Tuesday, September 30, 2008

Happy they are gone.

I'm unwinding from my day. I'm sitting in my classroom with the door open and listening to the school empty out. I can't believe how noisy it is. My kids were really talkative this afternoon. Some days are like this. You get your class back from lunch and they're a different bunch than you started with. I trace today's behaviors in the afternoon to the way my students were treated at lunch. They were yelled out by the lunch monitors and the lunch servers for the entire 45-minute period. They didn't go out to recess. They were made to sit longer and listen to more yelling when the period was over because of their behavior. They ate in silence. They weren't allowed to get up and move around. Some of this they earned because of bad choices. A few students were pushing others. A few were talking too loudly and wouldn't stop. That's pretty normal for lunch. Did it require a teacher yelling at them through a bullhorn for 45 minutes?

We talk a lot about discipline and breaking cycles of despair and defeat. We talk a lot about using new methods and restorative discipline. After all this talk, many people in my school just go back to doing the same old thing. Yelling at kids with a bullhorn is the wrong thing to do and results in my class becoming nutty for the rest of the the day. I have a super headache from them because they wouldn't stop talking. Sheesh.

Happy Rosh Hashanah to all of my Jewish friends and family.

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