My first 'lesson' and a comparison of two boys

"Don't use a shotgun when you can use a beebee gun"
-Dennis Gray, my VP on discipline. A piece of advice he was given when he was a student teacher. And sound advice I think it is, too.

On September 16th I had my first opportunity to lead something in front of students. It was a warm up, a logic problem. They had signs to indicate who they were, and using the given clues we were supposed to figure out who was sitting where. It went pretty well considering I barely had time to read the problem before I had to lead it in front of the class. It was pretty simple but there was lots of extra information, so I got a little confused. I mostly led discussion having everyone work together to solve the problem. I hope that was ok. I didn't think the kids would know how to tackle it without guidence. They had fun, had great suggestions (the ones who were participating). I tried to call on a variety of students, without putting anyone on the spot too much. I choose some of the quieter lower achieving students to be the models up in front of the class. they found it particularly silly when I was refering to who was 'married' to who according to the problem. It so happened that one really little guy was 'married' to a girl who was much more mature then him (and attractive as well, with heavy makeup). Everyone thought that was very funny, but it was a good natured laugh, not cruel or mocking. The biggest problem I have with the way that I led the warm up was near the end, a student didn't want to follow directions and I chose to confront him about it, and nearly entered into a power struggle, I realized what I was doing and was trying to figure out some way to divert the conversation, when Mrs. Keener chimed in with new directions. Obvilously I could have had some planning and preperation time, but I thought it went well, all things considered.

I noticed another example of the strange way that sixth graders act. There are two boys in particular that epitmize stereotypes that would typically be the brunt of teasing and bullying. One boy is very social and intelligent, but he is extremely small, his face is somewhat oddly shaped, his voice is very high pitched, and he behaves in a way that is often easy to laugh at. His handwritting is attrocious but he puts effort into compleating his assigments, and he's signed up for the football team. The second boy is overweight, socially awkward, and often smells a little bad. He is not articulate, his jokes don't always make sense, and some times what he says in general doesn't make sense. He wants to be friends with people, but is as of yet unable to make positive connections with other students, or teacher for that matter. Despite the first boy being easy to pick on, and feminine and everything the other students go out of their way to include him, be nice to him, joke with him and even protect him. Whereas the second boy is slowly being ostracized. I have yet to witness any outright teasing, bullying or anything, but it is easy to gauge the students attitudes towards him, and they are not benevolent. It seems to me the key difference between these two students are their social skills. While the first boy is limited in physical ways, he has adequate social skills to fit in, the second boy may not be as physically limited as the first, but his lack of social competancy sends his peers a message that he is not someone they want to be friends with. I don't know about either of their backgrouds, if they have 504s or IEPs, but it is particularly important that the second boy recieves some sort of help or training or something to help him to interact socially in a constructive manner.