The most important time in the classroom, I have found, is the time that you can get talking to individual students. In the classroom people have attitudes and reputations that they need to maintain. As a teacher I have to remain firm and in control. Students feel that they need to look out for themselves and the rights that they feel they are deserved. In a lot of cases these things clash and need to be resolved, but you have to know that there is no way you are going to make everyone happy. This is why you need to talk to people one on one.
     When you get them away from their peers I’ve found that even the hardest students tend to open up if you’ve shown them that you are concerned about their education and their lives. I try my hardest to let my students know every day that I care about what they are getting in my class and about the effort that they are putting forth. I want things to go well for everyone and I try to do things to ensure that the classroom stays this way.
     Some students don’t want to be in the classroom. In a lot of cases it’s not that they can’t do the work, they just genuinely do not want to be there. They can get out of the classroom too. They know teachers well and they know the buttons that they can push. There’s only so much I can take some days before I feel the need to send a student out of the classroom. I really only want to do it when it makes the classroom a better place to learn for the rest of the students.
     You can’t keep sending the same person out every day though. They need to learn even if being in school is not at the top of their priority list. One of the nice things about working in an internship with a mentor teacher is the opportunity to be able to pull students out of class and work with them separately. I have a student who has been sent out of many classes including mine. Her stack of referrals is high despite that fact that this is only here second year in the school. Some days she just comes into class asking to be sent out, but I don't like to send her. By doing that she is getting her way and not getting the education she deserves. The difficult days are the ones where she sits through all of class disrupting. The better days are the ones when I get a chance to take her aside and talk to her one on one about the work she has or hasn’t been doing.
     All behavioral problems aside she is a skilled writer and I hate to see her sort of talent be wasted on account of her not being interested enough in school to participate in the way that she could. I do my best to get here to participate in ways that keep her interested, but there is only so much that I can do as a teacher without devoting all of my time to here. I still have a class that I need to be teaching. The hardest part of knowing that there is a possibility for me to make an impact on her is the fact that I know I’ll never get as much time to work with here one on one as I could use. It’s frustrating, but still I am happy for those moments when the real student she is shines through all the rest of what I normally am forced to see.