Notebook Communication

As a teacher every year you will have a student that will be hard to deal with.This year I had one, every time the child would go home they would have a different story to tell that was not always true. In class this student knew all the right buttons to push, trying to raise my blood purser. So I need a new way to reach the student, what I was trying was not working, I tired to let the child know we are a team and to get through the day we needed each other that did not work. I tried comprising with the child, I tried letting the student know how the behavior was affect the class on a whole and how it distracts others; nothing was working. I even let the student pick there own seat, I talked to parents and just to say I noticed why the student was having issues was an understatement. The parent complete that maybe it was me "I was the problem ..." or my tone when I talk was the main problem."Really!" That was what I thought to myself, I was set out to prove the parent wrong. "I know so not the right spirit"

I deiced to stop reprimanding the student verbaly and started to keep a note book communication log. So for example one day I asked the student to have a seat, I must of asked like 5 times and then I stop asking and wrote in the notebook "How many times would you like me to ask you to have a seat before you seat down, I have already asked you 5 times so please give me a reasonable number." The student than sat down and then wrote to me that they were sorry and that 5 times was more then enogh, I then asked if their was a reason for being out of the seat and no answer was given. On other days the student and I would write back and forth, I then started trying this with other students. I asked the student if my tone affected how they answered me they said no your fine we give you a hard time some days. I was blown away when they admited it because this whole time I though it was just in my head. They said that I was a smart teacher and I always change things on them they wanted to see what I had next in my bag of tricks. I was done cause I had no bag of tricks no clue what they were talking about.

I kept the note book up mostly for documentaion reason I use the students responces when I needed to show them undersatnding and reason of the events in our communcation log I also could use it at parent teacher confrences to show how the student responed to their own behavior. When asking a question in the book to a student their responce made them take ownwership of their behaviors.

I loved the notebook communication log, in my class it saved me a lot of headaches.