Throughout my student teaching this semester, I have had the luxury of using my CT’s already established classroom culture. I observed her through her first several weeks of school where she established procedures and expectations, and while reading these chapters, I was struck by how closesly my CT followed these guidelines. Because of the solid foundation of expectations and respect she created with my students,  I have been able to teach my French II classes with very little difficulty pertaining to class room managemnt. Unfortunately, during my first year of NYU, when I was teaching elementary school in France, I had a terrible time managing my classes and did not have a CT to lean on for support. While reading these texts, I cringe thinking of the numerous times I failed at classroom management. Often, when I reached out for help, teachers told me how important it was to start from the beginning with clear standards and expectations. My question has always been, wait, what do I do if it’s too late? My MVP this week comes from Daryl discussing his teacher’s failure to react: “My new teacher didn’t set boundaries about what was okay to do. Kids would take out psorts or motorcycle magazines in the middle of a class discussion—the first time it happened, he hsould have addressed it right away. Instead he waited a couple of days.”

My question is, what do we do when we have failed as teacher’s to “start out on the right foot?”