An anecdotal report from the diary of a
teacher
If I am asked to share a
challenge that I faced during my teaching in the classroom environment, I would
most probably say that classroom management issue is the biggest problem I have
faced till now. When I look at the past, especially at my internship teaching
experiences, I see that everything does not work just as you think before. In
other words, although we prepare ourselves with wonderful lesson plans previously,
we even write some expected problems on those lesson plans, there are always
appearing some unexpected of unexpected problems in the classroom. Namely, things
don't work out as one calculates in the classroom and these things were
generally management related ones for me.
As I stated in this blog in
the earlier posts, in my internship year, in the spring term, I went to Atatürk
Anatolian High School as an intern student. My students were 15-16 years old
and the class size was 32 students totally. In my first teaching in that class,
I noticed that only boys were participating to my lesson while girls were just
sitting passively and examining me, my clothes, my walking around the desks. Whatever
I did in order to have the girls participate to my lesson did not work out that
day effectively. So, when the time for my second teaching came, I was a bit
intimidated because I knew that even though I had planned beforehand and wrote
to the lesson plan that students would do so in this activity, they would not
do exactly what I want them. So when I went into the classroom for my second
teaching, this time I was both afraid of happening the same thing and
determined to attend to all students.
Coming to the second
teaching day, when I first jumped into the board at the very beginning of the
lesson, when I asked some warm up questions, again boys answered my questions
but girls did not care about them at all. So, in order to have them
participate, I started to tell some kind of girlish stuff so that I can take
their attention. By doing so, I should accept that I took the first pace for
reaching to the girls. Then, as the lesson goes on, I always played for the girls;
try to attract them because boys were already continuing to participate the
lesson. In that day, I also understood that it was not about me, the successful
ones in that classroom were boys, and also in the mentor teacher’s classes, the
girls generally did not participate to the lessons. Hence, actually, trying to
attend to the girls would be also contributing to the future classes of the
mentor.
Regarding of the solution to
the problem, as I expressed, from the very beginning of the classroom, I tried
to attract girls’ attention, I created girlish situations, questions. I said
that “We all make mistakes so do not afraid to do mistake.” So, I tried to
encourage them to speak up in the classroom because it was so clear that there
were boys’ dominance and when the girls do mistakes, they are generally mocked
and they lose eagerness/ enthusiasm of course. So, as time goes on, I started
to see some girls raising hands and then I felt that they were feeling freer to
talk comparing to the previous lesson. So, here one more time , I saw that
instead of just ignoring the ones who are not successful in the classroom
environment and who are passive ones, by playing for them, by attending to
them also, by giving special need and care
to them, we can , most of the time,
