Alright, this week, it will be amazingly short compared to my chapter book published last week.

This week we got our classrooms. I teach on a team of four people. I’m teaching algebra and such. The only problem is that I’m not getting much teaching done because my kids are having a really hard time behaving right after lunch. Yes, I know, lucky me with the post-lunch crowd.

Things have been going frustratingly slow because I spend much of the little class time we have (they have been getting back from lunch late because they won’t be silent to be dismissed from the cafeteria) doing discipline. By Friday, I was already a full lesson behind on our schedule, none of them had learned anything, and basically, I had decided the end of the nonsense had to come.

When my students came into the class, they were supposed to start working on the “Do Now.” Although we have gone over my expectations, I have a sign on the door that they can’t help but see that reminds them “Do Now = Do it Now Silently.” After asking them twice to work silently with no success, I warned that we would go back out into the hall and start class again once everyone was silent. Well, we had to go out to the hall. Twice. In total, I spent 28 minutes of our 45 minute block with my students in the hall — waiting for them to realize I was serious about them coming into class and getting to work.

The final 17 minutes of class went beautifully. We went over the do now (the “trouble maker” even volunteered to write the answer on the board — with the correct answer I might add), the previous day’s quiz, and a new lesson! Of course, their mastery of the new objective was not what I would have wanted, but I can weave in some remediation over the next several days in a related objective.

Here’s to hoping they remember my expectations tomorrow and come in silently.