The Classroom Apocalypse

Today was our second full day of school. Cleo and I were so excited to start. We stayed up last night planning and making more things for our classroom. We arrived to class and our learners seemed excited to see that we were back to teach them. We spent the a lot of the morning teaching and reteaching them the routines. We also tried having them do writer’s workshop by writing about a time that something happen has happen in their life. I spent so much time modeling it to them, but as soon as they started writing I notice they were only writing about the things I wrote about it. As much as I would conference with each student and try to redirect them to write about their own life, they still seem to not get it. The rest of the morning was okay. After break things started to get difficult. Cleo and I tried over and over to remind students that they need to be excused from their seats, they needed to raise their have if they need our attention, and not to hit each other. It just got more and more overwhelming because even know we consistently reminded them, they just seemed to not get it. Kids were getting up all the time. Kids were calling “teacher, teacher, teacher!” Kids were hitting each other. Once we stopped kid from hitting another, another kid would start it. I never felt so overwhelmed and powerless within a class setting before. Cleo were so frustrated that we cried once we got out of school. I just couldn't understand why it had happen. We taught and disciplined just as we would in the States. When we got home the two of us debriefed our experiences with our professors which made us feel much better. We came to realize that the way these students learn is so much different from how we teach in the States and we came into the classroom too naïve. We thought we could teach just how we do at home, but in doing so we basically turned our students’ lives upside down. It seemed chaotic to them and that’s why they acted out so badly. Tomorrow we have to be stricter. Our professors suggest that we start class by sending the students outside and telling them that they will not get to enter the classroom until they are ready to learn and be respect. They explained that we should say “this classroom is a place of learning, and if you do not want to learn then you can leave now until you are ready to learn”. It is so hard for the two of us to talk like this because we so use to our kindergartners and first graders back at home. I could never imagine talking to my kids like this. I actually really disliked myself for being so strict to the kids and hated how I had to talk to them. But this is what the kids need. They need this type of discipline and this type of structure for them to function, well at least at the beginning. Hopefully we can introduce more and more interactive and inquiry learning over the next month and a half. Anyways, we have to remind ourselves that this is what the kids need. We are taught to differentiate our teaching and strategies for our diverse learners, meaning that if we have visual learners then we provide more visual cues or if we have learners who need to touch things then we use more manipulatives. But in this case, we need to differentiate our entire theory and mythology of teaching to what our students here need. Hopefully, once we establish this authority in the classroom we can being to teach more like how we teach in the states.