Substitute Teachers

Due to my new duties as department chair and the changes happening in my district going into program improvement status, I’ve been called out of my classroom quite a bit this semester. By the end of the first semester, I’ll be out a total of three weeks. As I began to take some of the days out of the classroom, I came back to the typical sub notes of this class was good and this class was bad. My honors class is always wonderful, and the other three classes are always some combination of tolerable to terrible. I decided I needed to give them some sort of goal to work toward since I was going to be gone so much. Somewhere in the Blogosphere I picked up the idea of having my substitute give each class a ranking of 1-10. This has been a great motivator for my students, and a good way for me to keep track of their behavior. The students like to know what score they get, and I really think they are motivated to do well. Students know I expect nothing less than a 5, and the higher the number, the better my response will be upon my return. What do you do when you’re out that helps with student behavior? Also, what do others leave for lesson plans? I’ve always left worksheets that review the key standards or our current chapter, but that’s going to get old. I don’t really have any other ideas. Do you?

Prizes

What do you use for prizes in your classroom? In my new ticket drawing, my students have two choices. The first choice is one food item. I purchased snack sized bags of their favorite chips, you know the weird cheetos and doritos, as well as some 100 calorie kudos granola bars in the candy flavors. Their other choice is two items from a school supply bin. In there is a variety of items from spiral notebooks to pens, pencils, and erasers. That box also has a smattering of random silly little toys I purchased from Oriental Trading Company. With all of these choices, it appears as though there is something for everyone as my students still seem to be quite motivated by the tickets and have looked forward to the drawing for two weeks now.

Sharing

Does your department share resources with one another? I’ve only worked at one school and with the same 5 ladies for three years. We’ve always shared most, if not all, of what we’ve individually created. The things we didn’t “share” weren’t because we didn’t want to, but because there isn’t time to share every single thing. If anyone in my department ever ask me for something, I’m happy to give it to them, and I expect the same from any of them.

However, in the past few weeks I’ve spoken with people from other schools who don’t share. Everyone creates each and every thing on their own. For the most part, I create all of my own stuff because I’m anal, but I like sharing, and I like knowing that if I needed something, it would be shared with me. Is my campus the anomaly?

Back to the Honeymoon?

After the rough week last week, I looked at what I was doing to motivate my kids. My entire class was running off of intrinsic motivation. For the most part, I’ve never used much extrinsic motivation, but where I teach, some kids just really need something tangible to motivate them. A friend suggested I go back to tickets and a drawing every week. I’ve done this before, so I decided to give it a try. What a difference! My students worked super hard this week for me, and their quiz scores were pretty decent. I suppose if extrinsic motivators get them to learn AND help with good behavior, I’m all in. They even got a better score from the sub this week! I’ll keep you updated to see how things progress.

Honeymoon is Over

I haven’t posted in forever, but here’s the quick update…the honeymoon is over with the kiddos. It is harder to show Christs’ love all the time, but I’m trying. I’ve spent time calling parents and scheduling parent conferences. Hopefully they help with the management and discipline. I’m good at a lot of things at work, but management and discipline is not my strongest point.