A Synopsis of Summer Training

Anne Monroe's class rocked and helped me keep sanity and have fun while many other people were simply playing up the desperate nature of our charge and how hard our hearts must be when implementing classroom management. I felt the despair of the situation was played up, partially to shock us and be sure we payed attention to the classroom management aspect of class. I am not saying this was completely unnecessary, I was not firm enough at all with classroom management, but I recall at the beginning of the summer thinking about nothing but classroom management and stifling my ideas for fun and creative instructional techniques. I see now that perhaps the base was necessary, but I still wish their was some focus on instructional techniques this summer. I think my students could tell when I was excited about teaching a lesson, and at least some got involved without much management beyond genuine interest in the topic. It is naive to think this will work all the time. In retrospect, I know all the focus on management was probably necessary and it exposed my weaknesses which is probably why I wasn't exactly stoked about it. I've been used to lecturing college chemistry, which students are compelled to pay attention to because they are there of their own accord. Switching my philosophy into a method that will make low-income black students able to learn algebra 2 and biology 2 was a metamorphosis that was challenging, but I enjoyed many aspects of it. I think all the constructive criticism we received was taken well by me, but the fact that we were graded so harshly so quickly is something I struggled with. I shouldn't care about grades anymore, I graduated college, screw it right? But it is engrained in my psyche and I guess I just didn't appreciate we had a grade that was worth a large percentage of our grade for a class the first week we were attempting to do something. Once again, thank god for Anne Monroe's class. If she had not been the teacher for our afternoon class, I don't think my attitude would have remained upbeat for the whole summer. I would have eventually burnt out with constantly being evaluated. I did like the multiple sources of criticism though, it allowed you to depersonalize it and if you heard the same thing from multiple people, chances are you have to work on that aspect. I think if something could be improved I would try to make it imperative that 1st year teachers plan their overall management strategies more cooperatively. Now I think its basically up to the teachers in individual classes their level of cooperation, and when they have differing styles and don't communicate it can be very ineffective. I would have 2 classroom management presentations for grades throughout the year, one joint one in the middle for your summer school and then one you get to modify for your own classroom. Also, I think the summer school expulsion policy cuts the balls off your consequence ladder. I don't want to kick kids out, but sometimes they should get detention. These two consequences shouldn't be related. I'd be remiss if i didn't mention Anne Monroe's construction paper lesson for note-taking and project making. I will be utilizing this lesson nearly weekly in my class.