The honeymoon is officially over

So I'm sure you are all wondering what the crap I mean by saying the honeymoon is over since I am not married and I'm not currently dating anyone. Well, let me enlighten you.

As you probably already know from reading previous posts, my favorite class to teach so far has been the 6th grade woodwinds. This is slowly changing........ They are now comfortable with me and are constantly testing boundaries. While talking to Rob about this one day (after a particularly frustrating day when I couldn't get them all to shut up for more than 5 seconds at a time), he told me that the "honeymoon phase" was over. When I first started teaching them, they weren't really sure about what to expect and were thrown out of their comfort zone because of the change. I think this caused them to behave a little better than they normally do. Now they are getting used to me being there and are resorting back to their old ways. Here's the problem. I don't tolerate their talking quite as much as Rob does, so obviously I've been a little harder on them than they are used to. This alone might be my downfall with them. Because they can't be quite as "free" with me, they don't seem to enjoy the class as much as they used to. I try not to stress about it too much since it isn't my classroom and that is the main problem, but I still wish I could find a happy medium. I'm guessing I need to step back and not change quite as much just yet.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, things are improving a lot with the 9th grade band. It started off kind of rough with them since (as I think I said before) they seemed to have the "you aren't my teacher so why should I listen to you" attitude on my first day. Since then, things have definitely been slowly getting better!! I'm starting to feel a lot more confident with that class and have been getting a lot accomplished, especially on one specific piece called Ascentium.