Friday, October 5, 2018

Classroom Climate & Management


Students in the classroom are well managed and have a somewhat respectful relationship with one another. It’s relatively positive environment and each student seems to be friendly with one another. Along with this environment, the students have a respectful relationship with teacher; one where students feel comfortable in the classroom to be themselves, but also respecting the teacher when he asks to students to be quiet, or with disciplinary actions. It is very clear the amount of respect the teacher has for the students by how they talk in a stern, yet caring tone. The care the teacher has for the students is clear as well through the teacher checking in with students during class and having those one-on-one conversations when needed. I think through this care and respect modeled through the teacher, the students have often reciprocated that care and respect.

Through observing the classroom, I’ve observed various classroom norms and routines such as signals for quieting down with voicing “3, 2, 1” with an expectation of the class being silent once the teacher says one. Another norm is each student at the beginning of the semester was given a job in which they are responsible for over the year. This is seen through routines such as one of the students passing out folders at the beginning of class, and another student collects the folders at the end of class. Another routine I observed was at the beginning of class is that the students start on the warm-up and when the teacher enters the classroom, all students will be silent. Some of these are enforced by points and others are enforced by the teacher by reminding the students of his expectations. This is somewhat related to rules of the classroom of being respectful and following instructions. The disciplinary system is somewhat unclear since the classroom I am in hasn’t had too many issues in this area.

When interviewing my cooperating teacher we acknowledged these norms and routines I had observed in the classroom, and mentioned earlier. One they emphasized was having students having jobs that they are responsible for. He said it really helps with completing small tasks such as passing or collecting papers, and transition times are decreased as well because the teacher can focus on the next item in the agenda. These jobs and norms are established during the first week of class, where the teacher doesn’t do any math material each class, but instead focuses each day around procedures in the classroom such as the “3, 2, 1” routine. These procedures are displayed through modeling and reminding, which is also how they are enforced.

My cooperating teacher talked about their management in the classroom and the use of PBS, otherwise known as Positive Behavior Support, which is used throughout the school. They also mentioned getting to know your students helps with management; that care and respect for one another creates a safe and effective classroom environment. Some management problems my teacher has run into has been “letting things slide” because they were more focused on having a relationship with the students. Management is something that’s hard for teachers like this because it they can “get walked all over.” Their advice was to establish a genuine relationship with your students, and then you have the authority to take disciplinary action when needed, without worry of completely damaging the relationship.

Based on observation and the interview with my cooperating teacher, I would hope to have a classroom environment where I can form genuine relationships with the students, but have students respect me. One thing I would use from my cooperating teacher is spend a good amount of time establishing classroom norms and routines. Creating this clear imagine of how your classroom will run will help  I think my future classroom achieve its goals.

2 comments:

elizabethtyler said...

Erika, there is a lot of really interesting stuff in here! One thing that really struck me was that your CT spends an entire week JUST doing classroom norms. I'm very curious as to how class time is spent during this week and whether or not it makes it harder to get started with the math content the following week since students begin to expect an easy class without math. I also find it very interesting how many posts have said that their CT uses relationship building in classroom management. My CT stated a very similar thing that I think that's so cool because it is not usually the first technique that comes to mind, but is clearly vital in maintaining a healthy classroom environment.

Lora said...

Thank you for sharing your observations, Erika. As part of your conversation did you talk about specifics from that first week of instruction? That could be useful information to have when you think about setting up your first week in your classroom. Routines set the tone for the day and they can set the tone for the year. It seems helpful that you are in a classroom where you can observe techniques that you can see yourself using in your own classroom. When we talked about middle level vs high school, are there some techniques you see being more useful at certain levels?