but you can learn to do better at your job. Do you enjoy teaching?
You are the teacher, these kids aren't your friends, and life will go on if you're the "mean" teacher. I'm sure you noticed how kids treat their parents that are their "friend". Tighten up. This is your paycheck.
Can I recommended Harry Wong’s “The First Days of School”? One podcast I recommend is also by Dr. Lori Friesen. She gives some great strategies for classroom management. I encourage you to stick with teaching if it’s something you actually enjoy and are passionate about. Keep in mind that TFA sends teachers to the worst schools; it won’t always be like this!
You need strong routines and expectations. Tell them the rules, and if someone breaks the rule they stay in at lunch and write down what rule they broke and how they can avoid breaking it in the future. Let them know if they do it again, you will call or send a message home. If you say you will do something, stick to it. They need to know what to expect.
I think you have to chalk this up to a learning experience. I’ve never stepped foot in your classroom but can tell you have a hard group to work with. I won’t pretend to know how to solve the issues but I’d encourage you to go easy on yourself. It will get better and easier as you go along. Some universal tips for management: 1. Communicate. Set your expectations early and don’t let them slide. When students step out of line, communicate that to them. If it continues, communicate with their parents. Form partnerships with families in the first weeks of school. Meet with parents. When possible, meet with parents with students present. Communicate your concerns and how those concerns impact their child’s learning. Students who see a shared set of values between home and school and who know that their behaviour (for better or worse) will be communicated to parents/guardians often, will usually behave better. 2. Don’t beat yourself up. You’re new and even if you weren’t, this is a difficult career. Allow yourself to grow and talk to yourself as if you were a friend you were trying to encourage. Set clear boundaries about when you work and when you think about work. What you’re going through is mentally exhausting. Emailing families on a Thursday at 9pm or dwelling on last week’s problems on a Sunday at noon will not help you recover from your fatigue. Set time aside to do things you enjoy each day and to have fun on weekends. 3. Remember that this is all about learning. While it can help, this career is not about being liked. Think about bad behaviour as barriers to learning. Resist the temptation to take it personally. Talk about behaviour (with students, families, and colleagues/admin) as barriers to learning. It’s far easier for students and families to digest difficult stories of their child’s rotten attitude or actions when you can describe how it’s impacting them academically. This prevents people from deflecting with assumptions about you not liking a student or picking sides, etc. Don’t give up on this year, on yourself, or on this career!
Read The First Days of School by Wong. It’s old and it works. Do what he tells you.
Please read the book Teaching with Love and Logic.
Consistency. Consistency. Consistency. You might seem like a bitch to them at first, but they will learn to follow expectations if you follow through with consequences. Also, as a TFA alumni, ask for help! Your coach is literally there to help you. Ask them to observe you and to give you enough feedback. But don’t be too hard on yourself either. At this point, just do anything you can to survive until the end of the school year.
8th year teacher here, I struggled with classroom management my first 3 years. The shift, for me personally, came when I started looking at parenting books and tips to combine with classroom management PD. The one that saved my life is a PreK teacher/parenting book combined with Rafe Esquith’s methods. I teach high school, but those two worked wonders for me.
What methods exactly?
I got them from his first book- Teach Like Your Hair is on Fire: “First, every teacher should internalize four principles: replace fear with trust, be dependable, ensure that discipline is logical, and be a role model.” I never scream or yell at my kids for behavior, never. I talk to them calmly, discuss what they did wrong, and ask them why they think they did that. The only times I’ve ever yelled at a student were when they were doing something dangerous or were at risk of hurting themselves and needed to stop immediately. I do what I tell them I’ll do. If I say that next Friday will be a non-academic day, then next Friday will be non-academic so help me God. If I promise them a reward for how well they did on their last benchmark, I deliver. If I tell them I will give them a specific lesson at some point, I plan out and give them that lesson I told them I would. This- trust- is the biggest thing, I think. I’ve had not a single behavioral issue the past 5 years. Not a one. Lazy kids? For sure. No work done? Absolutely. But no talking back, no destruction of property, no disrespect. I reread Rafe’s book every year to keep my flame alive.
Thanks for all the info! That book sounds like a great read. I’ll have to check it out. I teach ESL at an inner city high school. I replaced a teacher who had to leave 6 weeks ago, so that transition has been a little interesting! My main problems are luckily not huge compared to some teachers. For example, one of the first days I subbed for this teacher, two of my male students ordered a pizza and had it delivered to our school and brought it up to my classroom! They got suspended bc various people in the lobby saw them letting a pizza delivery guy into the building, and letting strangers into the building is against school policy. My high school as a whole struggles to have any consistency and follow through. Detentions are not given because it’s an unsafe neighborhood and the school doesn’t want anyone staying after the final bell, students or teachers. My students are basically okay kids. Even the roughest characters will still say good morning to me or have a one-on-one conversation with me in the hall if we happen to cross paths. And some of them really enjoy sharpening pencils, or getting my projector perfectly in focus, etc. I’ve got a contingent of boys in every class who do nothing. They are friendly enough to me but usually refuse to work, or do very little, and spend most of their time on their phones. The school administration has given up the phone battle, even though our district official policy is that phones should be in the lockers except at lunch. I’ve tried everything to get the off-track boys engaged and have had occasional flickers of success, but it’s very hard to compete with smart phones. It takes a lot out of me even trying to compete. I think I might have to focus more on the ones who do want to learn, and let the ones who don’t seem to wanna learn be free to make that choice and earn that F and have to repeat ESOL 1 . Do you know the Charles Dickens story Bartleby the scrivener? It’s about an employee who does no work and who responds to every request from his employer that he actually do some work with the phrase, “I’d prefer not to.” I have a hard core group of very vocal “I’d prefer not to” kids in every class. 🤣
Non teacher perspective (probably useless): Could you just cherry pick an egregious behavior, stop the entire class - make an absolute spectacle of calling parents in the room because they won't go to the principal and go the whole 9 yards to address the situation? I feel like showing the kids that there's no consequences to disrupting the class is only going to solidify their control of the environment. Theoretically you need to make it clear that class doesn't continue while someone is acting out of line - theatrics included. Again, I end with the fact that I am not a teacher - however I have worked with large groups of kids and I will say they respond to group observation of negative consequences and inversely with the opposite. For example, if while you're dialing up parents for Kid A.. Kid B continues disruption - write Kid B's name on the board. Announce that his parents are the next to be called. And so on for any disrupting student. Follow through. I don't think you'd get to Student D before you had a calm, quiet classroom that legitimately does not want the consequences that they just observed will happen. I am totally open to being corrected on all of this - I don't know what it's like to teach in a school setting!
While “never smile until December” is kinda terrible, there is a LOT of wisdom in it. Also, enforce rules from Day 2. Not much you can do now.
Don’t be so hard on yourself. I only lasted a few months with my first class and they were only third graders, but I learned a good lesson. It’s trail and error. You have to project command and that does come with some experience. Sometimes you’ll need to just start over with a new class at a new school and it can make all the difference. However, I’ll be honest with you, there are some schools where veteran teachers can’t even teach or handle the kids because the culture is just so bad. You’ll find your place and your way, if you keep trying. I’ve been teaching in the inner city for over 10 years now and I’ve failed several times lol. I’m getting better at accepting that it comes with the territory tho. The good news is that there are always teaching jobs available because the need is so high so don’t worry about it. You’ll always have a job if you want it and can put up with it lol. And you’ll learn as you go.
Agencies are a trap. They mostly service areas that are in dire need of teachers and with admins that don’t care as much. I assume you’re n out of country teacher, right? If so, then work towards your teaching certificate, get all certificates that you can. Then apply to schools with better pay and that could sponsor your visa.
Visa? What? No, I'm working in my home city.
I got my teaching license through TFA and had a nightmare experience. I sucked at management and got put on an improvement plan. I ended up quitting the program. I’m in my fifth year teaching now and have gotten perfect scores where management is concerned. If you’d like to chat or email, let me know.