Letting them get to me

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 I have one class that is just driving me crazy and I need to vent and get it off my chest. They are mostly freshmen and having basically not been in school for the last 2 years act more like middle schoolers. Also, there are 30 of them in the room. There are a couple of large personalities that, for lack of a better word, are just annoying. One student must shout out stupid answers to every question. There are a couple that just talk all the time. And quite honestly there are some I just don't like. This makes this class extremely challenging for me. I even went so far as to ask admin to come in and observe to see if my feelings were coloring my reactions towards this class. I was afraid that they had pissed me off before and that was hanging over and making me not like them when, in fact, they may be just fine. 

So I started this post with the intention of just trying to purge my feelings before the weekend begins. But as I typed that first paragraph, I had a bit of an epiphany. I do not have to put up with any of this. I'm the teacher. On Monday I'm going to bring the hammer down in class. I may even ask admin to not come so I have a chance to try and fix it on my own. The thing is, I don't want to think about this all weekend. So maybe I can just highlight some bullet points to get it out of my mind. 

  • I'm can tweak the seating chart a little bit so that I separate and isolate the problem students. Of course, we are doing an activity on Monday that will mix them up, but I just realized that I don't have to do that. In the activity they are supposed to pick their 'prides' but I can just assign them to a table. Perfect. 
  • I'm going to tell them, in a nice way, that some of the students in this class are messing things up for everyone and I'm over it. 
  • I am going to have a come to Jesus meeting with them and explain, nicely, that I will be running this class different from all the other biology classes because of just a few people in it. 
  • I am going to tell them that while I enjoy having fun in class, that won't be the case here anymore. We will be learning biology and nothing more. 
  • I'm going to tell them that since they won't talk to the people at their table everything will be done individually and turned in. That doesn't mean I'll grade it, but it will be turned in. 
  • I will be walking around with a clipboard where I will be keeping track of their citizenship points. Every class they will start with 5 points and if they behave in class and do  as they are instructed and complete their work, they will keep the 5 points. Every time I find them not doing their work, or doing something they shouldn't have been, they will lose points. 

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