it's a Monday

Today I had a very long conversation with my student teacher about classroom management.  We are VERY different in personality (I once described her as the antithesis of me but whatever) so this was a funny conversation.  I realized that so much of how I manage my students is via my natural sass and it's not something you can necessarily teach.  So she asked me for ideas and I gave them to her and she looked at me like "I don't think I can say that."  And then I laughed and said, "Ok, well you keep trying new things until you figure something out."  (Apparently it's not a normal thing to say to a kid, "I love you but you are seriously annoying me right now.  You get 5 more seconds to make that annoying noise and then you're done."  Who knows, it works for me.)

Anyway, point of this is that I realized how much of teaching just has to be you, being you, doing what you do.  Sounds overly simple but the reason I think your first couple of years are so hard is because you don't necessarily know what "being you" looks like.  We also talked about how you just need to make each student feel like you care about them as a person.  And then I had to nicely tell her that I don't think she's doing enough of that right now.  Call it manipulation or call it love, but you win over the heart of the naughtiest kid in your room and your life WILL be better for the next 9 months.  Oh hey kid with anger issues who's on pills for that:  Did you know we're going to be BFF's?  Oh you didn't realize that in August?  Well now 6 months later, he is telling me about how his girlfriend and him split up and needs advice and hasn't had one outburst all year.  I'm telling you (student teacher), it works.

So how do you teach someone how to love your students well?  I'm not sure.  I'm trying but it's not something you can necessarily teach a person.  So we're working on that this week.  I can't decide if she really digs what I'm telling her or just thinks I'm on crack.  Oh well.