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Mistakes from My First Year Back in the Classroom

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1. Being Too Friendly

Students in 4th grade come across as very grown up. Even though their height may deceive you (especially in the 2nd semester), 4th graders are oscillating back and fourth between tweens that are exerting their independence by rolling their eyes at you and babies that look up to you and cry on your shoulder. This was quite shocking for me to see the disparity in behaviors, but now that i've done it once this year I know the subtle balance of being a 10 year old. This year I am going to know the balance between joking around with students and when students are expected to exhibit a certain behavior. As a first year teacher, you will have to play around with this and learn the difference between building relationships and rapport with your class and letting them walk all over you or cause you to be inconsistent in your expectations because you're trying to be the nice guy. An example: "Do I have to come to the carpet?"


2. Not Having Behavior Systems in Place

When you walk into a fourth grade classroom, kids are no longer as sweet and they don't think it's cool to sing songs. However I learned last year that this doesn't mean they won't work towards a tangible or intangible reward of some sort. I learned that having systems and structures in place are essential to running an efficient classroom. This year, I will start by having a star card. Each student gets one and is in charge of coloring in the stars and keeping track of their card. I like to run it off on bright paper so they stand out. Students will color a star when I see them doing an expected behavior. When they fill their star card they may choose from a list of prizes predetermined beforehand. In the end, I learned that it is more rewarding to 4th graders to get the star than the actual prize. But having it to work towards give them an incentive to fill out their card. If you want to know more about class incentives and table incentives and how these are different form individual incentives i am happy to do a video on that. Leave a comment below letting me know because I have a lot i learned about that as well!


3. Butchering My Classroom Setup

My small group table was in a corner of the room. It needs to be in the center of the room equidistant from all other locations where students would be. Inevitably, last year the three students at the classroom library were chatting about things other than academics and/or using their ipads for something other than the assignment.


4. Not Knowing Correct Boundaries with Technology

My school, as all others in the US post-COVID, is a 1:1 campus. This means that students had access to their own iPad all the time. My plan for that this year will be to have students physically put their iPads in a bin/cart when they walk in and only get them when they need them. I don't know how well I will be able to stick to this as I've never tried it. I will also have to check with my partner teacher when we switch classes to see if she is ok with this idea. I think having kids put their ipads in a cart before switching classes and transferring the cart over will help transition time run a lot more smoothly as well. I was wanting to get a cart like this one, and students #1-5 ipdas go in the first slot, #6-10 go in the second, etc. for easy access.


5. Not Taking it too Personal

One of my favorite teacher volggers said it best when she said "Everyone is going to be who they are going to be." Parents WILL have negative things to say about you adn they'll have positive things to say. I think when parents have negative things to say, we pour so much of ourselves into this profession (whether or not you are burnt out) that it is so hard not to take it personally. In the end, people ultimately see you through their lens, and it is important not to loose sight of that. If you are doing what you think is best and it is coming from a good place, you will be at peace with yourself and that is who you have to live with for the rest of your life! Be open to constructive criticism and make changes where needed but "haters gonna hate. proverbs 9:8."

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