Discipline. It's eating up all of my creativity. I have to spend so much time and effort keeping the kids in order that it's a new challenge to come up with the best forms of discipline.
The standard thing I do is to tell someone to leave for 10 minutes or the rest of the period. But that's only if they're being incredibly disruptive to everyone else. I'll tell kids to stand up for an indefinite amount of time, stand against a wall in front of everyone, sit in a different place in the room, put their books on the floor (if they're doing work for another class), if they fall asleep I'll stomp the ground right next to them, if I'm asking a question and they're talking I'll make them answer the question (they'll say they don't know and I'll tell them it's because they were talking), or if they're being really obnoxious, I'll hand them my notes and tell them to teach. That last one is quite effective because the kids give them more crap than they do me, and it begins to be obvious to the student what I have to go through.
Basically, I try to keep my demeanor very calm and confident, even though I might not be. Some kids were speaking Changana in class while drawing some cells (speaking Changana is strictly forbidden) and so I stood directly in front of them so they couldn't see. They complained, then I told them that their not being able to see the board is like me not being able to understand what they're saying. I think they got it.
But even when my back is turned, I'm listening to who's talking and isolating exactly who it is by taking little peeks. It's a fun game, and it's fun to see their reactions when I walk right up to them after they thought they were being so anonymous. Sometimes I wait until I'm done writing something very long on the board, letting them talk, then I walk over, tell them to stand up and read what I just wrote out loud 5 times in a row. The theory is that they want to be talking, so I let them talk all they want - but in front of everyone.
Other ideas I'm kicking around include having them run laps around the school and sitting on the wall (hurts after a while). But I will NEVER lay a finger on them.
Peace
John
