Can You Start the Year Over?
Can you start the year over? We have all seen it. A teacher who starts the year with big dreams and good intentions. Whether it is a first-year teacher or a veteran teacher, a traditionally trained teacher or a teacher who enters the profession through an alternative certification program, a core content area teacher, or a related arts teacher, we have all seen the teacher who starts the year with this perfect idea of what his/her class will look like and the things that their students will do. And then somewhere between the first 3-4 days, it all goes wrong. If you are disagreeing with me about the timeline. Don’t. It may happen later for some well-meaning teachers, but for most struggling teachers the students start misbehaving or seeing opportunities for misbehavior very early. Usually, it’s right after the second day of going over rules and procedures and before the teacher starts teaching the content. Although we have all seen the unfortuna...