Ms. Chumley's Terrible Horrible No Good Very Bad Year!

Everyone remembers Alexander and his day right? If you don't know what I'm talking about, I'm going to need you to run to a bookstore, library, or online and find a copy of Alexander and the Terrible Horrible No Good Very Bad Day by Judith Viorst. Trust me! Then come back and you can finish reading this.

So second semester last year wasn't a great time for me in my classroom. I had a group of students across all of my different classes that made it difficult for me to run my programs as I have done in the past. In many ways they were much worse than kissing on TV and finding gum in my hair (if you don't know what that means, you didn't read the book--side eye stare...). After my largest cohort of staffers who spent 4 years with me graduated in December, my numbers were down slightly so I decided to open the courses up to any student who requested it.

This was a great thing in some respects. I found a number of really great students who might not have filled out an application but who have become the bedrock of the staffs this year. But also, I had a number of students who I did not ask back for this year.

At the end of the school year, I felt like a complete failure. I felt defeated. Every day of class that last term was miserable. To put this in perspective, my news publications won the state championship with the work done by my first-semester crew. I should have been on cloud nine. But instead, I was weary of fighting every day. I was miserable and seriously considered quitting.

Let me go back a little and explain more. I teach two different classes at our school and advise five publications under the banner of Wave Media. My classes are Yearbook Journalism, which focuses on the yearbook, and Multimedia Reporting, which focuses on the news publication website and printed news magazine, and both staff work on Podcasts and social media accounts. I had 45 students on each staff over three blocks. Great problem to have, I know! Unfortunately, for this group, the numbers meant I was more stretched, and most of the students were new to journalism. I had around 6-8 returning students in each section. I wanted those students to work independently while I worked with the newbies, but have you met teenagers? Being a self-starter is a rare commodity. I call those my Unicorns. They are rare and magical. I had several, thus the awards, but I also had a bunch of dragons in the room. And when you put dragons in close proximity, you get lots of burns.

Unfortunately, the majority of my second-semester group was undisciplined and rowdy. I had to give ASSIGNED SEATS! They just wanted to gossip and not work. I was shushed when I told them to be quiet. After all, what happened last night was news and we needed to hear all about it. I had to forbid food and drinks in the room after finding a milk container shoved under the couch and finding gum, not in my hair, but in the shag rug and on the bookshelf. The couch and comfy seating had to go because the students liked to take naps. I wrote one child up for eating a piece of candy. That sounds bad, but really, it was the extreme disrespect she showed. I said we can't eat in here. The words are in a speech bubble by my head. She looked me straight in the eye, unwrapped the chocolate and popped it in her mouth. I had lost all control. My time and energy were spent trying to put out the fires these dragons sprayed around the room and trying to protect those who were trying to work and trying to protect our publications. I was exhausted. I wanted to move to Australia (it's in the book, geez...).

Again, upon reflection, once out of the lair over the summer, I had to admit we had a successful year. We won a state championship. We put out five issues of the magazine. We published 200+ stories on the website and social media accounts. We completed the yearbook. But it wasn't the beautiful rainbow-infused Unicorn meadow of a year that I was used to. I felt like the singed, tattered heroine at the end of one of the myriad dragon movies. I survived. I'm not sure I slayed the dragon, but I got out alive.

I was able to go to an adviser's retreat last summer, and they asked me to present something. I thought about what I could share and really started reflecting on the year. What could I have done differently to influence the outcome? What coulda, shoulda, woulda I do if I ever have a group like that again?

I found that my mindset and internal dialogue really needed a reset. Which is probably its own blog post.

But my biggest takeaway is that I could have been more proactive instead of reactive. With some planning and work, I built a toolbox of 10 ideas and resources to keep those dragons busy while I focused on the unicorns and our publications. I thought about what worked even with my discipline problems, what motivated students in general and what our publications needed. I found a list of tasks that are easily adaptable to pretty much any program and which can be used as time fillers or even grade recovery if necessary.

I'm hoping in the future to inspire and get buy-in from any dragons that sneak in and turn them into unicorns. After all, Dragons are magical creatures as well. Look for a post with the toolkit in the forum HERE!