For some odd reason I've slumped into the bad habit of threatening my students. You all know what I mean.
"I'm going to call your XYZ."
"Next time I'm sending you to the office."
I don't need to say that these are idle threats. The day gets away from me and my well meaning threat goes nowhere. Thankfully my students haven't caught wind of my complete fail. Yet.
Not really sure why I started doing that. I've always been cognisant of not doing this, but low and behold I stepped right into it. The big bugga boo x 2 is this Social Studies project due Wednesday. The other is my students reading for 5 minutes every night. So far neither of these have been progressing properly.
In steps my new bad habit.
I've told my students no fewer than 10 times this past week that if I don't see 1 book a week plus one extra that I'd be visiting some houses to find out what's going on. Yesterday, it hit me.
"I don't want to go over these rascals houses. Why in the world did I just say that?" I honestly have no idea what I was thinking when I started saying that.
So how do I fix it? I have to get all those projects and readings done ASAP! So here's what I did. I called everyone of my students houses and told mom/dad/voice mail what needs to be done. I got a commitment from everyone that I spoke to that they'd do the best to get it done.
Hopefully, they'll keep their word so I don't have to be challenged on mine.
How do you deal with your own bad habits? Have you started any this year that you wished you hadn't?