Day 29: Gotcha!

My Daily Blog Challenge: 29/365

I often tell my students that I feel like a Watch Dog waiting for someone to do something wrong.  I hate this feeling!  I see too much of this in schools.  Call it attention seeking, call it bad behavior, call it whatever you want; in my classroom I call it annoying.

We live in a Gotcha culture.
-I'm going to speed until the cops pull me over-Gotcha.
-I'm going to be late for work until someone notices-Gotcha.
-I'm going to prioritize other things above my family-Gotcha.
-I'm going to treat people disrespectfully, until someone calls me out-Gotcha.
-I'm going to go against a class expectation until the teacher notices-Gotcha.

The list goes on and on.

I am trying to break this habit with my students as much as I can. We review expectations daily and the first thing I ask them is if there behavior goes along with our expectations (I am still working on making this response automatic without becoming upset).

I strongly believe that our schools and world in general need to be places where we support and encourage each other.  Instead of writing people up and getting upset with them, we need to lead and show them better ways of doing things. I see adults afraid of a "gotcha" that they rarely try anything new and I see students who are testing boundaries, so they are not afraid of a "gotcha" moment.  Either issue limits the amount of energy that people can place on learning and getting better.

Do you feel like the watch dog of your classroom/school? How do you deal with this feeling?