starbursts

it finally felt like i had run out of options. with my energy sapped from earlier classes this week and a general disinterest in concocting grandiose lesson plans, i committed to a path of positive reinforcement.

starbursts.

i walked into class prepared today. we skipped our usual yoga routine complete with bowing at the tail end of intentionally quiet and soothing stretches. we skipped homework checks because i had not assigned homework. we skipped any and all conversations about why we weren't going to be playing games.

we dove right into king arthur and his roundtable plotting in camelot. a whole page worth of copying and then translating. i did not crack a smile. i was not lenient with those who had forgotten to bring a pen. for the first time since arriving here, i felt that structure would necessarily have to be enforced or i was going to lose any hope of control (read: me going completely batty).

they're 6th graders. i taught their sleepy and lethargic first-period brains four days a week last semester but now have the unfortunate disadvantage of teaching them during one of the last classes of the day after their gym class. they are unruly. no, they're absurd. my mother (of course) was right when she told me it mattered what time of day i taught them. i just wanted to complain about needing extra morning snooze time.

shortly after we commenced, i began shelling out individually wrapped starbursts to those i found jotting arthur's story down quietly. and soon, the blabbermouths began to notice. and they began writing. fifteen minutes into class, i had the entire class writing when two days ago, i could not keep one out of the window long enough to break up an argument between two others.

it. was. amazing. it is not sustainable, but for that period of 45 minutes of my life, i felt like i was not utterly failing at this teaching gig. it reaffirmed my belief that positive reinforcement not only is a more efficient management style, it is also a method i am better suited to utilize. my sweet and sympathetic demeanor doesn't naturally lend itself to screaming at kids in a language i really have not mastered.

now if only i could figure out how to reinvent positive reinforcement without starbursts, i'd be set. starbursts, after all, are in short supply and, undoubtedly, there's a better way to embrace this whole being positive strategy without candy.

but, it is the candy i give out and the games that i play that have the teachers most thoroughly entertained and busily conversing about. perhaps i should continue to provide them with "i can't believe she plays so many games" and "what must those students be learning?" fodder for all of those coffee dates i cannot bring myself to suffocate through?