It is interesting and humbling to see how my attitude and behavior affects my students. Tuesday I found myself flustered and frustrated. The more the students misbehaved, the more frustrated I got, and their behavior continued to feed off of my responses. That is probably the main reason why Tuesday was such a long day.
Wednesday I went in determined to use positive reinforcement to encourage better behavior. I have previously found Wednesdays to be very tiring days, but yesterday was great. They had similar behavior problems (I had the same amount of students sitting out for part of recess, for example), but by rewarding the good students, I got the classroom back into order more quickly and for longer periods of time.
Today was an average day. I began developing a headache as the day went on, and from the start of school it has been discouraging to see and feel how a day will deteriorate as I feel more and more exhausted and my headache comes more to the fore. I still used positive reinforcement though, so it never got too crazy today.
Good days or bad, I am constantly seeing things that need so much work. My class is absolutely horrible while "standing in line" (they don't really qualify as either standing, or being in a line), and it is ridiculous. I need to think of something, and stay consistent with it. The problem is, I will try something for a day or so, it won't work a miracle, so I give up on it. I don't want to get stuck on a strategy that doesn't work, but I think I need to keep going for more than one day.
Well, tomorrow's a new day, as the saying correctly and rather obviously states. We'll see how it goes.
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