After reading the other blog posts, I felt like I could relate to a lot of what Julie and Meggie were saying. I enjoy working with all students, but it is more fun to work with students who want to learn and who like to participate and ask questions. It is nice to work with these students because you don't have to remind them to be on task and they are excited about learning. Students who are negative about learning, off task, and don't participate in class are the most challenging. The really challenging students are the students who have to be reminded 3-4 times to get to work and then they still don't want to do anything. I have a student in math right now that is really challenging. It is also very rewarding to work with students who may generally not participate, but suddenly get excited about one topic or the other and suddenly they are a totally different student. The hardest part is making all lessons interesting and appealing to all students to elicit excitement and participation.
I have been challenged by students a lot this past week as I have taken over teaching full time and students have been a lot more talkative and off task. By the end of the week, things had started to improve, I will see how this short week goes. I am looking forward to a break myself!
You hit the bullseye when you pointed out that designing engaging lessons is one of the best ways to keep kids on track, engaged, and participatory. Not easy at all! From my experience, there are highs and lows with every day, and no matter how carefully we plan with our students' interests and development in mind, some parts of the day will pique kids' interest more than others'(and which kids will be excited about any given subject area changes by the hour, too!)
ReplyDeleteIt's a little idealistic to say this, then, based on what I just wrote, but I do believe that a well-planned lesson, one that starts with where kids are (cliche, I know) is the best behavior management in town.
Here's a question for you: do you notice any patterns among the kids who are easy to teach and those who are challenging? For example, are kids in the first group mostly boys? Are kids in the second group younger for their grade? There are lots of other patterns to notice. Just wondering . . .