Yeah, that's right...I am still blogging

Quote #2: "Ms. Broome, you are going to be the death of me." - DG This quote came as a result of the fact that I kept persisting that a student of mine stay focused and be "on the ball" for the ENTIRE class period. I don't think it is unreasonable or even unexpected that a teacher should insist that a student give their "all" during class. Students should come in prepared to learn and strive to be better. I am not asking for excellence, but I asking for effort. And it is that "demand" for effort that made my student say that I would be the death of him. Which begs the questions: what are they doing in their other classes that makes my expectations so unreasonable?

Now, I don't want to discount the work of the other teachers in my building, but it is comments like these that make me believe that these IPS students are not being held to high enough standards/expectations. It is true what TFA had been telling us from the beginning...1)if you set the expectations high, students will rise to them and 2)the main reason there are behavior issues is because a student doesn't understand something, not because they are trying to be a bad kid. It is so difficult for me to hear other teachers discounting a student or expecting them to fail because "they just are that way". I think it is attitudes like this that the students bank on and, in their minds, justify their behavior. My students have told me that they are "just IPS kids" as a way to rationalize their behavior and make it seem like I am pushing them too hard, however I think that BECAUSE they are IPS kids they need to be pushed harder than most. They need to see what they are capable of and that their hard work will pay off and it does matter that they try to do well in school.

My room is decorated with huge amounts of color and I have a relatively complex rewards/consequences system for my students, plus I track their grades on my wall. It is WAY too much work, however what I have come to realize the point is behind it all is to give these kids some sort of immediate reward/recognition that their hard work and effort is important and will be rewarded. I think these students are so used to feeling like they cannot succeed no matter what that they need to know that when they do something right they are being recognized for that. If you have spent your entire education career being recognized only when you have done something wrong then you are going to act out in order to get attention. It takes a lot of work to break that habit and to show students that they will get more attention for doing the right thing or putting in the effort to get a good grade. And this is what I am working on right now; putting more effort into giving them small victories so that they can work their way up to major ones.

And to bring it back to the original quote, because I know I have gone on a little bit of a tangent, I am committed to making sure these kids are continually told when they are being the most amazing versions of themselves and not letting up on them when they are not living up to their capabilities. (The catch here is that neither they nor I know their capabilities, so I am just going to keep pushing and pushing them.) And if this means that I am "going to be the death" of some of them, well then maybe that part of them that uses IPS, their background, or the people they hang out with as excuses needed to "die".