After being in the grind of student teaching for 12 weeks I really fell behind on my reflective practice. Thankfully I left a chain of breadcrumbs with my lesson plans. I was up late last night writing and reflecting on my observations/experiences in the classroom and tech integration.
One specific reflection stands out amongst the rest. In my third week of teaching 10th graders, I was struggling to assert control over the class in a non aggressive, non authoritative way. The students saw this as an opportunity to run all over me. In the middle of the episode I gave up my instructional plans and sent the class across the room to the computer lab to work on our class wiki.
When the students got online they created a "smack talk" page and started having a flame war in the comments. It was embarrassing to watch, yet I hesitated to ban the students. After the bell rang I cleaned up the wiki and deleted the "smack talk" page, but I had to find a way to clean up the damage.
I had a discussion with the class about their behavior and asserted my control over the class and the wiki and reminded them of their roles as digital citizens. My classroom mgmt problems changed and the behavior on the wiki changed, but I never saw the same raw enthusiasm on the wiki again. I am kicking myself for not tying some of this together earlier, because I think I could have harnessed the energy in a better way.
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