Last week I discussed an incident with a student, my response and my anxiety at facing the next lesson with this student.
So, as I promised myself I would, I began the next lesson with this student as I would any lesson. However, they clearly had remembered last lesson and were unwilling to work again.
Unfortunately this meant that I had to hold an after-school detention – something I had hoped to avoid.
I am hoping that the statement of an after-school detention is enough to persuade the student that this behaviour and reluctance to work during my lesson is unacceptable. I am yet to teach this student this week, so it is once again on my mind – I sincerely hope that this is all put to bed now.
I had more clashes this week with my bottom ability chemistry group. This is a group of 15 or so with low target grades and it is always very difficult to get them engaged and keep them on task.
I had to re-route a couple students and gave out just as many detentions for poor behaviour and general lack of work. This is something that is slowly eating away at me.
I know I should always be consistent with punishments and rewards. Notwithstanding, I find that in the last week I have had to be very negative towards many students. It is getting to me. I don’t want to always be the teacher giving detentions. But, I know it is necessary to create the right learning environment and for students to know where they stand within my classroom and with myself.
Anyway, enough about the negative week I have had. You never know, the next lesson may be amazing. That’s one thing I always find strange about teaching. You can have the group from hell one lesson and the next time you see them, for some reason, they are all angels and you wonder why you ever doubted them.
I think it’s very easy to take things personally in this profession and the one thing I always try to tell myself is no matter what a student does or says it is rarely because of, or targeted at, you. Nine times out of 10, something prior to the lesson has affected them and so that is why you are seeing that behaviour.
This week is open evening. I am really excited about this. We get the opportunity to meet new faces and potential students for the coming academic year. We also get the opportunity as a faculty to show off our best experiments and practicals. This really excites me. When we think of our subject as teachers it is really easy to think: “the specification says this”, “lesson three is about acids and alkalis”, or “the students need to know this for the top marks”.
Chemistry (or science) is so much more than that to me. My favourite part about my job is when a student asks me how or why something works the way it does. An inquisitive student is an engaged student. Showing off experiments at open evening sparks those questions. It makes students excited to study science at GCSE and gets them asking those important questions.
For now I will concentrate on the behaviour in my classroom and challenging anything that I am not happy with. I am also trying to make a positive phone call home each day to balance out the negatives. Hopefully, this will all balance out soon – and the positives will begin to outweigh the barrage of negatives.
- SecEd’s NQT diarist this year is a teacher of science from a school in the Midlands.