As a response to some questions raised by Neil, I asked my students to rate my "strictness" on a scale of 1-5. Most of the answers were in the 2.5-3 range. I also asked them to indicate what percentage of the time they're engaged or interested in what is going on in the class, and the mean average there was around 70%.
I wrote earlier about how surprised I was to be a fairly strict teacher. I see now that this was perhaps just my interpretation of my own actions, compared to the super laid-back individual I like to think I am. According to my students, I'm pretty much in the middle of the road, which I think is a pretty good place to be in this category. I'm not so strict that they feel like I'm breathing down their necks and waiting for a reason to yell at them, but I'm also not so lenient that they feel they can just do whatever they like for the duration of my class. One student put it pretty well, rating me a "3" and saying "we have fairly controlled fun." "Controlled fun" is pretty much the phrase I would use to describe my ideal classroom management strategy. Hopefully I can keep my strictness right in the middle of the scale, which is a place I'm discovering that I'm pretty comfortable.
The engagement data was honestly a bit surprising to me. We've been going through Romeo and Juliet, and while I do my best to include interesting activities on a daily basis, there really is no substitute for actually reading the play, which is the part the students like the least. I only say this because I'm sure it had some effect on the results of my impromptu survey. 70% engagement is certainly not horrible, but it's not exactly what I expected, either. I think perhaps my initial expectation was a bit inflated, however. It's not realistic to expect all students to be engaged 100% of the time, and no matter how interesting I try to make the daily activities, there's always going to be someone who doesn't like what we do. I'm rapidly learning this because of the journals I'm having them write in each day. Despite the fact that I've repeatedly told them they're free to write about whatever they like, I get several journals each week with entries complaining about my topics and how they're boring. The lesson here is that I'll never be able to entertain or engage all of my students. Some will just choose not to be interested and some will simply not be into what I've planned, and that's okay. While I may have initially thought that I would be able to achieve a 90%+ engagement rating, I'm starting to think that 70% is pretty darn good. Students are never going to love writing daily or reading Shakespeare, no matter how interesting I attempt to make them.
I received some overwhelmingly positive feedback for the Facebook project Scott and I came up with for our 9th grade classes. Students made "Facebook pages" for the characters in the play out of butcher paper, and we've been having them write status updates and comments as a means of summarizing what we read. We eat lunch with most of the English department, and many of the other teachers were raving about how cool the assignment was and how much they wanted to use it in their classes. I took this as a huge compliment. The students for the most part seem to enjoy it as well, they come in to class in the morning and immediately go to the wall to check out what people have written.
At least with this assignment, my goal of engaging as many students as possible seems to be achievable.
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