Who’s in Charge?
To say my first year of teaching was terrible would be an understatement. It was like nothing I could’ve prepared for and so unlike anything I expected. If I didn’t know any better I would’ve sworn that I was watching a scene Freedom Writers. For most of the year curse words swirled around my room more than academic ones, fights or arguments constantly ensued. One child even threatened my life and I just knew that I was about to lose my job before I’d even paid into my pension. Because unlike Hilary Swank I was no stranger to their environment. I walked the same streets growing up. I could’ve easily gone there but I didn’t want to because this was my career. I was the adult, the teacher, their leader... They weren’t going to scare me away that easily. And still at the end of the every single day the floor in my classroom always looked like the garbage can vomited. Day after day, it became more obvious to me that in this classroom, I was a guest and they were in charge.
Sometime around my third year I sort of got the hang of managing a classroom. At some point I had found my “teacher voice.” I learned some tricks on how to keep the “appearance” of order by creating opportunities for it to look like learning was happening in my room. It might have been able to find it sooner if I wasn’t moved to another school where I was the “new” teacher all over again. Seven years later I still have a lot of work to do but, I learned how to deal with the students that want to fight me and flatten my tire without losing my cool. Now my class is looking like the Freedom Writer’s class mind you this didn’t happen for me in one school year. But, I also wasn’t able to bring a Holocaust survivor to visit them. It wasn’t until my sixth year of teaching that I was able to bring cool people from the community into our class and show them that it was okay to want more.
My classroom management style is a controlling one. I plan my lessons out methodically, I arrange the seats in my room. My students have jobs and we rotate schedules and there are rules and regulations for everything. Down to how to enter and exit the room. This has been the only way that I can keep any semblance of order. Additionally, this has gotten me good marks in my evaluation and as much as I hate to admit it, that’s a big factor in the decisions I make as a teacher. And while I know that this type of management has allowed some learning to take place. I feel like my students are too dependent on me. They are like little ducks waiting for me to feed them. I want them to take the learning and run with it. Much like those students from the movie.
In order to do this I have to become a facilitator in my classroom. I have some ideas on how to create lessons that make this possible I have to start community building and this is something that I have not been able to do successfully. I’ve tried but my students are more interested in figuring out how to get out of work as opposed to in the thick of it. If I can shift from classroom management to community building then I am certain that my students can learn so much more and care more about what they’re doing. Plus it will be different from before when people walked in or walked past my classroom. It won’t just look like learning is happening. The mark of a good teacher is what his/her students can do without them. Maybe, it I figure out how to shift from managing a classroom to building a community then real life-long learning can take place. If students can be in charge of disrupting the classroom they could also be in charge of leading it.
The challenge will be how to get my middle school students to use their power for good.
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