I mentioned in a previous post, the system that I am currently using for classroom management. I really like the “rules” that I use here. We spend a fair amount of time going over them at the beginning of the year and then revisit them as needed. They are prominently displayed in the room. Every year the class has a different flavor to it though and the system has to be tweaked. This year we have been in school almost 1/3 of the school year and the kids just will NOT stop hitting each other. I think it’s because, generally my class this year is really immature. It’s usually not a major argument or fight, just the occasional “HIT”, for whatever reason. And of course reasons really DON”T matter. Hitting is unacceptable.
So far I have handled episodes in house. That is, I have worked out consequences within the room, without referring anyone to the Principal. But it hasn’t stopped, and if anything has actually escalated lately. So today, my two most frequent culprits were actually hitting each other as I picked them up from lunch and one of them started to cry. So I marched them over to the office and wrote them up, with the whole class watching. One father came right down after the assistant principal called the house and picked his child up. “He will not do THAT again…..” the father said as they left. I hope I don’t have to refer the parent to Child Protective Services, but I do want the behavior to stop and nothing I was doing in the room seemed to work.
The assistant principal got real mad at the other one as she brought them back. He was entering the room with a smile on his face and she thought that was inappropriate. I had to explain that a) he was probably going to be special ed. and b) I don’t think the smile is defiant, I think he is a clueless little Hispanic boy (and by that I just mean that he is very limited in English) who just doesn’t understand and his response is to smile and nod at everything that’s said to him. She thought about that for a minute and it changed her attitude a lot.
Teaching Kindergarten/1st Grade 