Bode Week 8

          Back in week 6, I believe, I noticed that the discipline system my teacher had in place was a good in theory but maybe not clicking with the students. I felt this way because the students seem to forget that the number of checks they get during the week means that many minutes taken away from their choice time friday. My feeling is that students don't understand the consequences of their actions yet, therefore this is teaching them that responsibility, but what I wondered last week about needing to remind students of this system I noticed happening these past few weeks. Every monday my teacher will remind the students at the beginning of the day that "everybody in the classroom has 0 checks right now, that means that you all have all of your choice time...so let's try to keep up the good behavior and no checks!" Students are somewhat reminded throughout the day on monday and these reminders go away as the day goes on. My MT feels its fair to give students a couple reminders the first day but after that you have to start giving out checks again. If you keep reminding them with no consequences of a check, well then they're just going to keep behaving that inappropriate way. Even after students were reminded, the ones who tend to act out and get the most checks were doing things like not listening or talking when during class which results in checks.
          What this tells me is maybe it's not the system that is flawed or not pushing discipline enough, maybe it's some of these students who have reoccurring bad behavior. They get reminded every monday about the check system starting all over again and at choice time every friday they have to sit out from choice time (almost the whole time they are given) because they received too many checks over the week. After they are done with their sitting out time my MT or I has a little talk with them about "ways we can improve for next week so we avoid so many checks." On top of all these reminders my MT added a new detail to her system, sending a note home saying how many checks the student got that week; if it was over 4 then the student had to get the paper signed by their parent and bring it back in. It was incredible that the students who got 1 or 2 checks had parents email or write notes back to my MT asking what happened or how they can improve. Meanwhile, the students who got like 14 or 17 checks just had their parents sign without a note or any comments. This is important to me because I really feel like parent involvement is so heavily linked to students success and it's so interesting to see that the discipline system we use is being understood by those students who hardly misbehave yet hardly being acknowledged by those don't. Maybe students who get constant reminders need more attention and support inside the classroom because they don't get enough at home. Maybe i need to remember that the next time one of those students acts out and doesn't seem to relieve what he/she did wrong.