Lessons from Room 16

I have a confession to make. Unbeknownst to my students, this was my first year as a classroom teacher. When asked where I taught prior to Gunter High School, I would reply by telling students the name of the school where I completed my student teaching. I simply wanted to pretend that I wasn’t an amateur, that I knew what I was doing. Although many, many days I felt that it was extremely apparent that I was completely and utterly lost!

I asked my students to give me advice as I continue my career in education next year. (I will be teaching at a magnet high school in San Antonio). Their advice was interesting, encouraging and honest. Some said I need to “relax” and some said that I need to be stricter—and these students were from the same class period! A few boosted my ego by saying that I was the best English teacher they had ever had.

I enjoyed their comments, good and bad, because I am all about self-evaluation and honesty, so all year I have kept a running list titled “Notes for Next Year” on my desktop. Here are a few of the pertinent lessons that I have learned during my year spent as a Gunter Tiger:

• Be fair and consistent. Build a classroom culture based on mutual respect.
• Never argue or rationalize with a student. It gets you nowhere. I am the adult and the one in charge.
• Next year there will be a “NO putting on makeup in class” rule—My classroom is not a “Mary Kay” party! It just gets on my nerves!
• Give A LOT of freedom to write about whatever. Have students tape a suggested journal topics list in the back of their journals along with meaningful quotes and pictures. This will give instant value to their journals.
• Teach basic grammar skills first—fragments, run-on sentences, phrases and clauses, punctuation,even if they "should have" covered basic grammar skills previously. Then take off points for every MAJOR sentence error in their papers. This will force them to write correctly
• Teach them and make them accountable for doing it right from the very beginning of the
  year.
• NEVER allow students to bully other students. Make an example of the first one that tries
• When a group of students cheat, they ALL get the same punishment regardless of who actually did the work. (If one goes down, they all go down together).
• It is SO cliche but true, so I’ll just say it: I don’t GIVE grades, but students EARN them.
  If I believe this, then I can’t feel the weight and burden of a student when they choose to fail by refusing to work or by cheating. Although I care deeply about my students, my failure isn’t always equivalent to their failure.
• MAKE A HUGE DEAL OVER CHEATING –make an example out of the first student to cheat by giving him a zero (or ripping the paper up in front of the rest of the class and making a big dramatic performance out of the ordeal)! The old adage "winners never cheat and cheaters never win" will always be true in Mrs. Henderson's class.
• Don’t read The Scarlet Letter with regular ENG III classes; teach Hawthorne short
  stories instead. It was a beating!
• Every student matters. Each has a story to tell and an opinion to give. Most of them just want to opportunity to do that and want someone interested enough to listen. I can learn as much from them as they can from me if I remember this.

There were days when I crawled into my little VW Bug and literally felt that I didn't have the strength to make the 30 minute drive home, and then there were those days when I knew that I was exactly where I should be doing exactly what I should be doing. On those days I received a jolt of energy from seeing the flash in a student’s eyes because she finally understood the difference between a phrase and a clause. I passed back a paper with a big read “A” at the top to “C” student and saw the triumphant beam. Some days students came into room 16 to confide in me or request advice. These are the kind of days that gave me hope. These are the type of days that I would cling to on the Fridays when thinking about coming back on Monday could make me certifiably insane. I hope that with each year I reflect, learn, and then grow into a better teacher and even a better version of me. I will take away many lessons from room 16 and from the 78 students that I taught at Gunter High School.