Reflections Week Six

Reflection on expectations

Wow.  Don’t let any rules slide in my class let me tell you.  You let one thing go at it all falls apart.  That is one of my main lessons I have been learning this week.  Rules and expectations must remain the same for all students.  My particular issue is with students talking while I am talking, and a refusal to sit down.  Talking while I am talking and standing was something that my previous teacher of my classes let slide.  When I took over I took the same attitude.  If a few students were standing in the back I would haggle them to sit or if two students were having a side conversation I didn’t stop the rest of my 54 student’s attention to quite them up.  Not doing that again.  More students start refusing to sit, a lot of time is wasted on trying to reinforce something that was been excepted for the whole year.  When I first started I did not fully understand why it was so important to have students sitting.  Until they were becoming more and more inattentive and a couple students having more freedom to push others, just over all being goofballs while standing.  I did not mind the two students talking until more and more students starting talking as well.  Not to mentioned the students around the talkers were becoming lost as well.  It wasn’t working out for me.  Now I am stuck with wasting precious time trying to get the class under control because too many expectations have slid by in the last year or few weeks.  Transitions are slow, and I hate the feeling that the students run the class, not the teachers.  Boy have I learned a big lesson on expectations.  I will do my best to put a band aide on this year, but my first year of teaching will be looking very different…hopefully.