On Your Best Behavior

Episode Transcript

KANIKA CHADDA GUPTA [00:00:00]:
Last time on Year One, Jenna spent her first couple of weeks in a constant state of experimentation, trying to set up rules and routines for her brand new classroom.

JENNA MACNULTY [00:00:11]:
There are so many things that I already want to change and I already want to do, oh, this is not going to work. Oh, this works. I need to keep it. This is not working. But it's too late to fix that because I already taught it to him that way. Very, very early on. I had that realization where I'm like, okay, we're learning as we go and we have to be flexible.

KANIKA CHADDA GUPTA [00:00:28]:
On this episode, with a routine starting to take shape and the classroom boundaries solidifying, Jenna discovers she has a number of students who are eager to test her.

JENNA MACNULTY [00:00:40]:
I had a kid take out her umbrella and hide under it behind a bookshelf for 35 minutes because she refused to work. Nowhere is it written if a kid takes out an umbrella and hides behind a bookcase and refuses to work. You do this.

KANIKA CHADDA GUPTA [00:00:56]:
This is Year One from Carnegie Learning, a podcast that chronicles all the ups and downs of one teacher's first year in the classroom. I'm your host, KANIKA CHADDA GUPTA Chadda Gupta. Jenna spent her first couple of weeks as a third grade teacher, getting to know her new students and establishing the day to day rules of the classroom. In the weeks that follow, first impressions start to give way to the reality of the students Jenna is going to be teaching this year.

JENNA MACNULTY [00:01:27]:
My room is just a lot of behavior problems. A lot of kids who were on my quote unquote, like good kid list, like always doing the right thing, they're starting to test the waters and I already have about like five or six real behavior problems in my room. So yeah, definitely honeymoon phase is over.

KANIKA CHADDA GUPTA [00:01:47]:
In classrooms across America, first year teachers like Jenna face an increasingly complex challenge. Beyond mastering lesson plans and building rapport with students, these new educators must quickly adapt to managing a wide array of behavioral challenges. Issues that can range from attention deficit and defiance to emotional disturbances, posing significant hurdles to effective teaching and student development.

JENNA MACNULTY [00:02:15]:
As my principal put it the other day after she observed me, she said, your classroom is just a bunch of squirrels. When my attention is on those kids that need that redirection or additional support, in that moment, everybody else is out of their seats doing things, laughing at that person. So it's really hard to balance.

KANIKA CHADDA GUPTA [00:02:36]:
And the pandemic only intensified things. Younger students had to grapple with heightened anxiety, social isolation, and disruptive routines at a crucial learning stage of their lives. According to a study, kindergarten through 12th grade students during the first two and a half years of COVID collectively gained just 65% of the knowledge and skills they would have in a normal year. This had effects on students emotional resilience and their ability to engage positively in the classroom and has placed even more demands on teachers just trying to maintain productivity.

JENNA MACNULTY [00:03:13]:
The biggest thing that I'm struggling with is just the kids who refuse. Like the kids who straight up, I'll say, please come back to your seat. They'll say, no. I'll say, all right, then I'm going to give you the choice. You can either sit here or you can sit here and we're going to focus and do our work. No, that's stupid. I'm not going to do that. And I'm at the point where I'm like, I don't know if it's just a first year teacher me of me being like, I don't really know how I'm supposed to go about this or where the line is of where I get admin involved and where it's just me having expectations and setting harder lines for all of that sort of thing.

JENNA MACNULTY [00:03:44]:
I can deal with the chattiness, I can deal with the kids who have a bad day every once in a while, but it's just the continual refusal. It's like, that's just not going to fly.

KANIKA CHADDA GUPTA [00:03:56]:
Jenna's fellow first year teacher at her school, who's also named Jenna, is going through similar issues.

JENNA [00:04:04]:
I have a couple kids that struggle with impulsivity. It's like a combination of struggling to not blurred out and also juggling to be kind. Name calling has been a big one for me lately. So it's hard as a teacher to see, like, kids not being kind to somebody else in your room. That makes me more frustrated than other things that I see. I didn't expect it to be so hard for me to stay regulated with, you know, all the things happening in the classroom, because I. I never faced a time in student teaching where I was like, I need to take a step back so that I can handle this the right way. But then I had my own class and I was like, oh, my gosh.

JENNA [00:04:48]:
I never knew that a student could make me feel so overwhelmed or so frustrated or, you know, run out of patients in that way.

KANIKA CHADDA GUPTA [00:04:58]:
When it comes to addressing any disruptive student behaviors, teachers have to take a nuanced approach that balances discipline with understanding. They can't just maintain the order of the room. They also have to foster a supportive and engaging educational environment for their students.

MAGGIE [00:05:17]:
I had a student that they would say he was a runner or what we call elopement.

KANIKA CHADDA GUPTA [00:05:23]:
This is MAGGIE. You met her on our last episode. She's a teacher of 15 years and hails from the midwest.

MAGGIE [00:05:30]:
That means they would leave the classroom without being asked or just leaving whenever they wanted to. And I tried to be honest with kids, you know, when I talked to them, and I had this little student, and he's kind of quiet, and he told me he was just gonna walk out of my classroom, and I said, okay. And he was like, okay. I said, yeah. I said, go ahead, walk out of the classroom. He said, well, I'm just gonna walk out, and I'm gonna walk through that door into the parking lot. And I said, okay, go ahead. Walk out that door in that parking lot.

MAGGIE [00:06:00]:
And he was like, kind of looked at me, and I said, when you do that, then you can call and talk to your mom and tell her why you walked out of that parking lot. So I said, you want to walk out in that parking lot and talk to your mom? You want to go to lunch? I think I'm going to go to lunch. And I said, okay. I think so, too. I said, let's go to lunch.

KANIKA CHADDA GUPTA [00:06:17]:
In Jenna's class, some students are just pushing her limits. She can't handle all of this solo.

JENNA MACNULTY [00:06:25]:
I mean, I try to talk to them and explain why we're doing what we're doing, first of all, so they understand, like, there's a reason behind it. It's not just busy work. It's not just the teacher telling me to do something. I explain why we're doing it, and then if they're still refusing, I try to give them an option of how we can do it, but modify it so it's a little more comfortable for them, if that's the issue or whatnot.

KANIKA CHADDA GUPTA [00:06:47]:
Thankfully, Jenna is not alone. A network of administrators, mentors, and school resources are crucial in supporting first year teachers through the ups and downs when it comes to addressing disruptive student behavior.

JENNA MACNULTY [00:07:02]:
Every teacher has, like, a walkie talkie radio, and you can call for admin or counselors or resource teachers or just general support if you're, like, in a crisis. So it's nice to have that, like, immediate support of if you try x and you try y and you try z and nothing is working, then you can go to the radio for additional support, and they're really good about someone being there as soon as possible. Like, you do everything you can in your classroom first, and then if it's a continuous problem, then come to us. But as a first year teacher calling for that help, makes you feel like you lost the battle. You know what I mean?

KANIKA CHADDA GUPTA [00:07:39]:
Even veteran teachers can't do this job all on their own. They need support from staff and administration to succeed. Without it, the job can become impossible to navigate. MAGGIE, who we just heard from, stayed at her first school for a decade. And with each year, she found it more and more difficult to do what she loves without the backing she desperately needed.

MAGGIE [00:08:04]:
By my 10th year, I just kind of felt like the support that I needed as an educator coming from above me wasn't there. And every year just kept getting more and more rough. When you're a teacher, you try to build that community with parents and kids and support not only from outside the classroom, with families, but also support within the school school that you're in. And when that support isn't there, it can become really rough. For teachers, it's already a lot. You're also responsible for 22 to 25 lives of teaching them to read and write in mathematics. And when you have kids coming in and they may be in survival mode, you know, they don't know what it's going to be like when they get home. You are the only structure in their life, and depending on that relationship with the parents, too, you know, sometimes teachers are doing everything they can.

MAGGIE [00:08:58]:
And I had a situation with just some things that were going on in my classroom, and it just really kind of popped my bubble of, I don't think I can do this teaching anymore. And so, like I said, support from within the school district and then what was going on outside of the school and homes and things was just making it really hard for the students I was trying to deal with and teach, and we would sit in the lounge sometimes and joke around, like, oh, next year, do you want to be a flight attendant? Well, I could go work at Chick fil A. You know, I can handle customers who aren't happy about their chicken nuggets. I mean, that would be easy compared to some things that we do. I mean, we laugh and joke, but at the same time, I mean, we take it very seriously as teachers. I mean, it's very personal. Whenever, you know, a kid's struggling or a parent isn't happy with you because you want those kids to be successful and you want that connection. And when you don't have it, I mean, I can kind of take it personally.

MAGGIE [00:09:54]:
It's my job, you know, my job is to take care of kids, to teach them, and hopefully to grow up and be a good citizen later on, you know, to teach them to read so they can get that first job or their driver's license. And so whenever parents think, or you've been told, like, you're not doing your job right and everything, you can't say anything to that parent because they don't know everything that goes on that classroom. They don't know the dynamics of it all, because we have to be very private about things, too. We can't tell everybody everything.

KANIKA CHADDA GUPTA [00:10:23]:
Asking for help in any job is hard, but it's really difficult when you're in a new role and feel insecure about your abilities. You can easily feel like a failure when all you need is the confidence to keep going.

JENNA MACNULTY [00:10:40]:
I think a lot of it is like the learning curve. I don't want to feel like I'm just jumping to that safety net right away. Like, I want to test the waters and see what I can do. Because there is no cheat sheet of, like, if a student does this, teacher should do this as a consequence. If a student does this, a teacher should do this as a consequence. There's no. There's no guide. So I think a lot of it is, like, when something happens, I'm like, oh, I haven't really set the expectation for that.

JENNA MACNULTY [00:11:08]:
Like, if the admin would come and help me in that case scenario, and they would be like, what have you done in the past? I would be like, nothing because it hasn't been a problem before. You know what I mean? So I think a lot of it is just, like, my pride being a first year teacher, being like, no, I need to be able to, like, the only way I'm going to learn is if I handle it myself. And also, at the end of the day, I know that I'm the only person in my classroom all day long with all of these kids. Like, if I don't solve the problem and if they don't see me solving the problem, then the rest of the students are going to view me as not the disciplinary. They're going to view me as the teacher and not the disciplinary. But I need to be both in order for them to respect me. But it's hard when kids are throwing chairs and walking up and leaving, and then you have to get other people involved, and then it just feels like a loss because you're like, well, I had to call for help, but that's not what it is. So I need to fix that mindset and, you know, twist that around.

KANIKA CHADDA GUPTA [00:12:03]:
In her first month on the job, Jenna is encountering new firsts almost every day when it comes to student behavior. Thankfully, unlike MAGGIE's experience, Jenna is learning that her school's administrative support team actually has her back.

JENNA MACNULTY [00:12:19]:
At the beginning of the year, when I was really struggling with one of my students behaviorally, I reached out to her and my vice principal being like, hey, I'm really struggling with this kid. Like, he's a special education student. So I, like, have talked to his resource teacher, and we've tried so many different things, and it's just not working so pretty swiftly. We ended up having, like, a whole meeting with me, the vice principal, his resource teacher, and our behavioral specialist at the school. So I was like, it's nice that I could, like, reach out, being like, these are my concerns. And then there was actually something that came from it, whether or not, like, their suggestions actually helped or not, like, they were listening. Like, they took the time to sit down and listen to me.

KANIKA CHADDA GUPTA [00:13:01]:
Asking for help is one thing, but one incident in particular escalated to a level Jenna's never seen before, and she has to write her first disciplinary referral.

JENNA MACNULTY [00:13:15]:
Tensions are already high and indoor recess, as it is all the time. But in this particular case, I had students who were fighting. They said some very inappropriate things to each other, so I had to write a referral. And I was so, like, beside myself. I didn't know what to do because I was like, this was so inappropriate. Like, I don't even know how I'm supposed to handle this.

KANIKA CHADDA GUPTA [00:13:36]:
A disciplinary referral is a formal documentation process that a teacher submits when a student's behavior violates the school or classroom rules. Administrators then review the referral and may take further disciplinary action.

JENNA MACNULTY [00:13:51]:
Luckily, I have an awesome team who I was like, I don't know what to do with this information. And they were like, this is what you should do. So they walked me through it. She literally sat next to me while I wrote it. And my counselor, she actually took my class for, like, 15 minutes. She grabbed a book from her room, and she decided to, like, pull everyone to the carpet and read them a story while I filled out this form, because I. She could tell that I, like, just wanted to get it done because I was stressed about it. So she was like, you know what? I'm going to take your kids.

JENNA MACNULTY [00:14:18]:
You write it, you walk down to the office, you go put it in the mailbox, you're good.

KANIKA CHADDA GUPTA [00:14:23]:
While Jenna's struggles with disorderly behavior tests the limits of her patients and even her resolve, there have been some bright spots, too.

JENNA MACNULTY [00:14:34]:
Just incredibly reactive. Like, he just finds the negative in everything. And I've been able to talk him off a ledge many a times I've kind of figured out, not figured out because I still struggle with him and his attitude all the time, but I've kind of figured out sometimes how to kind of flip the script and try to find the positive with him. And I'm starting to also learn that, like, one of my students who really struggles loves being praised. Like, anytime he's doing the right thing, I have to say it out loud because that's the only thing that will keep him going. So, like, I know everyone says, like, relationships are the most important, but I mean, it's true, the longer you know them, the more you're going to be able to handle them. And that's what I'm finding too. Like, yes, the behaviors are getting worse as the year goes on because they're getting more comfortable, but also I know them now, or at least I'm starting to.

KANIKA CHADDA GUPTA [00:15:23]:
The first month of school is undeniably chaotic. Imposter syndrome, fear of failure and decision fatigue lurk down every hallway. So it's important to savor every win when you can.

JENNA MACNULTY [00:15:37]:
Are most of them doing what they're supposed to be doing? No. But are some of them growing and learning from these scenarios in the classroom? Yes. It's just going to take a hot minute. It's exhausting and I can feel like it's starting to take a toll on me. But overall, I'm still chugging along. I'm still going, but like, it's real. It's a lot of work.

KANIKA CHADDA GUPTA [00:16:04]:
This is Year One, an exploration of one teacher's first year in the classroom, brought to you by Carnegie learning. Join us for the rest of the series as we follow Jenna through every moment. And be sure to follow Miss MacNulty on Instagram and TikTok to keep up with her. For exclusive additional content free teaching resources and more, visit year onepodcast.com. Next time on Year One, Jenna's first disciplinary referral causes her to face her greatest fear of all, contacting parents over the phone.

JENNA MACNULTY [00:16:43]:
I wrote a literal script of what I was going to say before I called her. Literally, like a sheet of paper with three fourths of it filled with just full sentences from start to finish. I was so nervous. I'm pretty sure I just sounded like a robot, like reading from a literal page paper, because that's what I was doing.