Too Much Noise!

Right now my biggest struggle with this class is the amount of noise...it never stops. If it is not students talking it's just humming or tapping or TA's talking to a student in the background. This just makes me tense. First of all my personality is one that loves quiet rather than noise. When I'm in early childhood classes I expect playful noise and that is fine. When I am in a third grade classroom I expect noise during group work, but I expect it to be quiet in general when something is being taught or students are doing individual work. In this class it is NEVER quiet! It drives me crazy. It also drives my teacher crazy. She didn't realize how bad it was until she had to sit and listen to the kids while I was teaching. When you are in the moment and teaching it's easier to ignore the noise or lack of following directions. Repeating directions just becomes normal and you don't think about it. But once you remove yourself and look at the class through different eyes you can see how much of a problem this is! The teacher repeats every direction at least 10 times and usually closer to 20. It just seems that the noise level and inattention cause such a lack of listening skills.

Clearly these students need to be taught listening skills and even school behavior skills. I think the teacher should directly these skills and hopefully that would change the problem. The teacher seems so exasperated by it that there aren't really any ideas for how to fix the problem. It's more of an acceptance that this year will be hard and the kids are just going to continue so learn to deal with it! This reminds me that even if I get frustrated, I have to not give up on my students :)