Pick your battles!!!

This week my favorite moment was going to accelerated reader celebration for the students who have met their reading goal this year. They got a chance to see the author Michael Harmon and ask him questions. A lot of students seem really enthusiastic. The author had hard life growing up and he never graduated, so encouraging students to read to better their life and to achieve their goals, I think made a difference to them.

            The lesson that I have learned from my teacher this week was “to pick your battles”. You cannot get students for everything. You cannot reprimand them for everything. So, sometimes you gotta pick your battles, what is most important to you, what you will not tolerate. I feel like it is something I can use that in my teaching, because I do not want to be a classroom management Nazi, but I also do not want to be a push over.

            Now, there was a conflicting situation during the accelerated reader celebration. Some of the students few rows behind kept clapping very loudly, loudly to the point that is disruptive and made everyone’s ears hurt. They kept continually doing it and no one stopped them. The other students tried to tell them to stop, but it only made them do it more. For me, I did not know as a practicum teacher how to handle that, how much control to exhibit. The other teachers who were near by ignored it, but for me it was hard. So what would you do? What can you do?