Posts Tagged ‘discipline’

It’s been a while.  A new grade, a new curriculum, new standards, 33 beings each with his or her own concerns and quandaries, and not to mention my own in-house proto-teenager draped over the couch in poses of iPodded distress.  Not a lot of energy to write.  Complete sentences.  Even.
When there are that many kids [...]

Last week the last lingering afterglow of Winter Break sank deep into the bowels of the Pacific Ocean.  Kids began to slack off.  They stopped doing their homework with any amount of care and attention.  On Thursday, the day we have Music, and now, now that I think they’re old enough and mature enough to [...]

It’s that time of the year.  The most wonderful time, according to some.  The most hectic time, according to teachers.
In the three weeks between Thanksgiving and Xmas, we have to train 100 wild creatures to stand tall, suck in their guts, memorize, and sing–not shout, roar, yell, screech, or otherwise mangle–not one but two songs [...]

This week I had to make the phone call all teachers dread.  To the Department of Children and Family Services.  The supreme form of tattling.
Kelly walked at the front of the line holding a water bottle with ice in it.  The last time Kelly was carrying a water bottle with ice in it, she’d brought [...]

The first month of school is a crucial time in the life of a classroom. Don’t meld them into a working group, and you pay for it for the rest of the year. Classroom life is chaos. Teaching and learning are repeatedly interrupted by stretches of wildness. Days are exhausting. [...]

The force is always with us in the classroom. We, the teachers, direct, control, command. The question is always how much force to use.
I’m not talking about physical force–though did you know that in the eighth year of the 21st century corporal punishment in schools is still legal in 22 U.S. states?!
I’m talking [...]

How do you feel about lines? Most adults, I think, HATE them, unless we’re already in one, and someone cuts into it. Then we want the orderly justice a line promises, be it on the freeway or at Costco. Our inner wild thing wants to become a ruthless enforcer of line order.
Wild kid [...]

We all deal with it. Some more than others. All day I tried to find ways to teach physically. We were pirates (tomorrow being International Talk Like a Pirate Day). We were long vowels standing tall and short ones crouching down. We used unifix cubes all through math.

8 kids mostly [...]

There’s something about a new beginning in September that’s embedded in our life’s rhythm no matter how far we are from school. New season. New wardrobe. A new fall line-up.
A scrubbed and purposeful self ready to begin crisp new things.
Parents and teachers. We feel it more acutely. We live by [...]