Teaching is tough

Teaching is tough. I spent more than a few hours on Saturday and Sunday preparing lesson plans. I am attending a mandatory Peace Corps training next week, so I must prepare work for the learners during my absence. We don’t have substitute teachers. Someone will check on them and give them assignments, but no one will be teaching them. Ugh, I don’t know how much learning will happen.

I was not happy with my classroom management so last week I implemented some changes. The classes are not out of control but they are noisier and more chaotic than I want. At the suggestion of others, I changed to assigned seating. Now I have a seating chart inside one of those sheet protectors and I can write on the sheet protector with a dry erase marker. If a learner is talking or misbehaving, I don’t disrupt the class, I just walk to the learner, show them their name on the seating chart and mark their behavior. If they get 2 strikes (not 3) in a 7day cycle then they get detention. So far no one has gotten 2 strikes, but the change is still new.

As I am feeling better about classroom management, the learners just don’t seem to understand much of what I am teaching. They say they do but when I ask for answers or for someone to demonstrate an answer, they don’t understand.  Another benefit of the seating chart is that I can use my it to cold call learners, especially the disruptive ones, if no one volunteers. None of this is necessarily surprising but teaching is tough.

On another note, one of the male learners said to me “you call us nigger in America, don’t you?” It was a question, not necessarily aggressive, but kind of passive, aggressive. It felt like a challenge. I said it was very disrespectful to use that word. It is not part of my vocabulary and I never say it. He said others do. I said some do but most don’t. My friends and family do not and then I asked another math question. The next day he came to me and apologized. He said he was being disrespectful and trying to upset me. I admire the care and character he showed in apologizing to me.

“No brainer” has entered the vocabulary of my learners, along with ‘oopsie’ (shout out to Susie P for making that part of my vocabulary). I had them skip a section because I knew they understood it already. When they asked why we were skipping it, I said it’s a no-brainer for this class. They asked if it meant ‘easy’ and I said yes. They got a kick out of that.

I took a short video of my classroom but I can’t seem to include it. I will include photos another day.