Today’s class was draining especially after lunch. Wynne was hosting a thesis statement/essay workshop and the students would not focus to complete the task. In fact, the students were down right rowdy, childish, disrespectful and, at times, obnoxious! This was unexpected for me as well as Wynne since several students were removed from the program due to lack of constructive participation in class and through homework assignments among other things. (These students did not comply with the contract goals set by the LAGCC GED program.)
After the lesson section of the class time, students were asked to take 45-60 minutes to draft a 5-paragraph essay: intro, body (3 paragraphs), and conclusion. Wynne had left me in charge of the class because she had a departmental meeting. Instead of working diligently, the students talked in cliques when they should have been taking the time to craft a strong thesis statement and write their essays. While I was helping several students’ work through their essays things became a little noisy. I looked up from the student I was working with and asked them to keep it down because others were writing. Some students moved to an empty classroom next door to concentrate because of all the commotion. I tried being a little sterner to get the class to focus but they’d only quite down for a few minutes at a time. One student was working but became frustrated with the noise and my lack of control and slammed his books, swore, and stormed out of the classroom dropping the “f” bomb before he crossed the threshold of the classroom. His behavior was completely unacceptable. The funny thing about him is that he is a good student in terms of handing in assignments, following directions, and even essay composition. He needs to work on his temper and work on managing how outside distractions/factors affects his emotions. Wynne was back by then and was able to speak with him. I would not have known what to say to him, so I was thankful for her return. This is not why I chose adult education; I want to be around “mature” students I thought to myself in anger.
Outside of the usual noise distraction, one student was distracting and disruptive in another way. The GED essay question asked students to choose one side and defend it: Do you think learning from a book is better than learning from experience? This student felt morally conflicted by the essay question and refused to start the essay. He argued quite loudly and adamantly that both are needed in order to learn and he could not write the essay. After trying to work with him (by questioning him) on selecting one method of learning he probably favored a little more, I “gave up” and tried to get him to choose one by being “practical.” I explain to him that during the GED examination he would not have the luxury of having hours to think about the side he’d choose. He’d need to select a topic, defend it, and work on writing the best possible essay within the allotted time. That did not work, so I told him to think about it some more while I worked with another student. (Although I wanted to work through this with him, I thought it unfair to the other students to spend so much time with him.)
Classroom management is one aspect of teaching that I think you not only need to read about but also should experienced in order to become seasoned. I truly experienced it today! I had to manage the entire class, help them with their questions and deal with disruptive behavior while maintaining my composure. Teachers deal with people and not machines. Even machines have off days much less people. We have to realize that students have outside factors that impact their classroom behavior, focus, and productivity. Effective classroom management comes with practice and understanding of emotional intelligence; even with practice and knowledge chaotic days are certain to occur.
Classroom management is one aspect of teaching that I think you not only need to read about but also should experienced in order to become seasoned. I truly experienced it today! I had to manage the entire class, help them with their questions and deal with disruptive behavior while maintaining my composure. Teachers deal with people and not machines. Even machines have off days much less people. We have to realize that students have outside factors that impact their classroom behavior, focus, and productivity. Effective classroom management comes with practice and understanding of emotional intelligence; even with practice and knowledge chaotic days are certain to occur.
Wynne and I discussed and reflected on the crazy classroom we had and decided, “Some days are better than others.” Even with that, she said she’d reiterate classroom rules and respect for one another. I thought that would be a great idea.
I'm sorry that I had to leave for an hour in the afternoon, but there was no other option.
ReplyDeleteThis was a difficult day, but the students are still new to each other and us, and the effort required for writing draft #1 is more intense for some people than we might imagine.
We could have done one more idea generating activity before jumping into the writing; that would probably have made the drafting process smoother. This essay topic is coming out of our work investigating careers and education, but I should have made the connection more explicit by asking them to work with one of the readings to pull out some ideas about learning from experience vs learning from books.
The next time we met, the students and I reviewed the classroom contract that they drafted during the first week of class, and had a frank discussion about the kinds of behaviors that are simply not appropriate for the college environment.
Even so, these students are still learning how to be students, so we have to give them some latitude. The interesting challenge here is to make use of their vivacity in a way that contributes to their learning.