As the year progressing I often find myself struggling with consistency. I especially notice it around the time that grades are due because we need to get through so much testing. I try to make it a point to by honest and tell the students that I made a mistake and I would appreciate it if they help me with my goal as a teacher to only answer raised hands. So far it is going pretty well, but I still slip up sometimes and answer a question of someone who walked up to me or didn't raise their hand. We discussed as a class why I only accept raised hands: only one of me, hard to teach if there is a crowd around me, equal amount of turns to share ideas, etc.
Do you have any good tricks to stay consistent?
My biggest struggle with consistency is in setting firm limits about responsibility and grading. I told my students I would not provide extra recorder testing opportunities for students who forgot their recorders on the previously-set testing days, but now that we've reached the end of the quarter, I have had a hard time sticking by that limit now that there are students who have not earned even a "Progressing" grade for recorder.
ReplyDeleteThis morning, I finally just said to a young man, "I am struggling right now. I told you at the very beginning that I would not provide extra chances for people who came unprepared, but now I'm having a hard time standing by my word. What do you think?" His answer was, "I'm not allowed to have another day. I guess I was unprepared." But that "NP" was awfully hard to enter this afternoon...
With my social skills groups that meet 3x a week, we review behavior expectations on the first group of the week; My goal of setting this routine was to stay consistant with my expecations. By now, we play games with this routine (i.e., who has the expectations memorized, who can match the numbers to which expectation, who can list a time this week when they meet one of the expectations...etc.).
ReplyDelete