Quote:
Originally posted by AngelPhiSig
Hey everyone, I finally got a teaching job! Im teaching at a charter school in the inner city here... its tough!
My students have been through many teachers this year, and have been placed in other rooms when there was no teacher - meaning other grade levels... Im the person who has stayed the longest since the origional teacher. There was someone who stayed one day.
I am still concidered a sub, they want to be sure that I stay.
I have been in the room for three weeks. I have no voice today because I have been screaming.
Many of my kids have been suspended since I have been there... they like to just walk around, throw pencils and swear. OH by the way, they're in SECOND grade.
Any ideas on good behavior management plans? Not theory, I need things that have been tried and WORK for inner city/trouble children. Ive been told by other teachers to bribe/use a raffle... just to start to control the kids...
other ideas?
Michelle, I just remembered that you work in NYC (when I was dreading going to work) how are your kids?
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NYC teacher in the hooooouuussssssssseee!
I have the 4yr olds so praise and time outs work. Here's some things I've learned from co-workers and being a prep teacher my first year.
Right now a co-worker is using a bribe type of system with one of her autistic kinder. students. If Anthony sits on the rug for 10 minutes, he gets to play with the counting bears for 10 minutes. 10 minutes of reading gets 10 minutes in the block center and so on with other tasks she wants him to do but he needs motivation to do. That's probably too much 'baby' stuff for 2nd grade tho.
Another co-worker uses the "happy note" system. She made a small (the larger side of a ceral box) chart and divided it into 5 sections, each a different color. From top to bottom red, orange, yellow, green, blue. Each color repsents an adjective to describe behavior. Red is "uh-oh" Orange "watch out" yellow "good" green "excellent" & blue is "super star". Each child has a clothes pin with his/her name on it and begins the day on yellow. Depending on the child's behavior, THEY move their clip up & down during the day. The teacher tells them when but bc they move it there is a bit more ownership of their behavior. If you end the day on "Super Star" you get a "happy note" a slip of paper that says " 'Allison' was a Super Star today! 12/21/05. Signed Miss Jones". Those kids LOVE to get a happy note and parents have come to expect this daily behavior report.
I have used this system for a 3/4 grade bilingual special education class I saw 3 times a week. They needed a whole group system & I needed it to be something I could carry with me to their class. I put a kidney bean into a plastic container each time they were quiet as a came into the classroom, followed directions etc. I shook the container too so they could hear how many beans they had. I told them that when they got to 20 beans they would get a new pencil from me (the mice must eat them at our school kids always lose pencils!). You could also use this as a mngmt system for the different tables in your classroom. Each table had a name/color/ some way to ID itself, write that on the container and add beans during the day as the tables behave the right way. Grey sand with a bunch of glitter in it can be used as 'bling' instead of the beans. I like being able to hear the beans clang around in the container. The "bling" tho is quite popular up here in the land of 50cent songs..
Praise works, sadly bc I find most of our kids don't get enough of it at home.
Clearly you & the kids are not in a great situation bc they have had a few teachers already this year who have not stuck it out with them. Any kid is going to see this and wonder "why did she leave?" and get madder as time goes on. All this change is not good for them. When you pick a system to use just be consistent & treat it like the first day of school all over again. They are use to chaos and will take some time to adjust.
And finally...congrats to you for getting a job. And for being the kind of person who wants to work in the inner city. It's the hardest best job you'll ever have!