Classroom Management Blog
My first classroom management plan was nonsense. It had little association with how my class would (or could) actually be taught. In the powerpoint detailing my first discipline plan can be found a solicitation of student recommendations for authors; a one-day-then-no-tolerance policy for late work; a delusional attitude toward parent contact ("letters will be sent home before every nine weeks' exam"); and generally misguided bathroom, cleanliness, and entrance/exit policies.
The classroom rules themselves are inconsequential: Pete already mentioned that our principal passed down from Sinai a set of rules we all were to use, so the ones mentioned in my plan were still-born. Pete made another good point, that he came to rely heavily on his procedures. As did I, so they were in constant flux as I searched for a way to integrate (DOK 4) a well-ordered classroom with my innate listing toward laziness, irresponsibility, and poor filing-and-recording procedures.
My bathroom policy stands as a metaphor for my classroom management in general. In my small attempt to discredit the welfare-mentality, nothing in my class is free of charge (not tissue paper, not pens, not paper, not the bathroom, not nothin') but must be paid for with tickets. Prices inflate as the year progresses. During my first year, the easy part of my bathroom policy was the price--I could afford to be inflexible on that. The tough part was assigning a once-per-nine-weeks pass. At the beginning I gave everyone one, but did a poor job keeping track. Then I got angry at the idiots who seemingly had neither kidneys nor bladder, so my policy morphed into a "females only, and only for female problems" policy. That was unfair, and totally unable to be adequately regulated and verified. A "no-pass" policy briefly appeared, but exited just as quickly. By second semester's end, I was back to the one-pass for all rule, with all the problems from year's start as concurrent baggage.
My solution for the coming year: take the work out of my hands and put it in the students'. At the beginning of each semester, they will design an artistic bathroom pass, replete with all and sundry references to whatever they want. When they want to use it, I mark nothing down, I only tear up their pass and throw it away. The cut of the paper will have uncopiable irregularities to prevent forgery.
Same with all the rest. Students will take attendance and absences. Students will be responsible for taking a spare copy of the overhead notes and filing them in a missed-work binder. Ditto homework collection. Ditto room cleanliness. Most of my kids can't tie their shoes and would steal mine if given the chance, but a few are worth their weight in shoelaces. I gave this idea a dry-run in my homeroom halfway through the year, and I can say that since January I can count on one hand the number of times I had to take attendance or write my objectives on the board.
Granted, sometimes the attendance was wrong and the objectives indecipherable, but I wouldn't feel right in SHS with a perfect system. I'd be out of place, like heraldry on a mule.
One with a limp and with mange.
