A new strategy:
Brown Bag Day - This strategy was learned while in attendance at a CTC new teachers conference. This strategy is useful for implementing and continuing classroom management.
~ Students are separated by classes and period. Classes are able to earn points through positive behavior such as full attendance, homework completion, competitions, and by exhibiting scholarly behavior. Middle schoolers, by nature, are notoriously hungry individuals. Snacks and food are not typically allowed within my classroom. When students accrue a certain amount of points, their class earns a "brown bag day" in which I supply them a small brown lunch bag that they are allowed to fill completely full of whatever snacks they wish from home and allowed to bring this into class and eat while completing a fun, but educational activity. By implementing this, students become very motivated to help their fellow classmates remember what scholarly behavior looks like when they temporarily forget. This activity is more useful than bringing in snacks, or other prizes that can potentially be against school policy or harsh on teacher pockets. After implementing this reward system, student behavior became a lot more manageable as students really wanted to receive the reward.
Example of student success:
After trying multiple strategies to help curve negative behavior and apathy in my 7th-period class, I tried the above mentioned "brown bag day" strategy. After a week of keeping track of the points, I had buy-in from ninety percent of the students. If a student interrupted a lesson, those around them would try to correct the behavior before I had to address it. After a while, this class, which was the worst-performing and lowest average grade, began to show enough improvement to be closer in participation and grade average as my honors class.
Statement from an educational leader:
"Mr. Allen is an excellent addition to the team at Mesa Linda. You would not know that he was a first year teacher; he did an amazing job. His students made huge gains in their academics and he did a fabulous job instructing his students. Mr. Allen established positive rapport in his classroom. Mr. Allen attended all of the additional instructional trainings at the school site and was always seeking to improve his practice. He is a team player and a welcome addition to our team."
~Alicia Tuttle
Principal of Mesa Linda Middle School