Behavior Management
I’m going into my eighth week of student teaching, teaching freshman math, and while almost everything has been going well, I’m really struggling with behavior management. Specifically, I’m struggling with addressing the behaviors of individuals and following through with issuing consequences. I’m speaking to the same kids over and over again, but not moving past that in dealing with it. My mentor teacher says that I need to get firmer, and I need to be clearer with my expectations and consequences for inappropriate behavior, which I completely agree with. My last class period last week was particularly rough, to the point where I cried after the students left because I was so frustrated and overwhelmed.
I have no problem asking the class to quiet down as a whole or dealing with particularly bad behaviors, but less serious behaviors like talking/being off task in class have been a struggle for me. I’m pretty softhearted and have a very light, gentle demeanor and a very soft voice and I’m struggling with working up to being firmer. I think, subconsciously, I don’t want to be mean to the students or hurt their feelings, but I know that’s not an excuse for not dealing with bad behavior. It’s not fair of me to allow the learning of other students to be disrupted.
Has anybody had similar issues or have any advice on how to better handle behavior management? My goal this week is to really work towards getting behavior under control and get firmer with how I handle things.