Where has the honeymoon gone?

You know it has reached a sad state when you are sooo ready for the Labor Day holiday so you can catch up on the sleep you have missed going back to school. This year has been some big whammies for me. New grade, grad school and both going back on the same day. I am exhausted. So I am going to pack up this weekend, get ahead in my grad classes so that I can just take a breather and relax.

In other great news, my donated i<clickers arrived today. I had them set up and the kids were using them within just a few hours (I had to teach a little class in the middle). They are amazing! Everyone was so engaged! I am looking forward to seeing what all we can do with them since classroom response system and test scores are the topic of my action research paper. I hope everyone who has started has enjoyed the little bit of the honeymoon period at the beginning of the year because coming back on Tuesday, the real game is on!

P.S. Don't forget about voting for my Limeades for Learning project!

Help! Calling all Student Behavior Experts!

Ladies (and the occasional gentleman), I need some help. I have spent the last week in hell. There is really no better words for what this week has been.

I feel that a critical problem in my school district is the follow through of discipline. I have just transferred from 1st grade to 3rd grade this year after 3 years on the primary campus. I have grown used to a principal who does not believe in corporal punishment and we have gone through 4 different mash-ups of school wide discipline/management programs. I have watched as year after year the students become rougher and more violent. They are prone to outbursts and are physically harmful to themselves, teachers and other students.

There is one student in particular who I am "blessed" enough to have in my 3rd grade class this year. I have watched him year after year get away with being coddled. The school implemented a behavior improvement plan in the hopes to aspire him to be a better student and to give the teachers some guidelines to follow. So far within the first week of school, I have been screamed at, my personal belongings have been thrown across the classroom and I fear for myself as well as the other students around us. I have gone to the principal and assistant principal every day, sometimes more than once. I have already had one parent conference with another scheduled for Monday and I have already discussed classroom evacuation plans with my other students. The student was sent home from school on the third day of school due to being sent to the office 3 different times throughout the day.

My question is, When is it enough? Is there a point that you just give up on educating a child? How can you teach the other 20 students in my classroom when we are terrified and drowned out by the voice of one student? Is there a classroom management system that works? How enabled is this child by the parent and as a public school district what can we do to protect the other students and teachers from being harmed?

I wonder as educators, what would you recommend in the situation and at what point would you say that enough is enough. I have already asked to have this student removed from my room but none of my requests or suggested changes have been implemented.

What do you suggest? Do you have experience with defiant and belligerent children? What can we do to work on some problems?

Welcome...now Let's Lay Down Some Rules

So I found out today that I have to do things a little differently. At my campus we have campus wide rules so I had to change my thinking and my set up. So I created a Prezi to share on the first day of school that we can discuss. Let me know what you think.

Classroom Rules on Prezi

Classroom Management

Everyone has been talking about how they manage their classroom behaviors and I want to share a little about what I have done and what I plan to do.

Last year I used my "Sad Pad" for all documentation. I took a few seconds every time there was a problem and just jotted a quick note about what was happening, sometimes it was one a word or two, like talking, out of seat, etc. as well as the students name. Then I would add up every rule broken at the end of the six weeks and that would be their conduct grade. I think I really one had about 2 kids who every went below a 90 in conduct.

About the middle of the year, I felt they weren't seeing what was happening so I made a conduct clip chart like several people have posted about. Everyone had a clip with their name and could see where they were for the day. I did have more outbursts simply because the student had to move their own clip and many tears were shed. :)

This year I plan on doing a behavior log where the student is responsible for writing the offense and signing their name. I am moving to a much stricter campus this year and feel that this would work with older children. I have attached my document and plan to put these in a binder, I will still count each offense as 1 lost conduct point but feel that maybe it will have more impact if the student has to write it out themselves. I know this won't work for all of my students (I am getting "the teacher abuser".) but for many of my lesser behavior problems, I hope this will do the trick.