Embrace Challenge!

Things that should be done during month 1

1. The students should be getting used to your routine. If they are still going bezerk, think about what you are doing.



1. Is there a routine?
2. Have you called home yet for repetitive misbehavior?
3. Have you called home for tardy students to talk with parents/guardians?
4. Have you called home about repetitively absent students?
5. Have you called home to let parents/guardians know that you are enjoying their child in your room?  
   
   
2. You should have an idea of who is capable of what.
   
   
   
   1. Through informal assessment, you should have an idea of who routinely does their work and who does not. You may not know who copies off of whom yet, but you have an idea of who you can expect daily work from.
   2. You should have at least one formal assessment done so you have an idea of who is getting information into their brains.
   3. You should have enough grades so that you can give a semi-accurate progress report at the 5 or 9 week mark. Different schools do progress reports at different times b/c of the type of schedule.
      
      
3. You should have done at least 1 major lab, project, or several hands-on activities. You should be getting an idea of your students' writing abilities.
   
   
4. You should be building relationships with other teachers at your school.
   
   
   
   1. You should be getting an idea of who you can confide in and who will run around spreading rumors about you. It may take more than a month to have this figured out, but be aware that not every adult who appears to be your friend truly is.
   
   
   
   2. If you can find another relatively new teacher at your school, see if you can develop a classroom management partnership. What this means is that you will host students from the other class when the teacher needs to get them out of there. You don't want to send students to the office if you can help it. You want to solve as many classroom management challenges as you can without getting an administrator involved. Use your teaching colleagues to help you out with this. Often kids who are sent into another classroom are too intimidated to act out while in the "guest" classroom.
   
   
   
   3. Hopefully you have found someone you can collaborate with to develop lessons and teaching approaches with.