Classroom Management

WHAT IS CLASSROOM MANAGEMENT?

Lena Mann says classroom management is about teaching the students how to be responsible for their own behavior. According to Ms. Mann,

the teacher organizes the environment and manages the environment. Students that come into that environment already know what their limitations on behavior should be. I set limitations on ethical behavior only such as bullying or cheating. The rest will evolve as the year begins. In the beginning of the year, the students and I look at the rules the district has established for the school and for the students. Then I ask students if they are comfortable with those rules. I have them write an essay about their comfort level with the district rules and as a class we discuss the concerns that are mentioned in the essays.

There are days when you are challenged and on such days I always ask myself what did I do to make this happen. I am a person; my students are people so I always look to myself first when something doesn’t seem to be going the way I want it to. Teachers should always look to themselves first. When things aren’t going the way you think they should ask the students what might be the problem. Tell them how you feel and ask them if you should do something differently. Ask the students to help you to know what to do to help them learn.

Classroom management involves all of the tasks that teachers and students perform in any given day, covering a wide range of actions and attitudes associated with teaching and learning. Educators discuss classroom management from differing perspectives, but these different perspectives all take into consideration the interaction among students, teachers, and the content to be taught in an effective learning environment. McEwan’s (2000) view of classroom management encompasses a range of conditions from the interactions among and between students and the teacher, to the establishment and reinforcement of rules, to the room arrangement, to student access to materials and resources and to the frequency of teacher interactions with parents.

Weber (1994) defined classroom management as “that complex set of strategies that a teacher uses to establish and maintain the conditions that will enable students to learn” (1994, p. 234). Wong and Wong (1998) view classroom management as “all the things that a teacher does to organize students, space, time and materials so that instruction and student learning can take place” (p. 84). Iverson (2003) defines classroom management as “the act of supervising relationships, behaviors, and instructional settings and lessons for communities of learners” (p. 4), and views management as separate from discipline in that discipline refers to “teaching students how to behave appropriately.” To Emmer, Evertson, and Worsham (2002), classroom management involves a series of decisions teachers make to create classroom communities where students are engaged in worthwhile activities that support their learning. Lemov (2010) views management as teaching students to do something right through building relationships that are “nontransactional.”

If one considers the alternative to managing a classroom, which is chaos, effective classroom management can be viewed as central to all that is good and right about teaching. Since the responsibility for managing a classroom rests almost entirely on the teacher’s shoulders, this is perhaps the main reason that managing a classroom is often cited as the number one concern of beginning teachers. Such concern is not just a recent phenomenon in education. Consider the following excerpt from D. H. Lawrence’s (1915) novel, Rainbow, in which Ursula Brangwen begins her teaching career and is faced with the daunting task of managing the behavior of her students.

The day passed incredibly slowly. She never knew what to do. There came horrible gaps, when she was merely exposed to the children. … Before this inhuman number of children, she was always at bay. She could not get away from it. There it was. This class of fifty collective children, depending on her for command, for command it hated and resented. It made her feel she could not breathe: she must suffocate; it was so inhuman. They were so many, that they were not children. They were a squadron. She could not speak as she would to a child, because they were not individual children, they were a collective, inhuman thing. (pp. 355–356)

Ursula’s experience may seem a bit extreme and out of the ordinary, but it is a rare teacher indeed who has never felt outnumbered or outmaneuvered by an unmanageable group of students. Teacher education candidates can take comfort in the fact that a modicum of knowledge about human behavior and skill in implementing management strategies can provide even a novice teacher some degree of self-confidence and competence in managing a classroom. It is a huge undertaking, but it does not have to be overwhelming.

Establishing and maintaining an effective learning environment through management of space, time, instruction, and behavior requires a teacher to have expert knowledge of the learners, the content, and the context. Teachers’ ideas about classroom management often go through a series of transformations as they observe, learn, and reflect on the success of the management plans they have enacted. The way a particular teacher chooses to manage a classroom also derives from a specific system of values and priorities for attending to a range of educational functions. As you develop your personal professional philosophy of teaching introduced in Chapter 7, you will most likely include some of the ideas you have for managing a classroom.

Using What You Already Know About Classroom Management

In learning theory, the technique of activation or the use of advance organizers helps bring the students’ full attention to what they are about to study. For example, if a teacher wants to teach a science lesson about weather, he might ask the students to recall a time they had experienced stormy weather. He will talk about the sound of the wind moving objects around or the sound of rain and the smell of ozone or dust in the air. These are all things students would be familiar with, and recalling the memory of them will help students build a cognitive framework of weather to include additional information.

Likewise, we’ve all had some experience with management. If you’ve ever packed a suitcase, loaded a car, decorated a house or a room, planned a wedding or birthday party, or been shopping you probably already have a good idea about the importance of organization, time management, and access to resources. If you have spent any time at all working with young children, you no doubt know quite a bit about behavior management. You’ve also spent considerable time in classrooms observing how other teachers organize tasks and activities and manage the behavior of their students.

Frameworks for Learning About Classroom Management

Performance in managing a classroom does not rest entirely on rules, routines, rewards, and reprimands, but it is a far more complex combination of all that a teacher is, knows, and does. As an aspiring teacher education candidate, you need to recognize the relationships between teacher dispositions, teacher knowledge, pedagogical and management skills, and the level at which a teacher performs.

Three Areas of Classroom Management

Content management includes planning the physical environment, deciding on the procedures that will occur during the instructional day, and instruction (Iverson, 2003). Planning is the key. Teachers plan during the summer break for the coming school year. They plan on weekends. They plan before and after school, and during free periods. The planning that teachers do has a profound effect on instruction, student behavior, and the relationships that are formed with their students. You will learn more about the planning cycle in Chapter 13.

Table 12.1 Examples of Classroom Rules (Elementary, Middle, and High School)

Some rules of conduct are appropriate for all grade levels, for example, Treat other students the way you would like to be treated. Somevariations are required to address the specific behaviors and attitudes of different age-groups.

Elementary Classroom Rules

Try hard

Speak softly

Ask before you act

Clean up after yourself

Middle School Classroom Rules

Respect other people’s property

Keep a tidy workspace

Keep your hands to yourself

Act as if your grandmother is watching

High School Rules

Express yourself appropriately

Straighten up your area before you leave the room

Respect the rights of others

Turn off cell phones, beepers, and other communication devices

Conduct management is maintained through the establishment of rules and guidelines of behavior. Three to five rules for appropriate behavior seem to be the ideal numbers. How these rules are established depends on grade level, the teacher’s philosophy of classroom management, and what is considered acceptable behavior in the school. (See Table 12.1.) “Be nice” is a little vague for a rule. A fifth-grader might interpret “Be nice” as an invitation to chat with whoever is in earshot, while a high school senior might choose to be “nice” by doing a friend’s homework. Rules and procedures must be taught so that students know how to succeed in the classroom.

Children in different grade levels react in different ways to rules, regulations, and procedures, so naturally what works in a kindergarten class to get students’ attention may not work in a middle school class. Experienced teachers have found out that each developmental level has a set of typical behaviors that help determine which strategies teachers can use to best advantage. Third-graders tattle. Fourth-graders will do everything the teacher does. Middle school students will do whatever their friends do, and high school students usually make behavior choices based on a combination of the norms set by the school administration and the norms of their peers.

Covenant management is about managing relationships, having highly developed communication skills, and knowing ways the combined effects of content management and conduct management will influence interactions in the classroom. The relationships teachers are able to build with students, their parents, and the other teachers and staff in a school often provide a safety net when management problems arise. Any teacher who uses good listening skills, exhibits a willingness to understand another person’s perspective, and treats students with “unconditional positive regard” (Rogers & Freiberg, 1994)—letting students know that it is their behavior meeting with disapproval, not them—will be viewed as caring and thoughtful. Teachers who make the effort to build personal relationships are usually given more leeway when they must make difficult management decisions that might clash with what the students desire or what parents consider just. A checklist for implementing covenant management, along with applications and examples, can be found on the University of Northern Iowa INTIME website (http://www.intime.uni.edu/model/teacher/covenant.html). A copy of the checklist is provided in Table 12.2.

The Personal and Parental Affect in Classroom Management

From the first day of school, teachers should greet their students by name, make one personal comment to them each day, and note individual efforts and achievements in social, personal, and academic areas. Teachers who make an effort to communicate with parents will learn from the insights parents can provide about their children. Parents should be viewed as being in partnership with teachers in the education of children. Parents love their children and want them to be successful. Let parents know how much you appreciate the gift of their children that they entrust into your care each day.

Effective teachers build personal relationships with their students. Teachers greet each student in the morning and make them feel welcomed.

· Hall, G.E., Quinn, L.F., & Gollnick, D.M. (2014).   Introduction to teaching: Making a difference in student learning .  Los Angeles: Sage Publishing.  

· Chapter 12: Managing the Classroom and Student Behavior