What Great Teachers Do Differently? *

What Great Teachers Do Differently?
Chapters 1&2

These chapters were interesting to me because it wasn’t you standard “this is what you should do as a future teacher” type of book. It was more of a calling to all teachers to look inside themselves and really ask yourself “what or why are you doing this?”
For this assignment, we are supposed to relate what we read in these chapters to our observations in the field. Since I just met my teacher on Thursday, it is kind of hard to relate what I have learned so far about her to the intro pages of this book. However, a portion of this chapter talked about assertive discipline and if it was a solution or problem in the classroom. When looking at the Kindergarten classroom that I am placed in, the behavior situation is as follows: students all start out on the “green fish” , if they do well their clothespin gets moved up to the “orange fish”. If they then behave especially well then their fish gets moved up to the “blue fish.” However if the student misbehaves badly, their clothespin will go down to the “yellow” or “red fish”. Whenever my teacher moves clips up or down she makes an announcement to the class. Sometimes she will say “ Jill, James, and John are moving up…thank you for behaving nicely, or Jack and Julie are moving down for talking.” By brining the whole class’s attention to the situation can either be a good or bad thing in my opinion. Good because students are aware of the overall tone of the classroom however bad because now those students who are in trouble are feeling embarrassed. This doesn’t seem like a win-win to me. So should this be happening in the classroom? Would this be assertive discipline? I am not really sure. I haven’t been in the classroom or been around the students long enough to figure out if this is the BEST possible solution to discipline.