BTS Day

  Back To School Day

The first day of school can set the tone for the whole year.  Making a good impression is all important. But what is a good impression? I remember my first day of school that was also my first day as a teacher. It was January and I had been hired to teach math in a junior-high school. Three previous substitute teachers had walked out of the position. I was given fair warning and decided to take the “prick” approach. I was 21 at the time and my class of juniors had some eighteen year old boys with real attitudes.

I remember how nervous I was when I entered the building and was shown my room. The students did not know what to expect and were somewhat cowed for the first few weeks as I acted like one nasty S.O.B. Eventually I relented a bit and gradually lost control of the oldest class. However, I had made it into May before that happened and I managed to “hang on” until the end of school.

Having had my baptism under fire I started the next year with some confidence and once again exhibited a nasty, cranky disposition at the beginning of the school year. As a gradually eased up on the students the classes went along quite well. The students knew the boundaries within my classroom as far as behaviors were concerned. The only propblems were with some of the students from the previous year’s junior math class. I was teaching science but had to work with them in a study hall situation. It took quite a bit of effort to restablish control over these particular students, but I managed.

By my third year I was experienced enough to establish my classroom parameters with just a few weeks of frowning and as the years have passed I have managed to begin each new year with very few problems.

Most students want to work with their teachers and don’t think of their teachers as being “regular people”. They like to do things to please the teacher (especially at the start of the year) and don’t want to spend a year in conflict. Some students prefer to agitate and tend to disrupt the proceedings. Sometimes a teacher has a reputation that can either work to help or hinder the opening day process depending upon what it is.

The first couple of weeks are ther time to establish control and set the class parameters. Students are unsure of themselves, especially ninth graders, and can be easily taught how to conduct themselves in your classroom. In forty years, only two times did I have classes that were disruptive from the first time they walked in my door.

I remember Ray, a new teacher, who had it all figured out. The students and he were going to be friends and everyone would work together to learn. The first day he told his students to address him as Ray, not Mr. _____. It took three days for him to rescind that privilege and another three weeks to establish a good learning environment.

I recommend several ways to get started on the first day.

Greeting: Meet students at the door, make eye contact (most hate that), and introduce yourself. Shaking hands is an option unless it makes you feel too uncomfortable. Don’t be some sort of a smiling fool while doing this and don’t have a rod up your ass either. Have a welcoming expression on your face without appearing to be a phony.

Seating: Have seats assigned for the students on your original class list. Put the seating chart on the overhead or projector oriented in the proper direction so the students can see where to sit. Never let students pick their own seats.

Welcome everyone: Never complain to a student if he/she is not on your class list. Everyone needs to be made welcome and wanted by the teacher. Have a seating chart and assign the student a seat at the first oportunity.

Sincerity: Kids can spot a faker a mile away. Be sincere in welcoming students to your room. Wait a few minutes after the tardy bell for students still finding their classes.

Free Time: Don’t give them any on the first day. You are setting a classroom routine. Make it a good routine.

Introductions: After taking care of attendance, introduce yourself and talk about some of the more interesting things they will be doing while in your class. Be formal with them and any friendliness need to be done in a reserved manner. Have each student state his/her name and talk a bit about what they like to do when not in school (make notes).

Rules and Regulations: Set them out the first day. Be clear and concise and don’t overdo it. Give each student a copy and post them in the room.

First Lesson: As a science teacher I have some advantages. The first day I prepare some sort of a demonstration to focus student interest. I want them to look forward to coming to my class everyday.

No Wasted Time: Keep students busy that first day. It sets the tone for the year.

The Only Line Crossing is at the Alamo: There has to be a line drawn between the teacher and the students. That line will be a different distance from each teacher depending upon the teacher’s clasroom skills and personality, but it has to be there. A teacher is not there to be a friend to his/her students. That teacher is there to be a role model. Start being one the first day. Have that line be thick and firm on the first day and it can be moved toward the teacher as the year progresses. But always have it there.

Hard to Soft: It is a lot easier to go from being hardnosed and demanding to a more giving demeanor than it is to go the other way.

These are guidelines to help you survive the first day and to set the tone for the rest of the school year. Other experienced teachers may use variations upon these steps but I find they work very well for me.

The Winds of Change

This will be my last year of blogging so I decided to take a different approach. I tend to “get on my soapbox” and express my feelings about some of the things that are going on in education today. For the rest of this school year, I will be throwing the soapbox away and share tips and techniques I have used in my classroom to be an effective teacher (and survive).

That being said, I have just this one last rant from my soapbox. I will relate my feelings about teacher evaluations and seniority in this blog. There is a lot being said about poor teachers. There is no question at all that there are bad teachers. Every school has their share of them. They are not always the experienced teachers, since being new is no guarantee of competence and greater enthusiasm for the job. I am entering my fortieth year in the classroom and still look forward to interacting with my students. Likewise I have seen first year teachers who bored their students to death or had no classroom control and were driven right out of teaching.

The biggest recent complaint about teacher evaluations has arisen due to all of the RIFing (teacher layoffs) that are taking place across the country. The news is full of comments about finding ways to layoff the “deadwood” and keep the young, energetic teachers in the classroom.

Historically seniority has always been the predominant method of laying off people in any industry or profession. I don’t hear government workers being laid off according to any criteria other than seniority. How about having open heart surgery performed by a surgeon fresh out of medical school instead of a surgeon who has done hundreds of those operations. Which would you prefer?

On the other hand, seniority does not guarantee competence in any profession and RIFing in any job or profession should be based upon performance, not duration. However, the fair evaluation of people in any job or career depends upon so many different factors that it is a very difficult process. Not the simple process advocated by a number of simpletons (simpleton in their understanding of the educational process).

Let’s look at each of these factors as they apply to teachers:

1. Students

            a. Student opinions about teachers are nonfactors since most students like the friendliest teachers and dislike the teachers who work them the hardest. Of course parents hear all kinds of stories about what goes on in the classrooms and are infuenced by the stories that come home. Especially since their child would never lie about or embellish anything that goes on in school.

            b. Student test results are a poor gauge of teacher competence since all students have different learning abilities. Teachers who teach students with involved parents will see good test results no matter how incompetent the teacher may be. Meanwhile, students who see no value in school (for many different reasons) will generally show moderate to no test improvements. Of course the administrator will say that is the fault of the teacher who has not been able to interest all students in his subject.

            c. No matter what is done regarding seniority, there will always be a pecking order among faculty and the newer teachers will be predominantly given the more difficult classes, especially if student testing is part of the teaching evaluation criteria. I would prefer the advanced students if testing is part of my evaluation.

2. Principal

            a. Not all principals are competent. Not all superintendents are able to make the best choices when selecting principals. The principals and superintendents hire teachers and are able to evaluate teachers for two or three years with no tenure considerations. If a poor teacher is hired, whose fault is that?

            b. When evaluation criteria are changed and the principal’s evaluation determines who gets RIFed, almost all controversy regarding curriculum development and the teaching environment will go away. Who wants to aggravate a principal who is no longer held to a detailed due process to remove tenured faculty?

            c. Many, if not most, principals warn teachers in advance before doing a formal evaluation. It gives the teacher plenty of time to prepare a “dog and pony” show for the day of the classroom observation. Drop-in evaluations are looked upon with a “He’s out to get me” attitude on the part of the teacher. The exception would be if the principal makes drop-ins a regular occurance and focuses on the positives as well as the negatives taking place in the classroom.

3. Peers

            a. There is no way teachers will evaluate each other. Not only would personalities enter into the process, teachers don’t have the required training nor time to visit each other’s classrooms.

4. School board members

            a. Since most of them never visit classrooms at all, let alone on any sort of a regular basis, they base their knowledge about their schools upon what they are told by their administrators and any of their own children who are enrolled in classes. That makes them a nonfactor in evaluating teachers, not a very popular thing to say on my part.

5. The most ignorant groups who don’t know what is really happening in the public schools would be the politicians and big money executives who want to fix all of the problems in the educational system by tearing it down. They base their opinions upon what they hear from special interest groups such as conservative “think tanks” who use skewed data collected and evaluated by someone who would be “eaten alive” in a typical classroom. They know how to evaluate teachers and want to remove job protections to “kick out” the bums doing a bad job. If only it was so simple.

There are fair ways to evaluate people and those methods need to be developed to remove incompetent teachers, worthless government employees outside of education, and politicians who refuse to live within a budget. Why just focus on the easiest target?