I just realized (at 5:50 in the morning, what a dork) that I have been dwelling on how Sweat the Details works in my classroom for a while now. I have nice live plants, I have a place for everything, I try to keep everything clean, but instead of reading this as a cue to behave in an orderly way a number of my students seem to be cued for destruction. I find sunflower seed shells spit in all my plants, sinks, and just everywhere really. Gum is smeared across the radiator. Notes with disgusting pictures are hidden on the shelves, or the drawings are just right on the tables. When I come back from a day with a sub (as I will today) books are missing, plant's leaves have been cut with scissors, and there are huge additions to the sunflower collection.
I don't know if I should interpret all of this as a signal that I am doing something wrong (they can tell I like my room to be nice and want to get back at me for something?) or if this is just because with over a hundred teenagers moving through my room a day there is bound to be someone that will do these things. What do you think? I just don't know.
Okay.......so as a kid who once took a tiny fleck of paint chipping off the door jam and managed to create a very large display of the beautiful pink paint underneath all while mindlessly talking on the phone to my BFF, I learned sometimes we all do things without thinking. Dad was definitely not happy with my art!
ReplyDeleteI think our students are the same. Sure, they know how we prefer things to be in our classrooms, but they are human and just don't think too hard about it all.......sometimes when they are focusing diligently on a task or just sitting as attention is waning because the sun is out.
I think it's why I do struggle a bit with strategies like 100%. (I don't have my Teach Like a Champion book right in front of me at this moment so my strategy naming may be off.) Students are human like the rest of us. Life happens. I can choose to make myself frustrated by a million things or just learn to have students help in the maintainance of those few nonnegotiables priorities that are needed to advance learning or keep me sane.
I agree with Kerri in that sometimes students don't even realize what they are doing when they are doing it. Often times when I feel that students are not taking care of my things, I just try and reteach what it should look like, without making it a negative experience.
ReplyDeleteFor example, I have a book corner in my room filled with chapter books that students can choose and read freely from. Often times I will look over and find books just thrown on the book shelf and not put away properly, even sometimes just thrown on the floor. When I notice things starting to get "messy" over in the corner, I just take a few minutes and go over what looks wrong with the picture. Students are always eager to point out that they weren't being very respectful with materials and jump in to "fix" it to what it should look like. This takes just a few minutes and I don't use it as a time to gripe at them about what they were doing wrong, it's about reteaching the behavior you want from them.