The Metaphorical Straw

As the days have passed, I've been noticing something of a trend within my classes.  Namely, my most frustrating classes seem to be solely kindergarten.  Now I love those little guys, but there are classroom management issues that make me want to tear my hair out.  Or cry, which was something I expounded upon in a post on my livejournal here.  Essentially, there are certain classes that get so out of hand that I end up shouting.  They just ignore me, or they forget about it by the next time they come to class, and all I end up with is a sore throat, a headache, and the urge to cry (or scream, depending upon the day).  This is unacceptable to me.

I know that as a new teacher I'm going to run into problems like this.  Not only are these kiddies very new to school in general (I've been told that many didn't even go to Pre-K), but they almost certainly have not been sequestered with twenty other excitable children on a too small stage doing structured art lessons.  That is not to say that all my classes are bad.  Most of them go quite well, in truth.  But the ones that don't...those are the ones that really get me.

When I was in school, my professors touched upon the Love & Logic style of teaching.  We were even required to get the book for class.  But, it was never something that I truly understood.  We didn't read much more than a few passages, and talking about it in class proved a bit too abstract to digest.  It's something that I need to attempt to put into practice to really get the gist of.  Well I kept that book, and I've been reading it more and more voraciously as the days pass.  You see, I don't want to be the teacher who yells all the time and who must resort to threats and bribery to gain a shakey control over her students.  I want to be the teacher whose students CHOOSE to behave, because it's my classroom and because they are making good choices (an oft used phrase in our school district's classrooms).

Having sworn to immediately attempt to put into practice Love & Logic, I went so far as to highlight important parts of my book and even take notes, as though I were back in college!  But it helped.  Today was the day I only have 3 classes, so it seemed easy to start off with.  And it is also the day that I have the kindergarten class I consider the second most unruly.  Here's the rundown:

At the elementary (1-4) I had only a 1st grade class.  They are currently doing a Kandinsky based project meant to introduce them primarily to lines.  It was one of the better behaved classes.  I began conciously trying to use Love & Logic phrases (or Thinking Words, as the book calls them) when speaking with my students.  I tried to give both the class and individual students choices several times during the class (for example: "You may choose to use a minimum of three lines up to a maximum of all the lines we talked about.  It's up to you.").  I also tried to use the strategy detailed in the book for garnering my class's attention.  Using a phrase like, "When everyone is sitting quietly, I will be glad to tell you what we're doing today."  Seemed to work pretty well.

After this, I left for the Learning Center to teach my two Kindergarten classes of the day.  The kids are doing sponge monoprints this week, and focusing on basic shapes.  So, painting. (And let's keep in mind that I do not yet have any drying racks--unless you count spare bookshelf space.)  Right off the bat, I made a few mistakes in terms of procedures.  For one, I could not find the rags I intended to use in class for clean up and had forgotten to bring the ones in my classroom at the other school.  This means that clean up involved a stop at the bathrooms to wash hands.  Having never needed to do this before, I had only the vaguest of ideas on procedure, gained by idle observation of classroom teachers as I went to pick up my class of the day.  The first class, having been mostly calm, was relatively okay.  But my last class....well.  Back to that in a moment.

As I said, the first class was pretty well behaved.  I began by using the same strategies that I did for first grade.  I had some gratifying successes as well.  A couple of boys were pushing each other and horsing around in line on the way to class.  I stopped the line and spoke to them calmly.  I said, "Boys, we're supposed to be making our quiet signs in the hallway.  Do you think you will settle down better here or at the end of the line?"  Of course, no 5 year old wants to go to the end of the line!  They both felt they could calm down where they were--and they did.  The class as a whole went well.  They were all highly excited to paint (it seems like all these kids want to know is if they will be able to paint), and they responded very nicely to my strategy to get them quiet.  I didn't have to raise my voice unneccarily at all. Then there was the mild chaos of clean up, as mentioned above.

The second class started out just as well.  I had a few more talkers in this one and a couple who liked to get up and wander (and mess with other kids' art, sadly), but everything went rather smoothly until clean up time.  While nowhere near the level of chaos of yesterday's class, it was still rather bad.  I still did not need to really raise my voice (though I will admit to curbing the urge to yell once or twice), and we managed to get lined up and to the bathrooms alright.  This is where it was just awful.  They were loud and crazy, and their teacher came to help me out because she could hear them down the hall.  Talk about embarrassing. And yet, not, because I was frankly kind of relieved!

I was just worn out after that, and again, tense and headachey.  But something about trying with the Love & Logic helped me to be less stressed and upset than I would have been otherwise.  Tomorrow will go more smoothly, I think.  For one thing, I'll have my washrags!