One of our school-wide focuses for class meetings this month was guest teachers! At QAE in general, we have noticed that our behaviors are heightened when our classes have guest teachers. In true positive discipline fashion, we brought this problem directly to the kids! The first week, we talked about what are the actual problems that we are seeing when we have guest teachers. The list really went on and on.... Things like talking out, being physical, not listening, being extra silly were all at the top of the list. It was great to hear them recognize the problem and own up to it! The next week, I listened to them tell me whey they thought those things were happening. That list was truly mind-blowing.
~ The guest teachers don't know what to do!
~ They don't know our names
~ They don't follow the schedule
~ We just don't like them
~ We want Ms. Ward to be back
~ They never get BrainPop right!
~ They don't know our names
~ They don't follow the schedule
~ We just don't like them
~ We want Ms. Ward to be back
~ They never get BrainPop right!
Week 3 of this cycle was to start thinking of possible solutions that would help when we have a guest teacher. The one that we landed on is truly fabulous! We made a "guest teacher book!" This book included things that were truly important to the kids.
We had a guest teacher for half the day on Thursday because I had a meeting with our building design team for QAE. This was a great chance to try out our solution. After the guest teacher left, we had a reflection class meeting where we talked about what went well and what didn't go so well. A lot of us noticed that our name tags were getting flipped around or even ended up on our backs. We decided that we were going to try out using sticky name tags next time :)