u/Fantastic_Double7430

First year teacher here. My classroom management lacked a lot in the year because I was focusing mostly on content. Luckily, I have a lot of curriculum built now so next year I can focus more on management. My kids aren’t super bad, but I need advice because I know it came from just lack of consistency.

I’m a young female teacher and I’m pretty tiny. I’m usually perceived as “nice”, which I think is somewhat good but I don’t like it as a compliment for teaching bc that could also mean pushover. My school doesn’t have a no phone policy, so some of my biggest struggles with classroom management have been phones and kids talking while I’m talking. It’s so disrespectful to me when I’m giving instructions and a handful of kids are on their phones, but admin doesn’t have anything to back me up on that. Regarding kids talking while I’m talking, I don’t let them do that now, like I pause and call them out or wait etc etc, but it’s a constant thing I have to do just because I wasn’t strict enough about that earlier in the year. I just let side bar conversations go on which was such a mistake. I’ve caught a handful of kids cheating recently, using AI apps to scan and write lab reports, do their assignments in class, etc. and they cheat right in front of me. I give them zeroes when I catch them, but it’s so frustrating. Oh yeah, a couple periods have always been in the habit of stopping ~5 min before the bell and starting to stand by the door which bothers me so much. I tried telling them for a couple months not to do that but it literally just kept reappearing as an issue. Again, my fault, but certain things I gave up on because they didn’t seem like worthy battles, but now I have a ton of small battles seeming like one big one.

I just feel like they perceive me as stupid and I know it’s because I haven’t been firm enough in the beginning of the year. I let too much slide and now I know next year to be more consistent from the very first day of school, but honestly I also was nervous because I was a new teacher both in general and to the school and was unsure of my power. I’ve been very good with routines, like I definitely keep the kids busy and that helps, but it’s more so the demanding respect aspect that I struggle with. This late in the year, I’ve struggled because I’ve been trying to implement that but they’re not used to be snapping about phones and demanding their attention which is completely my fault, but I’ve lost multiple of them in multiple periods. Again, they’re not bad kids and don’t do anything referral worthy, it’s just a reflection of my lack of follow through and I feel embarrassed. There’s only a couple weeks left in this school year, but I need advice for the next year and how to prevent this from happening.

I’m actually an honors chem teacher and I want to obviously best prepare my students for AP chem while staying within the parameters of honors. If you took honors chem and learned things that helped you in AP chem, please specify what they are!

The extra topics we cover include:
-wavelength & energy calculations
-quantum numbers
-bond energy (considering taking this out? Not sure)
-periodic trends & couloumb’s law
-hybridization
-IMFs
-oxidation numbers
-Vapor pressure, collecting gas over water
-Partial pressures w/mole fractions
-Electrolytes
-Net ionic equations
-Strong/weak acids (conceptual, no Ka/Kb calculations)
-Buffers (conceptual, no calculations)
-Titrations
-Calorimetry
-Hess’s Law
-Calculating K (no ICE tables)
-LeChat
-Identifying oxidized and reduced
-writing half reactions & balancing

If you have any input of if any of these helped you and/or anything you would add (again, fitting within the parameters of first year chem), that would be helpful.

Hi,

I teach honors chem and I just tried to take the AP chem MCQ and I honestly didn’t know how to answer most of it. I teach topics in honors that connect to AP and help prepare the students (for example net ionic equations, Hess’s law, IMFs, partial pressures, etc.) so I thought I would be able to understand most of the AP content but I was surprised.

I’m weirdly stressed that I lack that content knowledge. I don’t want to teach AP chem ever and my school has the position filled, but in a way I’m feeling like an impostor for not knowing AP level of my content area lol. It’s been so long since college too. Am I over stressing or is this ultimately important?

Hi everyone,

Does anybody have an honors chemistry / chemistry summer assignment? I did not do one last year but have a few kids who probably should have dropped earlier. I want to make some kind of algebra based review bc they need higher level math skills. However, not sure if this is helpful since AI exists and I know the other option is to quiz them when they get back, but if I give an algebra test to a chemistry class I’m not if I’ll get in trouble for that lol.

If anybody has a good summer assignment for honors chem, that would be helpful. Thank you!

Out of RHS, Citrus Valley, and REV, which high school is the best and why?

Hi,

I teach HS science and have noticed many teachers moving towards not lecturing at all. Many of my colleagues just have the kids copy notes from their Chromebooks into their notes packet and that’s it. They don’t really go over the content and then the rest of it is projects and activities and then the test.

When I give the kids notes, I lecture. Not a crazy amount, like I don’t stand up there for the entire period, but I explain the concepts with them and work out examples. This is how it was when I was in high school too, the teachers went through the notes with us. I know attention spans have dropped significantly, but it kind of surprises me how many of my colleagues don’t lecture at all. Projects and activities are of course necessary for concept reinforcement and discovery, but they just kinda have the kids self take notes and then have open note tests as well. I do both - I’ll teach the concepts using notes and then have them do activities and labs or I’ll introduce the concept as a lab and then do notes on it soon after. The whole self note thing also makes it kind of hard when kids go from a class like that into a class like mine where they’re expected to listen to direct instruction.

Is this the new norm? Should I shift towards that next year? I’ve tried having kids self take notes a couple times for strictly vocab based sections and it was just so awkward and judging from the last test they didn’t even understand the topics, probably just went through the motions of copying the notes and that’s it. I’m curious what you all think and do just because this was not a thing when I was in school at all. And I’m not sure if I would like learning that way, but everyone’s different and things are constantly changing of course