The Praxis of Pedagogy day 44

So I let the kids redo their presentations and turn in their new 8 page paper. I seriously wonder if I am setting a bad precedent by doing this. IMO a lot of teaching management issues come from what the word out in the halls is about you. Kids talk and they tell each other how they were treated by a teacher and the kids judge their experience with you in relation to how their friend was treated. That was longwinded but hopefully understandable. You gotta earn respect in teaching. It's the most important thing you can do. I try to earn it by being a respectful person and never forgetting the person that is in the role of the student. It is also important not to be a pushover. Nobody respects a pushover.

I got feedback from students. A good number of them said some very good things, but they all said that I need to do more fun activities. I agree. It will definitely be something I will be thinking about this summer. I would like to play some games cause I always remember having so much fun playing classroom games when I was a teenager. Having more fun activities will make the boring ones more tolerable. My excuse is I was scrambling trying to get my shit straight. Overwhelmed by not knowing what I wouldn't know, and then very much finding out what I didn't know. But whatever, things to work on. I'll have more planning time this summer.

So anyways the last student gave a presentation in my 3rd period class and I had them write a letter to themselves and comments for me. One of my students was still trying to play games though. While the two other students that were part of this whole debacle rewrote papers and gave new presentations, one student still tried to get away with giving me 4 pages. She said she never was told she had to write more papers and that she never told her CTM that she had spoken to me about the difference between her senior project paper and her final paper for me. She is in the greatest danger of failing and not walking tomorrow and it really bugs me. She wants to walk with her friends but she has been doing shit work lately. There were the waterworks of course but I'm immune to that after working with elementary school kids for so long.