Let go, and let THEM do

Simply put, I learned that I can let go a little and count on my kids to do exactly what I expect them to do. I had the privilege of taking ten students to the SkillsUSA Fall Leadership Conference in St. Simons, Georgia Thursday through Saturday. It was my first time chaperoning a field trip solo as an advisor, so I was nervous about everything going as planned. Our advisors (and even our students) have set very high standards that we expect everyone to follow, so I started the trip by reiterating the importance of following the rules and behaving at all times. As soon as the wheels on the bus started rolling, it’s almost like a switch flipped and every one of my students acted like little angels. I didn’t even have to remind them of our rules. Other students, from our school system and others, were misbehaving, and my students just turned their heads and repeated our school motto (which has to do with pride in our school). As nervous as I was to not disappoint the other advisors, I learned that my kids know how to behave and set an example for other students. Also, while I was out of school for the field trip, I left sub plans for my classes. All of my students had two projects to finish and turn in while I was out, and when I returned to the school Saturday afternoon I was surprised to find that everyone met their deadline and the substitute had nothing but nice things to say about my students. This just further shows me that I need to worry less, and know that I can count on my kids more.

Cheating

Does anyone else have a high number of students cheating this year? This has been the worst so far out of my three years. I had a student turn in her final paper today over a topic they have been working on all semester and she plagerized the whole thing from the internet. Word for word, line for line, misspelling for misspelling, etc. It makes me sick. She's one of my top students too. I had to call home and she has 2 days ISS.
How do we keep them from engaging in these activities and being outright lazy??

Reckoning!

Today everything came to a head during the first few minutes of second block. The usual horseplay begins and a bulb on the ceiling gets knocked down with a piece of PVC pipe and a couple of kids almost get hit by the debris. Dr. B was at my last observation and was witness to the kind of behavior they are capable of. Given all the other incidents this semester I felt it high time for a reckoning. The whole class has been assigned to copy the entire glossary of the Core Curriculum books before they can set foot inside the shop to engage in another project. The funny thing was I was as calm and collected as a jeweler setting a diamond. I've decided that I can't go on like this and I shouldn't let them either. They never started on the words and had some 70 minutes to do so, they just pleaded with me. We'll see what happens on Monday.

Student disrupting class

Ladies and Gentleman,
Disrupting class use to be a nightmare for our teachers not anymore. First check your schools policy and see how they want to handle disruptive behavior. At my school, I had a come to Jesus meeting with my administrator's. I basically told them that we are losing good teachers because of a problem we could fix. As the school resource officer I told them that I don't do disciple, and they don't do criminal procedure. Now if a student gets charged with disrupting a class, he will get ISS and I will give him a court date. This cut down our disruptive behavior.

Disrespectful Children

Hi everyone,

I really don't have any complaints this week. I am very excited that we have next week off. I really need the break. This week, we had a fight at school which is nothing new, but the thing that really concerned me was that a student hit a parent in the head with a chair. Can you all believe that? It really bothers me that students have no respect for adults. I talk to my students all the time about respect and some still don't get it. I tried to explain to them that when I was growing up, It was okay for someone else's parents to chastise me. Some of the students thought I was crazy. They absolutely believe that no one else should be able to tell them what to do even if they are wrong. Whatever happen to "It takes a village to raise a child"?

Kindness Week

This has been Kindness Week at my school. And, unfortunately, it has been anything but kind. Fights every day. Yesterday was a particulary bad day. Happened in the commons area near the vending machines at the end of B lunch. One guy threw another guy into the vending machines. The guy's head was bleeding, the other guy proceeded to continue hitting him. Over and over. Finally the SRO and the administrators broke it up. It was awful.

Then this morning, as the students were released from the commons area, before the 8:25 bell rang, another bad fight in the hallway. Ditto for lunch time. As the 3:30 bell rang, more altercations at the bus ramp.

I want my students to LOVE one another and be nice to one another. But it has not been happening at our school this week. Lots of gang activity going on. Too much violence.

I guess I am just a left-over hippie and all this violence is very upsetting to me. I wish every kid in the entire school could see the video Freedom Writers. And read the Freedom Writers Diary book too. Maybe they would see themselves and end this senseless violence!

Can you figure?

The 2 boys that were expelled for fighting in my class are back. I asked them for the real reason of what the fight was all about. One kid blamed it on an instigator. This so-called instigator, and true enough he was, has since moved to a different school. He said "without him here things will be a lot better"! I told him "you shouldn't allow yourself to be influenced by anyone". I'm searching to find a way to get these kids to start thinking for themselves. They are so into this sub-culture of fighting that a seriously volatile atmosphere has been created. I told them that there are soldiers over in Iraq dying so that they can have the freedom to fight and kill each other over here! Can you figure?

Stolen Cell phone

Well hello,

Class since our last meeting things got a little crazy. I am so use to communicating through the phone that i neglected to use this form of communication....
Well My phone had got stolen last week on Wednesday around 9:55am-11am by one of my students. I left it on my desk unattended and that wasn't to bright of me. After class while on lunch duty i realize my phone wasn't in my pocket. After my duty i went into class and looked for it. I even had a colleague call the cell phone. I wasn't able to locate it in my class. I remember who sat around my desk and located them. I asked the 8 th grader if he had anything to tell me? He responded no; than he mumbled this must be about that cell phone. We went into the the SRO office where he told a couple bogus lies about how he found a phone. I told him it was mine. Once i got my phone back all my 200 contacts and my pictures of my daughter had been deleted. The young man received 13 days of suspension my class should be peaceful now....
Wesley

Amazing Wednesday

Hello all,
Well, we have survived Spirit week and Halloween, our students were allowed to dress-up for Halloween and it really was amazing. Some of my students, that don't seem to participate in much of anything came to class in costume. As I stood in the halls and lunchroom looking over the students, I tried to imagine just how they came up with the various ideals that they had applied to their outfits. Did they see these ideals on television, or even possibly in a book? Heaven only knows, but I think that these students actually created some of these outfits in their very own thoughts. This proves what I believe with all my heart, our kids are capable of achieving things in this world that are unimaginable! Let's continue to pray that they will apply their talents in a good way and enjoy it! -as we continue moving forward toward Thanksgiving and Christmas! --Riley

Book'em Danno

At the first of the week I posted about the kid dipping in my class.Then when I sent him to see the A.P. he lied and told him that he wasn't. The A.P. suggested that we talk to him together,so we did yesterday.After about ten minutes of him denying that he was dipping and saying that he was tired of being accused by everyone,We got a confession,Some of the responses to my first post helped .I told him it bothered me more that he had lied to us about it than him actually dipping.
The A.P.said we needed to start tag teaming these things.It worked out great.My A.P. and I are trying to decide on some type of work detail instead of ISS .Because most kids like ISS. Thanks for all your responses.

Through the teeth!

Check this one out,
One of my goof-off"s decides he wants to get serious now that it's at the last end of the first nine weeks and he's failing. So he comes in after school, makes up a quiz and we have a little chat about his grades, future, etc. He comes into class the next day. I tell him "Okay, you can make up the small hands-on project" that he didn't do. I even offered to let him come after class to finish it if he wasn't able to during class. Next thing I know (maybe 15 minutes later) he's finished! He starts pressing me to grade it right then and put it in the gradebook so he can see his new average. I tell him I'll do it after class. After class, upon thorough examination, I find that he had snuck out to the back of the shop, retrieved one of the other student's same project that was thrown out, brought it back in, spruced it up a bit, brings it over and says "here you are Mr. Connors, I'm done". We'll be having a little chat about that one today! Ya'll have a good one!

Fight!

I had 2 fights yesterday. 1 in my first block, 1 in my second. The second fight took place next to my desk. As a result of the ruckus my desk, that I had spent some time modifying to support my desk-top computer and printer, was damaged. It can be repaired and I figured it will be done by the 2 students who were fighting. It's so funny how these guys can go 9 weeks cutting up with each other, working together, helping each other, etc. and then out of the blue something over a stupid piece of candy can set off a war! 1 kid has already been kicked out for a week for fighting. The other is severe ADHD and forgot to take his medication as I found out later from the nurse. A formula for disaster! Anyway, today they will be back in here, as per my request, working together on my desk. I figured for them it would be a good learning opportunity.

DIP

I've explained to all of my students the policy about using dip in school. I caught a student using dip Monday, told him to go spit it out. He replied, "My bad", and went to spit it out. I informed the Assistant Principle about it and he wanted to see the kid in his office. So the next day I sent him into see the principle where the student denied dipping in my class although he has been put in ISS twice this year from other classes. The A.P. told me that he would go ahead and put him in ISS or we could talk to the student together. I told him we would wait and talk to him together. This is a first for me. What's the best way to respond to a student that says he didn't do something that you know he did?

Behavior Like CHILDREN?

I could not help but see a common tread in all of the postings I was reading...students are behaving like children, and not like the little, responsible, motivated and self-discipled smaller adults we need them to be. That would be only so that they can realize and appreciate the fine resource provided to them by having "us" as their teachers!

It gets hard, but we must force ourselves to go back to those lessons we learned back in Developmental Psychology...these youngsters may be housed in bodies that are large, and adult-like, but their brains are still immature. The human brain continues to go through profound developmental changes in thinking, reasoning abilities, and sound judgment-making abilities until the age of 21, or 23 in some cases. We are teaching immature children, not adults, and we should remind ourselves of that fact frequently as a method of maintaining personal sanity!

I have a co-worker who phrases it less tactfully, "Essentially, their brains are not what they should be yet, so in essence they are still retarded; not yet fully developed in their mental processes." Think that when they start to get on your last nerve!

A Crazy Friday

Yesterday,in all 3 of my classes the students were off the chain. The 1st periord had about 6 students who decided to play with a lighter. Another student decided he would just get up and leave class. In the 2nd period at least 18 out of 22 decided they would sing rap songs as if they were at a concert ( outdoors ). After asking them to stop several times, then a group of boys and girls decided they wanted to have a rap singing "battle'. The 3rd period boys decided they would socialize in a group and tell jokes. As you can imagine, I wrote quite a few disciplinary forms and forwarded them to the administrator. Can you imagine these scenarios for 90 minutes each , in one day ? When they end up failing the class because of failure to complete assignments and to pass exams , they wonder why. Out of about 70 plus students , only about 15-20 shows interest in learning . I doubt if the students involved will receive any consequences for their actions , even though the instructional environment was disrupted . After this week and with the students having a day off on Monday, there's no telling what to expect on Tuesday. Is there any hope for this generation of teens ?

When is enough - "enough"

I have several students in my classes that absolutely have no desire to learn. They will actually turn in their tests completely blank. I have spoken to each one of their parents and their parents all say the same thing - that they will continue talking to their child, but they are having attitude problems with them at home as well.

I have tried motivating these students every way possible, but it seems that I am hitting a brick wall with them. These students are also the ones that I am also having discipline problems with.

I know that a teacher should never give up trying to motivate and influence their students, but when is enough just that - enough!!!! I have other students that want to learn, but are being "Cheated" out of learning because of the distraction these students bring!!!

These students have been given detentions, ISS and their parents have been called. Advise will be greatly appreciated!!!!!

Steven Vinsant

Profanity!

So many of my kids are in great need of a mouth washing! I've decided to award detention slips to all who can't hold their tongues. I'm beginning to realize that we may be the only people available to teach these kids some common decency. What thoughts could you share on the subject?

Fighting in school

This is my third year at this school and I have never seen so many fights. Last week the cops had to arrest five boys and two girls. Even when going with the cops they were still them a bit of their lips.These are the same students that are always out of class and does not care what grade they get on a test. On the other hand these students are the ones that Shane was describing on Saturday in his conflict resolution. Sometimes these students leave home carrying a book bag of conflicts and as teachers we are there to help them resolve them before the fight starts.

Spirit Week

Hi All, Our school is having spirit week this week. I can't help wondering if it's really worth the trouble. Each day there is some sort of plan for the students to wear a certain color, dress-up in a certain attire or to do something a little outrageous. My students seem to pick up pretty easy on every chance to act a little too silly. I am experiencing extra behavior problems already and it's just Monday. I understand that the students are still kids, but is it worth all this to have them act like pre-school instead of high-schoolers? Well, it's not my choice, but I will choose to try and be a little outrageous myself- maybe to even tolerate a little too silly students?-Riley

Frustration

It used to frustrate me so much to see my students fail a test. While it still upsets me, I have learned not to let it get to me. When you back up and look at the "big picture", most of them are the kids that don't care about school. They are the ones that sleep in class, do not do their homework, "goof off" during group projects, etc. I also realized that the ones that are failing my class are usually failing all of their classes. Normally my class is one of their higher grades. Just another bit of evidence that career tech is a dumping grounds for kids that don't want to be in school.