silent teaching

Last week was a long stretch for me. I almost completely lost my voice and had to deal with more behavior issues than I was expecting. I guess the "honeymoon period" is over with these students. But through these difficulties, I have learned a few teaching tidbits. The first is that I over-rely on verbal commands and that I do not actually need them to maintain classroom order. While my voice was rapidly disappearing, I quickly went through a series of silent classroom management experiments. Clapping a rhythm for the students to repeat....did not work. Standing quietly in the front of the classroom and waiting for the class to settle down really did not work. And as much as I tried to explain the "quiet coyote," it also failed. My most successful technique (for the older grades) was to stand in front of the classroom with my hand in the air and silently count down my fingers from five to zero. If I reached zero and there was not absolute silence, I would erase one of the class points (each class begins with four and is trying to reach a certain number for a prize). My fifth grade class learned this method the fastest, and they now tell each other to be quiet as soon as I put my hand up so that the class is usually quiet by the time I reach three. Yay for small successes.

Another prevalent behavior issue has been tardiness. Yesterday, in my sixth grade class, only six student (out of twenty-four) arrived at the proper time. I wrote down their names and at the end of the class I let them leave on time. All the other students had to write "I will not be late to class" ten times before they left the classroom. They were not enthusiastic about this supplemental writing, so I hope I will be able to start on time with a full class tomorrow. I implemented the same technique with the sixth graders.

Being sick while teaching is not very fun, but I did discover that I can go and take a nap in the nurse's office during my prep periods if I am not feeling well. I felt very strange lying in a bed in the school, but I felt much better after the rest.

Every Thursday, several of the teachers (as well as the principal and vice principal) get together for a couple of games of volleyball. Sore throat and all, I decided to join in the competition. Apparently, my principal was the captain of his volleyball team in college and loves to direct people around the court. I figured that if we cannot speak the same language, we can at least communicate through a game. However, some of the rules are slightly different on the other side of the Pacific. For example, kicking is perfectly valid, as long as the ball does not touch the floor. Also, we did not rotate through the positions, so I played center net for three games and missed a lot of balls. Even though my team lost, we had a great time playing!

Well, that's all for now from the teaching end of things. Tomorrow is day 15 of teaching, the start of my fourth week. Yikes!