Meet the new boss, same as the old boss

So, my old classroom management plan. Writing assignments, detentions. No talking. Right... After talking to some 2nd year TFAs from my school, I abandoned that one before school even started, and came up with a new plan. Consequences: warning, conference, detention, parent phone call, office referral. These are still on the wall, but in fact, I've long since stopped using them. I initiated a new plan with my second block: warning, writing assignment, detention, office. I stuck to it for a few weeks, but I found my rules: absolutely no talking during certain activities, etc, to be uneforcable and my consequences to be unreasonable. I got about 4 writing assignments, all from the same girl, and one other girl who stayed for detention. The rest I wrote up for skipping detention, and nothing happened to them. My classroom management plan right now is in serious need of a revamping, and the main problem I'm facing is that I am still not sure what my own expectations are or should be. I can't expect silence for 98 minutes. And like Ben said, limiting talking with a rule such as be respectful or even speak respectfully at all times is too wishy-washy. What is respectful, what isn't? Who decides? Let's argue about it. Plus, I am not sure what to do for consequences. Detention is not longer an option, since I've started coaching (that's the one thing that's going right in my professional life at the moment). Writing assignments? Would anyone do them? Before school detentions? Would anyone come? Calling parents? For one particular student, I have never been able to get a number for his family. The one the school had given me gave the Chrysler dealership.

My rules now are very simple. Do math, or at least shut up so that everyone else can do math. If you don't do math, you get a zero. If you don't shut up so that everyone else can do math, I'll ask you nicely to be quiet, and then I'll write you up. This is really, really bad. Some days I can get along fine with it, and others, I lose it completely. Like Thursday and Friday. Completely lost. I know I need something better, and I sit in front of the computer and draft and scrap new plans almost daily, and I lay in bed and draft new plans in my sleep. I even find myself contemplating new plans as I try to shower in the morning, half asleep and wondering why the water in the new house, aside from not really washing off the soap, smells so strange. But I always end up throwing them out before I get to implementation. Because I just can't envision anything working out.

In a way, although I hate to admit it, my management plan relies on my students doing things. If they come in uncooperative, I am really sometimes at a loss. This is a little more than I like to admit, even to myself. I have looks, I have words, and I have grades, and the kids who have a shread of respect, or who care at all about their grades aren't a problem, but the kids who don't care about anything or anyone, I have no consequences to try to turn them around. I feel like I would have been much better off sticking to my original consequences, but my original rules were untenable. I need to figure out, first, what I want my 98 minutes to look like, sound like, and feel like, and then I need to create rules that will create that. I would kill for 50 minute blocks. But I guess the grass is always greener.

That's all. The end.