Reply to Anyone else dreading school starting in 3 weeks?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]You know MCPS is joyless. At parent observation, which is only 45 minutes long, half the parents fell asleep. Kids are yawning, bored and its completely uninteresting. Has zip to do with being challenging or not, just lack luster presentation and an utter lack of love of learning. Imagine spending everyday at the DMV 6 hours a day. This is what our kids get. [/quote]

Honestly, as a teacher, parent observation day is one of my least favorite days of the year  for me. It is a dog and pony show for sure. I struggle with what activities to plan, knowing that I am being judged beyond belief.

If I plan a fun, engaging, kids-out-of-their-seats activity, then parents judge me because they think there is little classroom management going on due to the noise and the fact that the room seems a little chaotic (but who cares! The kids are engaged!).   But there's always the chance that someone gets a little too enthusiastic and isn't watching where they're going during one of the transitions and bumps into a bookcase and gets a bloody nose. (Yes, this has happened). Or 2 kids have trouble sharing materials and get in an argument and so the parent of student A complains to administration that student B is a bully and they shouldn't be in the same class. Or a parent of student C complains that I took a few minutes to resolve the situation  with students A and B and wasn't paying enough attention to Student C during that time. Then I'm labeled as the teacher who has no classroom management skills and kids get hurt in her classroom. I teach K and it can take a little bit longer than the beginning/middle of October for all of them to really understand WHY the rules are there and actually be compelled to follow them. The kids in my classroom are still getting used to being in school.

Situations  1 and 2 seem ridiculous to think about, but stuff like this actually happens (not all in my classroom, but in colleagues' classrooms as well)

So then I can plan a kids-in-their-seats lesson which has fewer risk factors, but then get labeled as a boring, non-dynamic teacher. But the environment is more controlled and there's less of a chance of the above situations occurring.

Is there a happy medium between the 2? Of course! But it takes time to get to know students and what issues may arise during any lesson.  If you visit my classroom a little later in the year, once I've gotten to know every student better and can better anticipate any issues that may occur, dynamic out-of-their-seat lessons can  occur as the norm. But for that short amount of time on a mid-October morning, I'm usually going to choose the least risky choice. Sorry.

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