ELLEN
BERG
Diary #5
The Wicked Witch of Turner Middle School
I am so completely jealous of my seventh grade counterparts. There they are, day after day, reaping the benefits of our hard work to mold our students into self-directed learners. With every compliment I receive about my former students and with every well-managed room I pass, I grit my teeth and wish for a pass, not to the bathroom, but to the future a few months down the road.
Sigh. Friday evening I came home feeling beat down, discouraged, and lower than the occasional dead rodent my cat brings me. Over a spicy beef tenderloin and glass of wine Friday night at a new restaurant in town, I poured my soul and sorrows out to my husband. I told him I had lost my touch, that this group was fabulous skill-wise but so much more difficult behaviorally, and that I needed to either move into a different position in education or we needed to speed up our plans to move to San Diego. I wove long, intricate fantasies about mythical classrooms where children immediately respond to the procedures and expectations of the classrooms, where children never act like children and every day runs smoothly and without conflict. "Are you done?" my husband asked at the end of my trip to fantasyland. "I think so," I said. "May I just point out that as long as I have known you, you are always this way at the beginning of the year? You are certain this group is more difficult, that it will take you forever to get them together, and that your head will be full of gray hairs by June. This is no different from last year, and you loved your kids last year." Okay, so that is true, not that I could recognize it in the midst of the forest of my third block class that NEVER shuts up or the child who throws screaming tantrums when he doesn't get his way or even the question asked a hundred times every day, "Oh, is that the homework on the whiteboard?" even though I have labeled it "Homework" and placed it in the same place every day. Pain you forget I think the first month or so of school is much like childbirth. My mother always told me that having a child is the type of pain you forget, which must be true or any woman in her right mind would not have a second child. It seems that the successes, positives, and relationships of last year have clouded the memory of the early battles from the beginning of previous school year. On the one hand, it comforts me to know that this is all normal, that I am not doomed to spending my year pulling my hair out. On the other hand, I am confused as to why all my hard work and planning in terms of teaching and practicing procedures is not working as swiftly as Harry Wong proposed. If anything, I am more prepared this year. I have worked diligently to make my expectations clear, and still I am having trouble. To be honest, I am really only having trouble with one class and a few isolated students from other classes. My third block class is right after lunch, and the students are chattier. They talk as they come into the room, they talk through mini-lessons, and they fairly holler as they do group work. There have been some isolated days when they are fully cooperative, and I find that I like them tremendously as people. We have practiced the procedures repeatedly, I have talked with them and reviewed my expectations, and still they look at me as if I have four heads when I reprimand them for talking out. Just thinking about it is making the muscles in my back tighten up. What's unspoken is speaking loudest In truth I know this will pass, and it is just a matter of time before I hit upon something that will improve the situation. After drowning myself in calories Friday night, I spent some time thinking about my third block class. I have become more and more punitive in my dealings with them. I think they know that I hate to see them coming, that I am already anticipating problems before they ever reach my classroom. I think my unspoken expectations are speaking more loudly than my explicit written and verbal expectations. I am reacting and overreacting in my efforts to control this group. I am doing a lot of things I know are ineffective, but in the hectic first weeks as I struggle to get back on schedule, I have forgotten those important lessons. However, I am much quicker to see the problems now than in the past. Improvement. On Monday I am going to sit down with third block and apologize to them for my behavior, and I am also going to tell them that I do not like the behaviors they have chosen either. Together we will identify what is keeping them from learning and me from helping them learn, and in small groups we will come up with solutions to our identified problems. I do not want to feel as if I am the Wicked Witch of Turner Middle any more, and the only way I see that changing is if I enlist the assistance of the students involved. In the past that has served me well, and I think it provides a good model for my students. They need to know I make mistakes, and I ask for help when I need it too.
