The holidays are very stressful for everyone (parents, teachers, students) and we tend to see a lot of behavior problems around this time of year. I was out on Friday and left a very involved lesson plan with several different activities to keep them working from "bell to bell". Unfortunately my first class decided to rebel and this resulted in two fights, with the students only getting half of their work done. The rest of my classes got all of their work done, and there were no problems for the rest of the day. Of course the class that has the fights is also the class with the worst grades and lowest test scores (go figure). So what am I supposed to do? I leave them a great lesson plan (packed with literary strartegies), and they've had practice doing these types of lessons before, yet I have all of these issues. I do not need my students to fall behind when they are already struggling with getting their work done. I would love to give them extra work as punishment, but I worry that they will just refuse to do that work as well. Frustrating....
(I think we need that Christmas break in two weeks to come a little quicker so we can all recharge.)
Mollie, I feel you pain on this one. It seems that substitues have always been poorly trained and really do not want to be in the teaching situation. It is sad. Your room was a diaster, I had to call security and the worst part about bad substitues is that it reflects back on your class like you could have controlled it!!
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