A Cardinal Rule of Teaching

Today I almost broke one of my cardinal rules of teaching: never give homework or book work as a punishment for or a threat against misbehavior. My class wasn't really misbehaving, but they were getting on my nerves. I started class like usual with roll and then checked to see if they had done their homework. While I was checking homework I made a comment about "My wife..." and that started a flood of questions. I had no problem with this - it was the first time many had asked about me and I was willing to share. So I told them about how Salem and I ended up here and a little bit about where we're from. They loved it - especially when I told them why Michigan is the coolest state. (If you don't know, it's because you can show someone where you live or grew up in Michigan on your hands.) After our digression I wrangled them back to practicing TOEFL, but there were still one or two students who kept asking me questions. Like I said, I don't mind answering questions but sometimes I just don't want to talk about things with my students. Like, whether or not Salem and I want kids. They can ask, but I'm not going to talk about it with them. Well, no matter how many times I said no, one or two of them kept asking, "Teacher, do you want to have kids?" This was the point when I almost uttered the words: "If you don't stop asking me that I will assign you extra homework..." But I caught myself, took a deep breath, and continued teaching. It was frustrating, but demonstrates that I need to work on controlling how much I talk about and to nip-in-the-bud any potential problem questions a lot quicker. I know this is all a part of continuing to learn how to teach better, but it can be irratating to learn by doing.

On another note, I had a great lesson with 5th Secretarial! They presented and turned in their projects for "Create Your Own Planet" and man, was I ever surprised. I had three or four students create models of their planets, one student had a poster that had a Jupiter-like ring popping out of the page, and I had another student bring in a small tapestry with a Buddhist god on it from which she had drawn inspiration for the life forms on her planet. Needless to say, I was very pleased and I asked their permission to take pictures of their projects. Later I will share my lesson plan from this activity and some pictures from this activity.