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Edublog AwardsSep
12
Making those hard choices about retiring from teaching when stress starts to affect health.
Filed Under Dealing With Stress, SOS for Teachers, The way I see it | 3 Comments
Last Tuesday morning was the first day of class of the new semester, and I was more than a bit apprehensive. Would my new classes this semester be as challenging as the ones I had the previous three semesters? I certainly hoped not. I love teaching but there is a limit, and I felt as if I might have reached it. Last year was the first time my doctor told me he was concerned about my blood pressure. It was a bit high. Small wonder I told him.
The stress of my job was starting to affect my health. That was quite a blow. I loved teaching. I didn’t want to hear that teaching was starting to affect my health. I had always promised myself that if and when my job started to affect my health, I would make some hard choices. I didn’t want my job to make me ill. I didn’t want to be like some of my colleagues who went into retirement ill. I promised myself that I would retire before I reached my” best before date”. My experience in the classroom this last 1 1/2 had me wondering if I had approached that best before date.
I decided that if my classes in the new semester proved to be as difficult as the ones in the previous three semesters, I would retire and ride off into the sunset. I could hear Happy Trails playing in the background whenever I thought about it. Much to my delight, after the first week of classes this year, all my classes seem to have students without any major behaviour issues. You may think that one week is hardly long enough to determine the nature of my classes. Believe me, it isn’t. I haven’t had to call home or refer any students to the office yet because of inappropriate behaviour. Believe it or not, in the past I’ve had to call home after only three days because some students would just not settle in. They were so disruptive and so disrespectful. Thankfully I got wonderful support from all the parents I called, and we worked together as a team to encourage students to make better choices for better outcomes. Those troublesome, troubling or troubled students continued to be a challenge as they learned to choose to be respectful.
I’m actually looking forward to teaching content in my classes this semester instead of having to teach students how to respect one another and me and that if they want better outcomes then they have to make better choices. I too have to remember if I want better outcomes (continued good health), I may have to make better choices as well. I hope that choice isn’t retirement. I love teaching too much, but I love good health even more.
Sep
6
Yes, it’s still true- A positive attitude is key to maintaining a positive environment in the classroom
Filed Under Behaviour Management, Dealing With Stress, motivating students, positive climate, SOS for Teachers, Special Education, underachieving students | Leave a Comment
A positive attitude is key to maintaining a positive environment in classroom. I’ve been writing this blog for over four years and have shared with you strategies I have found useful. From time to time, I reread the posts I have written to remind myself what works to create a positive environment in the classroom. Yes, I forget sometimes and need to be reminded- that’s OK though because I’m not perfect.
Tomorrow is the first full day of classes, and I am getting a bit anxious. I’m obsessing wondering how best to prepare myself for tomorrow. I’ve got introductory activities planned and ready to go. Yes, all those handouts are ready but still……I’m wondering. After rereading the post below, I feel much better. I’m no longer wondering. I know from experience what I wrote back in 2008 about the power of a positive attitude is still valid today: a positive attitude creates a positive environment in my classrooms. There having just said that, I feel more confident about tomorrow and the up-coming year. I can relax (a bit) now.
I’ve reposted the original post in it’s entirety below. I hope you find it useful too.
A positive attitude is the key to maintaining a positive environment
I couldn’t agree more with Wade Boggs when he says
A positive attitude causes a chain reaction of positive thoughts, events and outcomes. It is a catalyst and it sparks extraordinary results.
In an earlier post, I wrote about how I set about establishing a positive classroom climate at the beginning of the semester and included the Slideshare presentation that I created to summarize the classroom agreements and what they meant. If you want a copy of the Slideshare presentation I’ve created , just email me I’d be delighted to send it to you.
Implementing the classroom agreements of mutual respect, appreciation/no put downs, attentive listening and the right to pass establishes a positive classroom climate where students can feel save and valued. Of course establishing a safe, positive climate and maintaining it day in and day out are two different things. What’s the key to maintaining that safe, positive classroom climate once it is established. Without a doubt, it’s a positive attitude.
If you have a positive attitude you’ll believe and act as if all students will be successful in your class. If you have a positive attitude there are no losers in your classroom despite what you’ve might have heard. Students will live up to your expectations. Think and act as if students are trouble, believe me they won’t disappoint you. I’ve learned that the hard way in my early years of teaching.
Let me give you an example of what I mean. I’ve found that often well meaning colleagues will give me a heads up about the troublemakers they’ve had in their classes. When they find out I’ll be teaching these kids, they tell me how bad the students were. Just for a nanosecond I think great. Just what I need- trouble making students. But then I quickly remind myself that attitude is not a useful attitude to have about these new students whom I don’t even know. I really try hard not to prejudge them. I figure even if these kids were troublesome in the past, it doesn’t mean they are now. Things change.
A few years back I had two students whom I’ll call Chris and Kyle, not their real names of course. They came to my class with a negative reputation and promptly started living up to it. After a few days I decided that I wasn’t going to engage these kids in their battle. It would be totally counter productive to use all my energy battling with these two fourteen year olds, and besides they’d probably win the battle. So I decided that I needed to sit down and talk with them to see what’s going on.
Chris and Kyle proudly told me about their reputation for being bad in class. I told them I didn’t believe they it. They couldn’t believe that I hadn’t heard about them, so they promptly gave me all kinds of proof to support their reputation.
I decided that I would show them I didn’t believe that they were trouble makers and would treat them with respect and worked extra hard to develop a positive relationship with them. Whenever they were disrespectful to me, I’d go to them quietly and ask them why they were being disrespectful to me when I wasn’t being disrespectful to them. I did the same thing when they weren’t listening attentively or showing appreciation. They’d actually apologize for their inappropriate behaviour. I figured being disrespectful had just become a habit with them, and they would learn to be respectful over time. It wasn’t easy, but these two students got to see that they didn’t need to live up to their reputation as trouble makers because I refused to see our relationship as student vs teacher, as them vs me. I really did respect them as human beings and really did expect them to respect me as a human being.
I thank the classroom agreements of mutual respect/no put downs , appreciation, attentive listening and the right to pass for establishing a positive framework that enabled mutual respect to develop. Chris and Kyle became my biggest boosters and did all kinds of positive PR for me and even came back to visit all the time to laugh about how immature they were in grade nine and how they were not like that now. They were proud of being respectful and not of being troublesome.
I truly believe that a teacher’s positive attitude does cause a chain reaction of positive thoughts, events and outcomes. A teacher’s positive attitude is a catalyst and it sparks extraordinary results. Just because I believe this doesn’t mean that I don’t forget this lesson too from time to time because I get distracted by the challenges of my own life, and I regretfully adopt a negative attitude towards a student. I know better, but I also know I’m human and not perfect. When this happens, I apologize to show my respect for them. I want them to see mutual respect in action in my classroom.
Sep
1
School starts next week so it’s time to dust off my Web 2.0 tool kit.
Filed Under "At-risk" students, Behaviour Management, Blogging in and out of the Classroom, Computers In The Classroom, Engaging Assignments and Activities for Students, Learning Strategies, motivating students, Reading, Special Education, underachieving students, Web 2.0 tools and technologies | 2 Comments
School starts next week, and it’s time to dust off my tool kit I use to engage my reluctant and struggling readers and writers. I need to remind myself that there are lots of reasons why my students are reluctant to read and write- learning disabilities, competition from other activities, lack of interest, school not valued. Some of my students have told me they don’t read and write outside of school. Of course they do. They just don’t realize it. I have to make them aware that they read and write outside of school everyday. I need to help my students make a paradigm shift and so they can realize when they text message, email, surf the net or are on YouTube they are reading and writing all the time. My students are very comfortable online. they spend hours and hours on line. I try to use that to my advantage when trying to engage my more struggling and reluctant students.
Good pedagogy states that I should start where our students are. Where are my students? The BBC reported recently that today the average kid spends 44.5 hours a week on-line. Imagine. I can hardly believe that, but when I asked my students whether they thought the statistic was accurate they seemed to think it was pretty accurate.
given that my students practically live online, I decided to build a Web 2.0 tool kit to use in class.
I’m going to share with you a slide show I used at a presentation last year to introduce the Web 2.0 tools I use and why I use them. I also give an example of how I used them. Hope you find the slide show useful.
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