City School Stories

Reflections of an Author

Submitted by Frank Murphy, Oct. 5, 2010

The newness of the school year has begun to fade.  Students and teachers are falling into the routines and procedures of their classrooms.  September is done.  Now the real business of “getting to know” you gets underway for everyone.

October is the month when testing begins.  Teachers will prepare quizzes and exams in order to assess their students’ knowledge.  Students will examine their teachers’ actions as they deal with their behaviors.  They will test the limits.

Friendships will be renewed and new ones will be formed.  Children will compete for each other’s attention as well as that of the teacher.  Conflicts will emerge. Disputes will brew. Fights will erupt.  How teachers handle these developing dynamics during the next few weeks will set the tone in their classrooms for the remainder of the year.

It is the work of teachers and principals to firmly and fairly manage the behavior of their students.  If this task is not dealt with well, then the learning environment will suffer.   This is not an easy job.

The difficulty of this work is explored in the next several installments of Confessions of an Urban Principal.   In these accounts the effects of student misbehavior on the climate of Meade will be described.   Similar scenes are happening now in a school or schools somewhere in our city.

How well is the start of the new year going at your school?

Reflections of an Author

Submitted by Frank Murphy, Sept. 21, 2010

In yesterday’s installment of Confessions of an Urban Principal I described how one parent put a damper on the first day of school for the Kindergarten students. On Wednesday I will introduce another parent who created a disruption in the first floor hallway of the school. In the weeks and months ahead, other parents will be introduced in the regularly posted installments of Confessions of an Urban Principal.

It is difficult to create a safe and orderly school when there are adults in the school community who are acting out in an angry and scary manner. The presences of several of these parents in a school would impede the success of any school reform effort. This is an obstacle that is often ignored by the reformers who proclaim the slogan of “Make No Excuses.”