Substituting in relatively new for me but so far I like it. I can’t wait to have my own classroom someday and have more control over the situation. I’m in the Far Northeast section of Denver which is considered Montebello and Green Valley Ranch. I didn’t even know there were that many schools in that area. It’s a rougher area but urban education is one of my interests. I also substitute for Jeffco but did not have any jobs in that district this week.
This week I only substituted four days this week but it was filled with much of the same behaviors and lingering questions. My major issue I have when substituting is classroom management. This week in particular each classroom had a different method for handling behavior problems. The first class used the red light green light behavior chart. When the clip was moved to yellow, a student loses 10 minutes of recess. When the clip is moved to red, a student must fill out a refocus form where they describe their behavior. I found it very difficult to be consistent with moving clips, partly because I did not know all the students names and because it took away time from the lesson. One student in particular was very vocal and always misbehaving. When he was told to move the clip from green to yellow he started talking back and arguing with me. Needless to say, by the end of the morning his clip was on red. There was no consequence after being on the red card; therefore he took it as his behavior the rest of the day didn’t matter. I wonder if there is a better method to use in the classrooms, especially for substitutes. I had a similar experience the following day using the same system. However this time when I asked a student to move her clip for throwing a pencil at someone, she burst into tears and made a big fuss. I again had to take time away from the whole class to get her to settle down. The rest of the day, I found myself overlooking some of her behavior because I didn’t want to move the clip to red and deal with a meltdown again.
Another class where I was a substitute used a jar of marbles as a reward system for behavior. When everyone in the class turned in their homework or came into the classroom quietly. While this started out as a good idea in the morning, by the afternoon I ended up having to take away move marbles than I put in. This was the way the instructions read from the substitute lesson plan. Is it fair to punish a whole class for the behavior of a few students? I noticed near the end of the day when I would take a marble out for people not being on task and wasting time, certain students were targeted as the reason the whole class lost a marble. Usually this was not the case. It made me wonder if there is a better way to manage a class without harming the self-confidence of certain students. If one kid does not bring their homework, will everyone in the class gang up on them because they did not earn a marble? Is this idea using peer pressure in reverse?
The last class I substituted for this week uses team collaboration and the method for monitoring student behavior. The student’s desks were in pods, with each pod given a different team name. Teams that were on task or the first table to be prepared for the lesson would receive a point. It seemed like a very competitive environment. Similar to the marble jar classroom, I noticed certain students were constantly blamed for their table not receiving a point, even if it wasn’t their fault. I also noticed students were more interested in the points each team accumulated than the lesson we were working on. I tried to avoid giving many points because it seemed like a distraction. In this method, students were rewarded for good behavior but bad behavior was left unnoticed.
Of course with all of these behavior methods, I still keep a list of students for the teacher who were extremely helpful and those who were in need of refocusing. Do student need to see their behavior in a visual way? At what cost are these methods effective?
