Hello everyone, I’m completing my B. of Ed. (Primary) degree this year, and I’m very interested in any suggestions you may have on asserting myself with an unfamiliar class, and especially teaching strategies for ‘challenging’ students! I had a bit of a rough old time at a school last year, understood by the faculty to have an above-average proliferation of behavioural ‘problems’. I felt that I was more of a distraction against familiar routine than another practising teacher. I would also be interested in strategies anyone may know of or use in recognising specific learning difficulties based on behaviour, as the regular classroom teacher knew of no formally diagnosed learning difficulties within his class. Thanks - any help would be greatly appreciated!
: You don’t say what age you were teaching but certainly adolscents “test” the situation. If you’re looking for a way to get adolscents not to test the boundary of their lives, good luck. That’s their nature and when one fights against the nature of something, one creates a battle that will eventually be lost.Your choice of the words” assert yourself” is interesting and perhaps telling. It’s also interesting that you feel, as a college student, that you should be another practicing teacher. You were a student teacher? Hazing student teachers is a time-honored tradition in schools. YOu were paying your dues, that’s all. It’s not a time to feel like a practicing teacher but that’s not what you were.Will you be reentering the classroom this time as a bonofide member of the faculty? If not, your mentoring teacher should remain in the room and do what they’re supposed to do… mentor you. If you will be a hired practicing teacher, you’ll find a different story in the classroom.As to what any teacher would find in any classroom these days, that’s a different story. We all find kids who have grown up in a world of visual and auditory stimulation. They have been able to access television, film, music all of the time. Depending on where you teach, they’ve been on-line for years.Kids today are bored in school. It’s boring. The four walls of a classroom can’t offer the stimulation that they’re used to. Don’t teach Africa. They can turn on the Animal Planet channel and watch a better show than you put on in your classroom any day. Don’t teach history. The History Channel does an excellent job with that. If you teach the life of the Maori, well, the Maori have their own website and it offers better information about the Maori than any non-Maori might have.What do any of us have to offer these kids today? Only our humanity. Let these kids see you as a person. Don’t hide behind “asserting yourself.” Work very hard to teach things of interest and useful relevance or…what’s the point? If you’re ever teaching something and find yourself saying, “You’ll need this one day” think hard about whether you should be teaching it at all.You need to be interesting, not assertive. You need to be caring of them and their immediate well-being. You need to see them as people who need to be interacted with not who need to be managed.As to recognizing specific learning disabilities based on behavior, it’s hard to give a “nutshell” version of diagnosing oppositional conduct disorder, attention deficit disorder, nlvd, etc. etc. If you “diagnosed” these issues or others through your observation, what would you do then?You’d still have them in your classroom and then would still need your help,maybe even more than the others. Assume they all need your help and spare yourself pointless diagnoses.I’ve taught for just over twenty years in many schools and many age levels. If you’d like help planning engaging curriculum and finding your way to classroom practices that work with kids, I’d be happy to.Otherwise, consider reading anything by Mel Levine who writes on learning issues or Alfie Kohn who writes on classroom issues.Good luck.Hello everyone, I’m completing my B. of Ed. (Primary) degree this
: year, and I’m very interested in any suggestions you may have on
: asserting myself with an unfamiliar class, and especially teaching
: strategies for ‘challenging’ students! I had a bit of a rough old
: time at a school last year, understood by the faculty to have an
: above-average proliferation of behavioural ‘problems’. I felt that
: I was more of a distraction against familiar routine than another
: practising teacher. I would also be interested in strategies
: anyone may know of or use in recognising specific learning
: difficulties based on behaviour, as the regular classroom teacher
: knew of no formally diagnosed learning difficulties within his
: class. Thanks - any help would be greatly appreciated!