From: David.Mctamaney@f32.n272.z1.fidonet.org (David Mctamaney)
Newsgroups: k12.chat.teacher
Subject: Classroom Discipline
Date: Fri, 15 Jan 93 00:21:00 PDT
Organization: FidoNet node 1:272/32 - Acorn I BBS, Marlboro NY

Dear Lisa,

LM> * Origin: Hogs Hollow (Mac) Tsawwassen, BC Can 604-948-0272 (1:153/928)

I do not know whether I was more intrigued by the exotic origin of this
message or the openness with which you appealed to other teachers for
advice.  Whichever, I would like to answer, even though I am
certainly not an authority on this topic.

I have been teaching English, and occasionally Latin and Computer
Applications, for the past 18 years at a 9-12th grade high school in
Monroe, NY--a few miles south of Tsawwassen!  Finding my style took a
lot of trial and error, and I wish I had had the good sense to ask for
advice from others years ago.

This September I stood patiently on line at the Xerox machine as a new
teacher struggled with our tempermental machine.  Subsequent
conversation revealed that she was running off a four-page set of rules
to distribute to her students on their first day in her class.

I took a deep breath and made the first suggestion I had ever made to
another teacher--and told her to throw out the last three pages or the
kids would eat her alive.  "I have only one rule," I said.  "I tell my
students, 'Don't do anything wrong.'" Real funny--all the old-timers
on the line laughed, but I don't think I was really much help to her.

Well, I thought about that for a while, and this year, perhaps for the
first, I have paid closer attention to what it is that I really try to
do to make my classroom work.

Undoubtedly others will write with fine advice.  Some already
have.  But let me urge you to do one thing all the time: try to be
organized.  Nothing confuses the kids more than getting the message
that the teacher doesn't know what is going on. I have a folder for each
of the students in my 5 classes--134 this year. As they enter my room
each period, I spread these folders out on a table by the door, and each
incoming student picks up his folder. They decorate them, and write
song lyrics, and notes, and who loves whom forever and all sorts of
stuff that I ignore, but the folder system is great.  When that bell
rings if your folder is on that desk, I consider that to mean that
you are not in the room. When I hand out Xeroxed materials, I place
copies in the folders of the absentees. If I notice that Johnny still
can't use who or whom, I insert some extra work in his folder.  He finds
it, quietly, without a lot of his friends needing to know.  They leave
me poetry, notes from older brothers and sisters away at college,
questions that they were "afraid" to ask in class, etc.  I insert
pictures of them cut from the local paper, include copies of my mom's
chocolate chip cookies--anything that I hear them talking about or know
is part of their life.  Now they want to get that folder and once its in
their hand they head for their desk and class has begun--often before
the bell.  As they leave, they deposit them in special bins set
up in the room.  At the end of the day, I put them in numerical order,
checking to see if there is anything special for me, and insert
messages, suggestions, etc.

Great way to take attendance without all that boring roll call stuff,
and to have a personal means of communication with them.

I also keep om a shelf a 3-ring binder for each class.  It has
various sections and looks like the notebook they should be
keeping.  There are lists of quizzes and dates that they were
taken, essay assignments and dates they were due, etc.  It is
pretty easy for them to see what they have not done, and what they
still owe.  Calendars, sign out sheets for special "extras" like
materials to take to study hall, makeup packets to better grades on
certain projects, and other stuff that kids have asked for over the
years that I found to be interruptions to class teaching are in those
binders.  I have a special drawer for everything from band-aids and
safety pins to dimes for the library's Xerox machine.

I think you get the point.  I hope you find this helpful.  If not, at
least you may have to think of a way you will handle the minutiae of
teaching!

Good luck--we need teachers who care enough to ask.

Dave.

  OLX 2.2  I'm in shape ... round's a shape isn't it?



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