Week 6 Post

Well another week is in the books. Another tough week due to sickness, substitute, and crazy children but again I'm looking back at the week and thinking "ok, I can still do this..." This week has been kind of eye opening to me. For the past couple weeks I've been observing my students as well as starting my Action Research without my students really knowing it. I've been taking notes and watching them to see how they react in an everyday classroom surrounding. However, lately I've been looking at those observations in a completely different light. This week my notes, observations, and AR journal have seen quite a new tone in my writing. Instead of "this student doesn't do this well" or "they seem to struggle with these qualities and charactersitics in the classroom", it's turned to "this is where I need to do this with a student" and "what can I do to possibly prevent this outbreak/situation in the future?" Instead of looking at the students and placing the responsibility solely on them I've now realized that this is partly, if not mostly, lying on me now. I know that what I do or don't do will not prevent or cause everything that these students do over the next couple of weeks but I do know that a lof of what they do will be influenced by me. My goal is to find a suitable classroom management style that really creates a great environment for learning for all students. I now know that relying on the students to make those changes alone will cause no success. It's my time to use those observations, notes, and ideas in my teaching to hopefully come up with a plausible answer.
I just hope I have a good enough idea of how my students will handle situations to work with their behavior to create that new environment.
Now's the time, the gloves are off. Time to get down and dirty!