Confessions of a Student Teacher

Confession time. I have realized as I round out my third week of pre-student teaching that I have so much to learn: My students have questions for me that I don't have answers to; problems arise in my classroom that I have a hard time finding solutions to; I have questions for my mentor teacher that don't always have an easy answer; and sometimes, I really do have to give a student detention, even if I feel badly about it.

These are all things I am working out as I learn and teach. Students ask me questions that continually remind me that I do not know everything. In fact, at times I feel that I barely know anything. I decided this week that instead of trying to come up with an answer, that I would be honest and transparent with my students. I told them that I didn't know, or that I wasn't sure--but that I would try to find out and that they should try to find out as well. This worked marvelously! I am constantly being reminded that middle schoolers love honesty! They totally accept that I don't have all the answers--and it takes a lot of stress off of me as well.

Put fifteen to twenty middle schoolers in a room together: mixed genders, races, and identities. What do you get? In my classroom, the answer tends to lean towards chaos. One thing I have noticed about my seventh graders: they are never still. They are leaning back in their chairs, drumming on their legs, or tapping their pencils. Oh, the tapping of the pencils. The sound of twenty pencils tapping to twenty different rhythms is enough to drive anyone mad. If I had a nickel for every time I ask a student to stop tapping...

This became a problem in the room. I was being driven crazy, my mentor teacher was being driven crazy, and I'm sure at least a few of the students were close as well. A fellow student teacher suggested giving the students pipe cleaners to tap instead of their pencils. I wasn't sure if it would take. I prefaced giving out the pipe cleaners with, “Tap with this instead of your pencil. Be sure it doesn’t become a distraction.”

IT WORKED!

….For about five seconds. Within a few minutes of receiving a pipe cleaner, my more “rambunctious” students were twisting them, throwing them in the air, or throwing them across the room. Apparently my definition of a “distraction” is completely different than a seventh grader’s. Let me give a sample of the dialogue after a few were twisted and thrown:

Conversation with Student A:

“Hey, please don’t twist up the pipe cleaners; I would like to reuse them.”-Miss Bryan.

“You have to reuse these?”-Student A.

“Yeah. What do you think I am—made of money?”-Miss Bryan. (This garnered a giggle from the student and resulted in a once-again straight pipe cleaner.)

That conversation went pretty well. I tried to apply understandable reasoning to my request. However, once a pipe cleaner was thrown across the room, I started taking them away and giving warnings to students. I realize now that the best thing I could have done is the one thing I neglected to do: set up a classroom protocol for the pipe cleaners. I should have started with something like this:

“I’ve noticed that the pencil-tapping has gotten excessive in our classroom and can be quite distracting. If you feel the need to tap your pencil, I will give you a pipe cleaner to tap with. Please keep the pipe cleaners the way I give them to you: do not bend, twist, or cut them. If you throw them at someone or across the room, you will not be allowed to have one anymore and you’ll get an Off Task Card.”

My plan is to try this again tomorrow, with the aforementioned classroom procedure. I will post an update on how it goes!