Responsibility and finding balance.

Well, it certainly was a fun and crazy week in kindergarten!

Most of the week was like being on a cruise...I gradually assumed more and more responsibility (taking over social studies, most of the reading groups, managing transitions between activities, experiencing a fire drill) and somehow, some way, by some miracle, it felt easy.

I spent a good deal of time observing my CT, as well. While she describes herself as a "fly by the seat of her pants" type of teacher (her plans are about one sentence long for each 30 minute activity), it is astounding how easy she makes it look. Not only that, she knows when to be swift with punishments and knows when to praise kids for their successes. Even when I was praised for the good things I did - management wise - this week, and even though I was told I made it look easy as well, I cannot describe the storm of thoughts whirling around in my head as I tried to juggle sticking to my plan, managing the class, keeping track of time...It's amazing to me that teachers can (mostly) keep it together for as long as they do!

I implemented a new classroom management technique this week, which was using a "mystery person" as a rewards system for the students. My CT has tried this before and likes it, but she hadn't used it this year. I cannot believe how well the kids responded to it - all day they asked me if I would tell who the mystery person was, and on the day I chose not to have a mystery person, it was practically chaos. I used it 3 of the 5 days last week, and the first two days were a huge success. The third day, however...

This brings me to the "finding balance" part of my title. I taught my social studies unit this week and was met with great feedback from my teacher. She even commented that "It seems like you've done this before..." which I thought was the BEST compliment I could have gotten from such an awesome, seasoned teacher. The first three days were, like I said, like being on a cruise. Management was easy. It came naturally. The kids loved the activities I chose and they behaved so well I barely had to manage at all.

So, the fourth day. The culminating day of the unit. I planned a SMART Board activity (which I spent a little too long creating), and I used the puppets I introduced on day one to help me with managing. The SMART activity and the puppets worked like magic. The kids were involved, engaged, demonstrating all of the things they learned that week...And then, we moved on to the main activity I'd planned: original "plays," performed by each table group, of how they would solve an imaginary scenario I provided each table.

While they were working, it was great. I made my expectations clear with a signal ("When you and your group have decided on what you would do to solve the problem, turn your voices off to zero and look at me.") They were like perfect angels waiting for the rest of the groups to finish. And then, we went to the carpet to perform our brief plays. All hell broke loose! I thought I was doing an okay job managing as things went haywire - I stopped several times and explained that if we were in a real theater with real adult actors, we would be asked to leave for being so disrespectful. I pointed to the behavior sign and used the school's PBIS language just like I had observed my CT doing time and time again. I ended up keeping the kids in for 5 minutes past recess just so every group could finish - the lesson went way over time because I had to spend so much time stopping and starting so each group could perform their skit.

At the end of the lesson, I felt defeated. I felt that while each group got to perform - albeit briefly - my talking over the other students talking over them was just a huge distraction. No group got their "time to shine." I felt guilty about that - and I didn't know what I would have done differently. I conferenced with my CT after the lesson, and she said she thought about stepping in but didn't, because she knows that I wouldn't have learned as much if I hadn't had that experience. I was really grateful for that, at the end of the day. She knows exactly what kind of experiences I need to immerse myself in to learn the most. And while all week was smooth sailing, I learned the most during that 30 minute lesson than I did the entire week before it.

Her suggestion was basically this: it's okay to be mean sometimes. She said she would have sent every student who was being disruptive back to their seat and put their head down until they were ready to participate. She pointed out that I'm always so positive with the kids, if I showed some of my "claws," they would have known I meant business. And I've observed her doing things like this so often I'm surprised I didn't think about doing it. I think the young, hopeful, overly-optimistic and unrealistic teacher in me just wanted my positivity to work during that lesson.

So, that leads me to my mystery person. I had a talk with the kids at the end of the day about how the mystery person wasn't doing their job during that lesson and that we wouldn't get the reward because nobody was showing me the right way to act during class. I explained that it hurt my feelings because I worked so hard on the lesson and that it hurt every group's feelings when they couldn't perform their plays the way they'd planned. Everyone seemed to understand and I think that the "punishment" of not getting a reward was my small way of correcting my lack of hardness during the lesson.

Wow, I wrote a lot about that! Which is good, though, because it's important for me to be able to look back on the things that went wrong and be able to keep them in my mind as I teach. This week, I'll be attempting another "play" with the class - we're going to read multiple versions of a fairy tale and work on our retelling skills by creating a puppet play in our leveled reading groups. Time will tell how well this goes!