The good, The Bad and The Ugly

Middle school....whoa, something we were not expecting....Today we went to Coventry middle school and we were thrown a curveball.

First of all we shall talk about the good.  No cell phone issues!!! Dear God this was the highlight of my day.  Students were being reprimanded for using electronic devices that they should have not been using in the first place.  I've been in different high school classrooms and they all had their faces in their laps due to the constant checking of cell phones or ipods.  Apparently students at the middle school level are not so worried about cell phone conversations.  I think the major solution to the cell phone problem at Coventry was how they reprimand the problem when a students uses one.  Our cooperating teacher told us that if students were caught with their cellphones a first time they would be called on by the teacher, the second time they would be reported to the principal and the third time the principal would take the phone for the remainder of the year.  Most importantly parents could not get mad or interfere because if they come in the principal will say to them it is strictly stated in the handbook.

Now let's move on to the bad.  I hope that by the end of the month my mind changes about teaching middle school but it is not something i'm looking forward to now to be sincere.  Middle school is such a different atmosphere from the high school feeling and not to mention the extra perks we have added.  The first of the perks being a crazy rotating schedule; I mean there is two teachers...one of them teaches mon, wed and fri and the other teaches tues and thurs in one week but then the next week they switch days.  Somehow they manage not to have the same students and teach the same curriculum.  Second, these particular teachers, teach out of a "cart."  What this means is that they have no set classroom which doesn't allow them to align seats in the manner they desire or takes time away from class because they cannot have the technology ready if she is using it on a particular day.  I really could add more to this list but I don't want to seem like the highly critical person.  At this point I am just trying to embrace all that's going on, still trying to figure it out and adapt in some shape or form.

Tomorrow morning we go back to Coventry and as much as I know there are more negative setbacks instead of the positive ones, there is still a classroom filled with 28 students who don't need to worry about my hard time adapting.  I must put on my teaching face and move on...this aspect of teaching I have learned will be one of the ones which I will be using the most.