1. Student Teaching Journal Excerpt
Mattoon Elementary School
Miriam Larson
Thursday, Sept 20
I have been surprised by how well behaved students at Mattoon are, especially in
comparison to the classes that I observed in Champaign during my practicum. However,
Mattoon isn’t without its discipline problems, as the book fair theft incident and an
incident today illustrate.
The incident today was not particularly egregious. I was reading a book aloudto
first graders and there were several students who were chatting in one corner. After two
warnings, I moved one of them to a different seat. That seemed to resolve the chatting
issue, but when I went to the other side of the library to get the class’ library cards, I
found out that the mischief was not yet over. When I came back to the class, a kid yelled
out “he bonked me on the head!” This was the same student I’d asked to move so I asked
him to sit in timeout for his third offense. When everyone had been dismissed, I went to
talk with him.
The most interesting thing about our conversation was that, after some
questioning, he explained his reason for hitting the other kid: he was bored. I was
surprised to hear him admit this and thanked him for his honesty. Then I asked him to
think of other things he might do if we were bored, actions that wouldn’t be hurtful to
other people. What could he think about? What was he interested in? “I don’t know.
Nothing,” he said. But I told him I didn’t believe that he had no interests and eventually
we figured out that he was going to check out a superman book. I suggested that maybe
he could think about superman instead of doings something hurtful to someone else.
When there is time for this kind of conversation – which there often isn’t – I
really appreciate the chance to help students understand their motives and find alternative
ways to deal with their feelings. In this case, I got the feeling that I’d heard this boy out
and gotten some sense of who he is, rather than just branding him as a trouble-maker.