Sticking to my guns… so to speak…

The idea of making myself enforce my rules consistently for two weeks straight seemed decently close to impossible. I’m the kind of person that hates looking at or thinking about a lot of [hard] work and therefore, procrastinates. So just thinking about being consistent with all my consequences just made me want to curl up in a ball and watch movies under the covers… or something. But it had to be done. And then I thought of it! I could just work at one consequence at a time! I recently created a rule saying that there was absolutely no eating or drinking of any kind in class with the exception of water. My students even have to ask me before they have a cough drop. Otherwise, the consequence is immediate detention (bump the warning). I spent all of 1st term and at least 1/3 of 2nd term arguing with students about chewing gum in class or drinking Cherry Coke all the time. My kids were getting really out of hand with the food… there would be napkins left on desks, wrappers and empty drink containers on the floor… Once I even found a large mound of empty potato chip bags and candy wrappers in the back corner of the room behind the broom I left there. Entonces, no warning. In each class, I made an announcement explaining the food rule and the consequence of breaking the rule. Then I asked the students if they understood, and when they said “yes” that was that. Every single time I saw a student eating gum or a honey bun, it was detention. A sip from that coca-cola (at 8:45 am, mind you…): detention. Needless to say, the number of students in my detention has grown exponentially, but that’s a good thing. My students hated me for it for about 2 ½ weeks, but they’re used to it by now. At this point, the situation is pretty under control: I don’t find plastic bags or wrappers on the floor anymore and I don’t have to waste time in class explaining why a student is receiving detention (because the student and everyone else in the class already knows why).
Now that I’ve gotten this consequence under my consistency belt, I’ve moved on to another one: “bad words” and copy assignments. I no longer permit words and phrases like “stupid,” “shut up,” “idiot,” “dummy,” etc., and every time a student says one of these words, he or she receive a copy assignment. I’m beginning to go back and forth between giving students a warning for using a “bad word” before giving the copy assignment, but I’m sure I’ll work that out soon enough.

(As a side note: today three of my students asked me if they could have a cough drop. I told them to show the cough drops to me: two students had cherry cough drops and one student had lemon ones. I told the students they could have their cough drops with a straight, serious face, but in the back of my mind it made me smile.)