By Erica J. Ringelspaugh 
Erica J. Ringelspaugh teaches English,
literature and composition at Adams-Friendship Area High
School. She began her teaching career in February of 2005. | A desk in the front row of my classroom sits empty. Still a new teacher, I usually crowd the students close to me so I can keep a close eye on the passing of notes, the clandestine touches, and also the careful reading and writing I expect of them. Yet I keep that desk reserved at the front of the classroom, empty. It waits, patiently, as a symbol of a time when I was so overwhelmed with failure I didn’t know how to begin. So I stood on a desk. While student teaching, I struggled with classroom management. I hate yelling; I hate threatening when I’m not going to follow through; I hate demeaning my kids for acting their age. Stumbling through the semester, I designed decent lessons that fell short in execution. I wondered what the heck I was doing but was unsure how to change; I wondered how to replace yelling, threatening, and demeaning, so that both the kids and I actually liked my classroom, but ultimately I replaced them with nothing. But when Barbara, my supervisor, came to watch me teach during my fourth university evaluation, she startled me into wondering if I was going to fail entirely. After crying most of that night – keening to my parents, teachers themselves, fearful my life-long dream was unattainable – I came into school the next day thinking that maybe I wasn’t cut out for this after all. I carried my supplies to class, waited while the bell rang, and then I stood on a desk. They watched me out of the corner of their eyes, waiting to see how loud I would yell, and somebody asked, “What are you doing, Ms. R?” “Great," I said, "now that I have your attention, let’s begin.” They groaned, but they got back on task. They told me I’m weird, and I told them, “It works.” I don't often resort to standing on the desk. I have other strategies.
I also count bricks, waltz, ‘Shuffle off to Buffalo,’ clap, whistle, and simply wait to get students’ attention “All right, guys,” I sometimes say, “It’s that time when I either start yelling or I start dancing.” One day, “Carrie,” a sweet girl who is very academically advanced, looked straight at me and said, “The yelling we can handle; it’s the dancing . . .” I, of course, immediately broke into a polka. Last week, “Leslie” narrated in her journal, “I have to write more. Miss R’s yelling at me. Well, actually, she’s not yelling at me, she’s just looking at me.” Leslie knows that I’m not going to yell at her; I’m not going to make her feel stupid that she didn’t write; I’m just going to stand there and make the writing-in-the-air motion at her until she starts writing again. Another time, I sauntered up to a group where “Cody” was relaxing, leaning back in his chair, arms crossed over his chest, completely uninvolved. “How you guys doing?” I asked. “I see you’re not getting very far.” They looked at me plaintively. “Cody, you’re in charge. When I get back, you better have these slackers working,” I said in my joking voice. Cody unzipped his sweatshirt and grabbed a pencil out of another kid’s hand. And group work got done. But sometimes I just have to stand on that desk. At semester, 21 new freshmen piled into my boxcar classroom, dragging my familiar doubt along with them. I thought, for a moment there, at the end of first semester, that I was doing a decent job. I had established bonds of trust with my students; I successfully combated bullying and cliques in my classroom; I weaved my way through school politics. But these new kids wouldn’t shut up. And I panicked teaching the research paper. And my grandma got sick. And I shut down. So I stood on the desk. I chatted with the kids about what had gone wrong. I directed them to look back to the first page of their notebooks, where, on the first day of the semester, we brainstormed traits of the effective student and the effective teacher. I told them to write for a moment about whether they were being effective or ineffective students, while I stood there, perched high in my classroom, desperately wondering whether I was being an effective or ineffective teacher. The familiar curmudgeon of doubt taunted me. After a few minutes, I was able to smile again; I stuck out my tongue back at that curmudgeon and climbed down. I told the kids to stand up and turn in a circle twice, counter-clockwise, to symbolize rewinding the day, and we started over. Return to New Teachers page Posted May 12, 2006 |