Second Week Teaching!

My second week teaching was more eye opening than the first. In the beginning the students were excited to have me in the room and they followed directions, usually with a little bit of push. But the second week was not like that. As many of the students became more comfortable with me and also being back in school (they had just finished a two week holiday) their behaviors became more defiant. I have never had to worry about one child's safety so much as I tried to also watch 24 other students. The realities of behavior issues in the classroom are really sad. Because one student decides to run out of the room or throw things I have to stop my instruction to calm the child down or call the administration. I also know that however difficult I thought this behavior experience was it wasn't as bad as it could have been because I had my mentor teacher in the room with me. We were able to work together to teach the students and work with the behavior issues at the same time.

The school has recently started a school wide positive behavioral intervention system (SWPBIS) but it is still new and the students and staff are still working towards full commitment and understanding of how it needs to be implemented. Back home we also have a positive behavioral intervention system in place but it has been implemented for a while. The center of the whole system is the Quiet Room. This room acts as a safe zone for students who need a break because they need to control their anger, either by teacher request or students may ask to go there. Inside the room there is another little room where students can throw a ball or jump around. There are also multiple desks in the main part of the room for students when they are fulfilling detention during recess and have work to complete. The staff member who runs the room is in charge of the positive behavior slips that students around the school receive and she inputs the data to see where all the tickets come from--classroom teachers, specialists, other teachers, etc. The staff member also inputs data for misbehavior around the school--where did it happen, what happened, when did it happen. The school looks at all of the data once a month to see if they need to apply any changes or to focus on a certain behavior school wide.

Even though the behavior issues in the class have become very difficult for me I am learning strategies to implement that can lower the occurrences of these behaviors. The strategies work with most of the students but there are still a few that I cannot reach. I have never seen so many detentions and suspensions in the first grade, in my life. I am saddened that it is the same five students who choose to misbehave. I wish there was somewhere in the school the kids could go to talk to someone about their likes and dislikes and how they feel when they go home and those relationships they have with their parents. I understand first hand that behavior issues can stem from disadvantaged homes and it does make a difference when someone listens. I am not sure how the culture in Australia looks at people who talk about their feelings, but I believe it helps. Some people just need to talk about whats happening.

All of the lessons that I taught during my second week went great. We were mainly working with two digit numbers--skip counting, number identification, and number representations. The students were hands on with some kind of manipulative every day. It was wonderful to watch as their understanding and ability to incorporate the numbers correctly grew every day. I am also becoming more aware of how to teach students in first grade. I am still so used to third grade that I occasionally try and implement a lesson that is too difficult. I lean towards teaching lessons in which the students have to make the connections between concepts I am teaching (with guidance) and the younger students still need to be explicitly taught everything so they are able to use their knowledge later in life to make their own connections. Everything we know was taught to us at some point. Even counting and manners.

This was a very short week because one of the most important Australian holiday fell on Thursday. Anzac Day.

Till next time.