I am gonna make it through this year if it kills me

This Year by the Mountain Goats.  My theme song at the beginning of the school year.  It was a tough start but I made it through and I'm not dead.  Mentally, maybe, but I'm still here.  I'm sure people want to know my favorite parts of the school year - what went well, what I enjoyed most, and maybe what just sucked.

I have to say I got the most pleasure out of getting to know my students on a personal level.  I loved the "hanging out" times when I could just talk to them one on one without having to teach them anything.  I enjoyed staying after school so that I could provide personal help on math problems, or just to walk down to the gym to shoot a few hoops (and dunk on cocky 6th grade males).  The most satisfaction came when I explained things clearly enough that students just got excited about them and wanted to shout out what they knew.  I loved when I was able to teach well enough to where the classroom ran like a well-oiled machine.  Students knew what to do and were excited to do it.

The most frustrating part of the year was by far the classroom management.  I hated disciplining students, or having to do so.  It seemed like it was a constant battle that raged on every day (with some students in particular).  I never figured out how to handle a few of my kids and there are still situations where I have no idea what to say or do.  It's not as bad now as it was at the beginning of the year, but this is the part of teaching where I still feel like I haven't grown much at all.  I'm not really a good natural leader and I don't like to have to boss people around.  That's not fun or satisfying to me, but it was to some of my students, and I had trouble with them.  I almost want to have some real challenging students next year so that I am forced to figure out some solutions.

I wish our school didn't have a place to send unruly students.  It was like a crutch anyone could use if they didn't want to handle a student's bad behavior.   Rather than figure out a solution to the problem or treat the student with dignity, we could simply send them out to be another teacher's problem. I used it too much and many other teachers used it too much.  It seemed like it made classroom management easy (using it as a threat), but threatening students isn't the way to go and other measures must be used if you want to have a successful, positive classroom environment.  I need to figure out some of those strategies for next year.  There's a lot of polishing to do and I think I just need to dive in and do it, figuring things out on my own.