I love it a lot.
But, sometimes...
Ugh.
Sometimes you really feel like the meanest teacher ever.
Like today, for example.
First of all, this week has already been nutso. We were out Monday and Tuesday, it's a full moon, and Halloween is on Saturday.
This feeling has been building for a few weeks now and today it kind of came to a head. My class was working in centers after an extensive review or rules and directions the day before. So, things were going great until it was time to clean up and switch. There were several groups that didn't clean up and as I walked around to monitor the process I noticed that many of them hadn't even done their center work.
Now, centers is not a time for play in my classroom. I spent a great deal of time yesterday discussing expectations and I was really hoping that today would be better.
I.
Was.
Wrong.
(This is where the mean part comes in.)
So, instead of finishing up our centers we all sat back down and went over our expectations AGAIN. This time we wrote them all on posters that I mentioned we would go over every single day until we got it right.
You're probably thinking I'm a psychopath for getting this pissed off about centers, but we've been doing rotations since about the second week of school and there was really no reason for the types of behavior I was seeing to be happening. You might also think that I put too much pressure on my second graders.
Well, here's the deal:
I don't. I don't put a lot of pressure on them, but I do have high expectations for them. This is something I mention to these students every single day. Every day in my classroom I let them know that my expectations are high because I know they can do it.
Were my second graders upset that we had to sit and talk about expectations and center rules instead of being set free to do things? Absolutely.
Did I still have at least 80% of my class participating in writing those expectations? You know it.
My kids know my expectations are high. They know that even though we had a four-day weekend that our rules did not change. They know that just because it's almost Halloween they still have to act like small, respectable humans.
Am I mean because my expectations are high? Sometimes.
Will I lower them? I won't.
There are so many things I want my kids to know, but independent learning is high on the list. I try to start that early in the year and stress the importance of taking their learning into their own hands. You might think that sounds crazy but I truly believe that my second graders can do that.
So, I felt mean at the end of the day. (Especially after THE EXACT SAME THING HAPPENED DURING MATH CENTERS, OMG.)
My expectations will remain high and I will continue to remind them every darn day. And if that makes me mean...well, okay. ;)
