Well today is the first day of my new rules for this class of freshmen. There are a lot of good kids in the 9th grade class, but the maturity level is something you would find in a your average 3rd grade room. My old method of pushing the responsibility on to the students to get them to realize that they had to grow up, just wasn't working for this batch which is unfortunate because that is really the easiest way for them to go.
I've had to institute some draconian rules regarding passes and tardies that I haven't ever had to do before. If you knew how much I hate making rules for the sake of having rules then you would know that this is not a decision I made lightly.
The one thing that keeps letting me know I'm on the right path is there are a few students in the room that seem to actually be glad that I'm not putting up with some of the nonsense that was so frequently associated with this class in the past. Those students are really stepping up and doing far better and taking far more pride in their work than I had seen from them at the beginning of the year.
We'll see if that continues or not. I know that a lot of what I wrote is very vague, but I'm not all that comfortable speaking of my students in a public forum. Suffice it to say that I do what I do for the good of the student and not because I like to lord some sort of fictional authority over them.
