Wow ... Just wow.I thought you were talking about 2nd grade middle or high school kids, not elementary.You also need a book, a smartphone and some good earphones (noise cancelling) until you find a place to lesson plan in peace.
Someone should send the link for this thread to Obama. I read a couple of times how he admires the Korean Education System and thinks the US should emulate it.
I have four co-teachers (high school). One of them, the newest teacher, is very young. This is her first teaching job. She is sweet as she can be but she's just clueless. I've been doing this for 6 years now. I am strict, but also very "fun". I've been at my school for 2 years so most of the kids are rather attached to me since I'm the only English teacher they've known. The young co-teacher has been getting absolutely mauled by her classes (commercial/trade high school, these kids don't really care about studying). She finally asked me for help because apparently her classes with me behave better than any of the other classes we've seen.We have a seating chart.We have a monthly contest where the classes compete against each other to win a prize. We have random prizes in random classes so they never know.We have serious rules. For every screw up you have to stay one minute after class. Kids can end up losing 8 minutes of the 10 minute break between classes which they absolutely hate. If they escalate and get nasty with me they are out of my class (this is hard for a lot of teachers because some co-t's won't let you do it. I explained to mine from day 1 that I was not going to be harassed by a teenager and if I said a kid was out, they were out for that class period).Just don't take any crap from day one.