How To Recover From A Classroom Train Wreck….
Photo Credit: Trey Ratcliff via CompfightI wouldn’t want to teach at any other school than where I’m teaching now, and I think the same goes for the vast majority of our faculty. And I think the same percentage of our students wouldn’t want to be attending any other school either. Since we’re in Program Improvement, every year we need to provide forms to our students where they and their families can request an assignment to another school, and typically students look at me like I’m a bit crazy and many say something like, “Why would I want to go somewhere else?”
That being said, as the biggest inner-city school in Sacramento, we are not immune from the challenges facing our students, their families, and our neighborhood. They sometimes get brought to the surface by the pressures of holidays, and that was certainly the case this week.
Most of our counselors, administrators, and school monitors have been busy the past few days dealing with dispute resolutions. We’ve had a number of fights, and lunch was cut short one day in an effort to head-off the potential of escalating violence.
On that particular day when things were tough school-wide, student behavior in one of my “double-block” classes