The Blog of Ms. Mercer

It’s spring, and a young scholar’s mind turns to thoughts of…well anything but what you’re teaching is what it seems like these days. I’ve seen more kids not just goofing off (hey, I wanna goof off), but crying, and having a bad time. Don’t get me wrong, lots of them have a good reason to be ticked off (how would you feel if a parent was sent off to prison for the rest of their natural life?). For that, I can only give a sympathetic shoulder, and let the counselors know what’s going down, but for the more mundane (and there is plenty of that going around), here’s my checklist…

1. Happy hour
2. Re-read Larry Ferlazzo’sClassroom Management | In Practice; think, plan, repeat, then implement some myself.
3. Re-read Mathew Needleman’s Creating Lifelong Learners » Blog Archive » Classroom Management: Appropriate Consequences and repeat his mantra, "They’re not bored, you’re boring", then do something about it.
4. Add both to Dan Meyer’s First Day Wiki in a new page called Starting Over