"I NEED to have my note back."

Over Christmas Break, Abby and I were talking about how my teaching experience was going to get more intense with doing my apprenticeship at Westwood by completely taking over classes and whatnot, and I remember a remark she made to me," I just don't see you as being a disciplinarian."

I told her about my "teacher stare" and how intense I would get, but in just the past couple of days alone, I've had to get over "not being liked" and discipline students because I am only after their progress and success. A few days ago I went to Cheer block with Missy and was assigned to work with the JV and Fish as an extension of her, and two girls in particular were later reprimanded for their unacceptable behavior.

Today, I politely asked a student to stop folding paper into a plane (or whatever shape s/he intended) because it was distracting and showed his boredom and lack of engagement to me, which was unacceptable because he wasn't even finished with the assignment. In another block, I saw a student writing and reading a note during the lesson and walked over to tell her to put it away. The student did for about five minutes until s/he brought it back out (at first a one inch margin at the bottom of the notebook and halfway out completely) and began to work on it again. I walked over to her desk, crouched down to underneath her desk level, and said, "I've asked you nicely the first time to put it away, but you didn't listen so I'm going to have to take it up now." S/he resisted and held the notebook shut so as it keep me from retrieving the note, but I took it up, folded it in half, and stuffed it in my legal pad without reading it. The student continued to be disruptive with other students around and Missy had already started an e-mail by the time everyone got started and I got back from the bathroom. We read the e-mail addressed to the student's parent over to ensure that the incident was reported accurately to those necessary for notification.

I can't even begin to explain the feeling I had confronting this particular student. My heart was beating out of my chest, and I could feel the sweats coming on. This student, a bully to her peers and teachers, scared me. I couldn't believe how intimidated I was by the student, but I was genuinely afraid for what may be said. I don't think I've ever felt physical fear like that -- maybe when I was getting ready to perform @ UIL or something, but I haven't felt that way towards anyone or anything in quite some time. Needless to say, I was glad to be done with the student by the time she couldn't contact a parent in order to get the note back from our hands, but I stapled the note to indicate that I hadn't read it (just to ensure my own safety) and told the student that we wouldn't give the note back until we got a reply from a parent about the e-mail. However, the student emphasized the parent's lack of concern for an e-mail of the matter at hand, and I wanted to tell the student, "Well, I care about your inappropriate, unacceptable, disrespectful behavior in our class." but didn't have time because Missy jumped in. Oh Lordy, those last 10 minutes made it the longest day, as the student stormed out of the room, slamming the door to emphasize dramatics.

Other than disciplinary means, I got to lead 5th and 6th blocks in a DLA activity again, and the students and I had a great time interacting. I felt very official by telling the blocks that one of the corrections on the DLA counted as a singular one because we were changing the infinitive "to defrost" to the gerund form "defrosting" for parallelism with the sentence in context and one of my students brought up the "FANBOYS" conjunction acronym, which reminded me of my own 7th grade English class when I first learned, "For/An/Nor/But/Or/Yet/So!!" and I got SO excited to share it with them. And then we moved on to what I identified was an antecedent, and I defined it for the kids and one of my students asked, "Did you learn that at Texas?" And I laughed in reply and said, "No, I learned it before high school. All of it." And they were just in AWE because they hadn't. They crack me up!

I'm really enjoying all the aspects of teaching, but discipline has got to be one of the most difficult parts of the job. I'm going to have to continue the disciplinary action tomorrow when I pull a few cheerleaders aside to speak with them and let them know I'm serious about my job and theirs and our time together. Ahh, growing up!

Always looking forward to the next,
Ms. L