OK, I think I have now caught up with my reading in L&L. If I get my rationale written, and my corrections made to my wonderful collection of KTIP forms I have amassed, I think I will be caught up, and in Dr. Gibson's good graces again. :)

Self-concept is a great and important concept, and so is a principles-based classroom. I hate having classroom rules. Why? No matter what you do, as L&L pointed out, some adolescent version of a jail-house lawyer will come along and find a 1001 ways to circumvent them. (This is a reason I like for the last rule in Power-Teaching, "Keep your dear teacher happy.) Now, my school has a definite set of steps that have to be followed when it comes to writing a student up for discipline or academic infractions. I can do nothing to change this, it is just how it is. However, I have tried, as best I can with my lack of teaching experience, to create a classroom atmosphere that relies more on principals that all can live with, rather than being a "rules-lawyer". I can think of one teacher at my school who is like this, and she must spend an inordinate amount of her time committing all of the state, district, and our school laws and regulations to memory. She thrives on finding and pointing out teachers who have "violated" the prescribed order of events, broken the rules, etc. She is a very toxic person, I cannot stand to have a conversation with or be in a meeting with her. I can only imagine how her classroom is.

As to self-concept, well I can only affect those students insofar as my influence reaches in the classroom and hallways. As my wife put it to me one time years ago: you spend almost 8 hours a day undoing the damage done to them at home, in their neighborhood, etc. and then you turn them loose, their families get a hold of them, and then at the first period of the day, you have to start all over because in almost 30 minutes their families and neighborhoods have undone everything you have worked towards all yesterday.

Parent involvement? I wish. I recall having a problem with a student a year or two ago, and went to a teacher who I knew had a reputation as really well organized when it came to running her classroom. When I asked her about this student, she showed me a letter she had sent home. In the letter she was asking for the parents to support her in her efforts to help her students grow, and to back her up when it came to behavior, write-ups, etc. This child's mother had checked the box that said, "No, I will not help you in your efforts to help my child grow as a person." Seriously, and this woman had signed it too. This is the atmosphere that I work with in this county. Encouraging, isn't it?