Refelction on Philly Institute '06 - #1

Me? A teacher? That's exactly what I was thinking for the first week and a half of institute. We had not yet met our students, but were only starting to talk about the building blocks of an excellent teacher. No, not just a good teacher, but a phenomenal one. And, let me just say, it takes A LOT of hard work. There are so many things that teachers do that I have taken for granted. Do you know how much planning goes into one excellent lesson?

Let's start from the beginning. On the day we arrived at our schools, we found out who we would be working with for the next five weeks. My collaborative group consisted of me, Kate, and Oriel. All we knew was that we would be teaching 5th grade summer school, and that we would have to do it together. Each of us would be teaching a different subject every week, and we would teach on our own. Sounds easy enough, but first we had to set up our classroom, from desk formation to coming up with a plan for student management - there was way too much to do. I have realized that it really doesn't matter how compatible people are, when you have more than one person trying to put together a classroom, you will hit disagreements. We definitely did not agree on everything, but in the end, the classroom was ours, and we proudly owned what we had come up with. I'm getting ahead of myself.

I had no idea how complicated it was/is to put together a classroom management plan that is actually funtional and effective. It is, however, the most crucial aspect of forward planning, aside from the actual lesson plans. If your students don't behave, you cannot teach. End of story. The crazy thing is, no matter how much you plan, when your students arrive in your classroom the first day, your classroom management never quite works out the way you think it's going to. In addition to this unfortunate fact, the plan will also not work if you, as the teacher, are not assertive enough to use it. On day one of institute, I was really not sure that I could see myself standing in front of the classroom and handing out consequences. Did I really have that in me?