Classroom Management
Since I'm pulling a double-duty tonight and just want to get through with this last assigned blog given the circumstances I described in the last post, this little ditty will be a short one. I've said that before, but this time it's for real. I'll be keeping up with this regardless of whether I have to or not during the school year, so rest assured I'll be back with something more interesting in the near future. So, without further adieu...
Say your prayers and take your vitamins before you go to bed.
Oh boy, I'm tired. When in doubt, resort to a WWF reference. Anyway, here we go for real...
Let it be known that I support role-playing during our team teaching sessions. While we all have no idea what our kids are going to act like in the fall, most of us being rich white folk coming from rich white backgrounds teaching in either rural or urban black schools, classroom management is going to be a big issue. I know you've addressed this with us already Ben, and I know that teaching a 40 minute lesson to simulate a real-life 50 minute lesson is a fruitful and realistic idea, but I have no idea how I'm going to handle any real situations that don't have to do with presenting a lesson. In the ACE program I've written about, they do something very similar to team teaching but include role-playing, and it's really helpful for my friends in that program from what they've told me. It doesn't need to difficult; just ask someone to be a class clown, someone else to be really timid and shy, someone else to be a particularly bright student, and someone else to be a particularly struggling student. The team teaching has already improved my actual classroom style leaps and bounds, but failing to add a classroom management component is a glaring weakness even if it is the only real weakness. Of course there are reasons for and against this, and I realize our vetern teachers may not be classroom management experts specifically (Ms. Cornelius flat-out admitted this as I recall.), but I feel pretty underprepared in that department. Now when I say that, I mean that we've learned how to do lesson planning and classroom management on paper, but we only learn how to act out a lesson plan in practice. This has beeen tremendously helpful, again, but that only tells me we need to work on classroom management in practice too. We can't learn it all in one summer without any real experience, but there has to be some way to incorporate actually practicing classroom mangament into our summer curriculum.
Okay, I'm being redundant and rambling in circles already, but I did promise a short post for once, right? So, let me close by saying that if anyone is interested, Catherine and I are moving into a really cool house in Jackson that was built in the '60s, and the neighborhood has a lot character and a real homely feel. We're a block or two away from all those big bad tall buildings downtown and live across the street from an elementary school with a public park as well as the Mississippi Democratic Headquarters. And as if that isn't exciting enough, anyone who cares about the Mississippi blues would be interested to know that we live across the street from the 930 Blues Cafe as well. So, sorry for all that lame commentary, I'm just really pumped to start living my life and teach some freakin' Latin for real. And now, at last, good night.
Say your prayers and take your vitamins before you go to bed.
Oh boy, I'm tired. When in doubt, resort to a WWF reference. Anyway, here we go for real...
Let it be known that I support role-playing during our team teaching sessions. While we all have no idea what our kids are going to act like in the fall, most of us being rich white folk coming from rich white backgrounds teaching in either rural or urban black schools, classroom management is going to be a big issue. I know you've addressed this with us already Ben, and I know that teaching a 40 minute lesson to simulate a real-life 50 minute lesson is a fruitful and realistic idea, but I have no idea how I'm going to handle any real situations that don't have to do with presenting a lesson. In the ACE program I've written about, they do something very similar to team teaching but include role-playing, and it's really helpful for my friends in that program from what they've told me. It doesn't need to difficult; just ask someone to be a class clown, someone else to be really timid and shy, someone else to be a particularly bright student, and someone else to be a particularly struggling student. The team teaching has already improved my actual classroom style leaps and bounds, but failing to add a classroom management component is a glaring weakness even if it is the only real weakness. Of course there are reasons for and against this, and I realize our vetern teachers may not be classroom management experts specifically (Ms. Cornelius flat-out admitted this as I recall.), but I feel pretty underprepared in that department. Now when I say that, I mean that we've learned how to do lesson planning and classroom management on paper, but we only learn how to act out a lesson plan in practice. This has beeen tremendously helpful, again, but that only tells me we need to work on classroom management in practice too. We can't learn it all in one summer without any real experience, but there has to be some way to incorporate actually practicing classroom mangament into our summer curriculum.
Okay, I'm being redundant and rambling in circles already, but I did promise a short post for once, right? So, let me close by saying that if anyone is interested, Catherine and I are moving into a really cool house in Jackson that was built in the '60s, and the neighborhood has a lot character and a real homely feel. We're a block or two away from all those big bad tall buildings downtown and live across the street from an elementary school with a public park as well as the Mississippi Democratic Headquarters. And as if that isn't exciting enough, anyone who cares about the Mississippi blues would be interested to know that we live across the street from the 930 Blues Cafe as well. So, sorry for all that lame commentary, I'm just really pumped to start living my life and teach some freakin' Latin for real. And now, at last, good night.
posted by David Jones | 22:47
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