Classroom Management

To begin this lesson, we must first identify what classroom management is. Teaching is not only about the lessons that you teach your students, but how you interact with them unrelated to classwork as well. As is expected in the profession, it is inevitable that there will be students that test one’s patience.

Classroom management strategies are implemented to take care of any behavioral issues that students may throw at you. It is important that teachers develop strategies that work best for them and their students in whatever situations that they are needed in. These strategies aren’t about discipline and making an example of a misbehaved student, but more so of making an example of good behavior and providing an incentive to follow that example. Furthermore, these strategies can also be used to make the student experience much better.

Classroom management is not a one size fits all sort of thing, and it doesn’t stop with the first successful class that a teacher has. Teachers are constantly implementing new and different classroom management strategies in order to meet the needs of their students that are subject to change each and every day. With the constant need for adaptability, there are great and positive ways of managing a classroom as well as bad ways. Teachers have the responsibility of meeting the needs of their students in a way that won’t be detrimental to their learning experiences. These strategies can be used to take care of bad behavior, and reward those with good behavior (in turn, giving students with bad behavior an incentive to behave.)

One way that teachers do this is by giving responsibility to their students with jobs that help run the classroom without needing constant attention from the teacher. In her textbook, Elementary classroom management: A student-centered approach to leading and learning, Kerry Williams explains how she implements these jobs in the classroom and it helps her focus on more important things for the class while the students take care of the basic tasks needed to start the day. An old teacher of mine used to do the same, having a list of jobs ranging from the bank teller (responsible for making sure that everyone’s classroom dollars were accounted for and even ran checking accounts,) to the meteorologist (responsible for informing the class on the weather for the week). Students were rewarded for their jobs and were also brought together through the dependence on one another to get things done.

Another way that teachers actively manage their classrooms is by being proactive with the decisions that they make throughout their classes. As stated in a 2010 article titled Classroom Behavior Management: A Dozen Common Mistakes and What to Do Instead, the authors make the point that the best form of discipline is prevention. It is important to take care of these behavioral issues before they become uncontrollable in the future. Barbetta et al. (2010)

Taking a more proactive approach to classroom management allows for a teacher to focus on teaching the right behavior rather than restricting the wrong behavior. In that same study, the authors also advise thinking differently about how to solve problems and how to react when students act out rather than trying to fit a square peg into a round hole. Advice such as switching strategy when one doesn’t go as planned requires a teacher to be prepared before the class begins in order to be successful.

Studies have shown that classroom management strategies are not all beneficial to the development of a student. There are some strategies that are very detrimental to children, such as singling a student out when they speak out of turn. Some educators forget that people children are very impulsive, and will reprimand a student when they do such a thing by publicly shaming them in front of their classmates by isolating them or saying rude things to discourage bad behavior. One example of this is to send a child to the corner for acting out. This kind of thing isolates a child from their peers in a very visual way that makes an example of bad behavior. This humiliates a child in front of his/her classmates, which may achieve the goal in the short term. However, it elicits frustration in a child and will likely cause them to rebel even more later on.

In a Narrative analysis of 13 Finnish students with ADHD Honkasilta et al. (2016), these students demonstrate this by sharing their traumatizing experiences with their teachers. A common theme of these experiences is that these students were not cooperating in a way that the teachers desired, and the teachers reacted by verbally, mentally, or physically abusing these students. One teacher going as far as to say, “Are you really so fucking sick in your head, what's wrong with you, you should fucking get some help.” As extreme as these cases may be, they teach readers to avoid reacting so aggressively when dealing with students and trying to understand why students are acting out rather than searching for a quick fix.

Strategies like these solve instructors' problems at the expense of their students' wellbeing. This tends to linger with a student further than the short-term and convenient solution. While a teacher gets a quiet classroom for the moment, that kind of thing keeps a student from wanting to answer questions in class in fear of being reprimanded in such a humiliating way or returning the respect that the teacher expects of them.

Comprehension Questions

1. Define Classroom Management, and explain why it is so important.

2. Describe a positive Classroom Management strategy that a teacher could implement in their classroom.

3. Identify an example of a Classroom Management strategy that a teacher shouldn't incorporate into instruction.