Classroom+Management,+part+1

toc =Introduction= There are three aspects of the classroom that teachers manage: space, time, and people. This sequence starts with the simplest (how can I set up my classroom) and moves to the most challenging (people skills).

=Space= [] This website looks like it was set up in about 1995, but the links are good, so I think it's just a plain vanilla website with no frills. Have a look at the resources here. In particular, read: 10 Ways to Think About Your Learning Space []

Also play with: Design a Classroom: [] You can also do this on paper and take a photo of your drawing to post.

This could be an ideal classroom or it could be a redesign of a classroom you have experienced or seen. What factors did you think about as you designed your classroom?

=Time= Teaching time is a rare and precious thing. In a typical school, so many things interrupt this time, from fire drills to school assemblies. The goal in managing time is to keep from wasting it by controlling the aspects of time over which you have control.

Procedures
Classroom procedures can either save time or waste it. Consider the common practice of lining up. If you set up a lining up procedure, have the kids practice it (give them the challenge of pushing their chairs towards the tables/desks, gathering their things, and lining up quietly as fast as possible). The time you spend practicing a procedure that could waste time will save so much time in the long run.

Think about ways in which administrative procedures can take place while other things are happening in the classroom. For example, have students mark their presence in some way as they enter the classroom so you don't have to take roll.

Consider how students can help you in this process. For example, set up a system where students can do things independently such as turning in their work or seeking quiet help from a peer.

Scaffold students so they can take over the jobs that you have to do at the beginning of the year. For example, I visited a music class where the first ten minutes were spent with the teachers tuning the students' stringed instruments. Teaching students how to tune and "certifying" students individually as people able to tune (and help others) would cut down on that time drastically.

Have students clean up and reorganize their workspace before leaving.

Instead of creating busy work when some students get finished ahead of other students, have those students work on their reading or writing (or some other type of learning that needs to happen regularly). If there is time for busy work, there is time for learning. Students appreciate learning so much more than busy work.

Invite students to help you maximize learning time.

Have the technology or any other teaching material ready to go and in working condition. If you have to reboot a computer or something like that, have students do something that is educationally useful for the minutes required to get the computer set back up. See below in Curriculum for more about 2-3 minute activities.

Curriculum
Some districts require you to spend certain amounts of time on a mandated curriculum. This curriculum may or may not meet the needs of your students. It will take some creativity to figure out how to address the needs of students outside of the mandated time. What activities can you do in little 2-3 minute blocks that might help review or reteach a concept? It could be as simple as repeating times tables or the quadratic equation. Even if a student cannot repeat something independently, he or she will benefit from hearing the material again as the others say it chorally. As you plan what you are doing for a given lesson, create some of these things. The first time you do this, the process of creation will be time consuming. However, many of these teaching tools can be "recycled" or repeated across a single school year and multiple school years.

Find web-based resources that teach the concepts you are working with and have students use these resources independently, perhaps while you are working with a small group. Worksheets feel like busy work, so try to use some other tool. You might even have students make up and solve their own math problems or write sentences that need editing and then edit them. You can learn a lot by having students create their own worksheets.

Think About
What are some times you have experienced in your career as a student where time was wasted? What are some learning activities (not busy work) that could have been done instead?

=People= Traditional approaches to classroom management are all about controlling the students. Spending time controlling others means losing actual learning time. The best approach is to have students learn to control themselves. Here are some ways of doing that.

Engagement
The best way to have students control themselves is to give them learning experiences that they find engaging and challenging. It is very difficult to do two things at once (claims to multitasking notwithstanding). So, when students are absorbed in doing something interesting, they will not have the time to create classroom management issues that require teacher control.

Consider how you can engage the informal class leaders. A student who tends to clown around distracting others may be very bright (with or without learning challenges). When you create an activity that engages this student, he or she won't have time to amuse him or herself through making other students laugh. When the "high status" students are engaged, other students will be likely to follow suit. In this way, you can prevent so many discipline issues.

Texting is not a problem when students' hands are covered in clay. In my college classroom, I use texting behavior as a gauge for how engrossed in learning students are. If they are texting, it is time for me to change tactics. If I forbid the use of texting (or whatever other problematic behavior), I will only drive that behavior underground. So, if I don't want texting to happen, then I need to find a way to make learning more interesting than the cell phone. Usually this means hands on learning of some sort. Like clay...

Cheat Proof the Classroom
Draconian measures do not stop cheating. The only way to stop cheating is actually to prevent students from wanting to cheat. There are several ways to do this.

To begin with, when you ask students to connect what they are learning with their own lives, you are making plagiarism much more difficult to do. If students are analyzing aspects of their own lives in relation to concepts you are teaching or otherwise using their own experience, they are less likely to plagiarize and more likely to learn.

Using Bloom's taxonomy. The higher level cognitive elements ask students to be active in relation to what they are learning--to evaluate, analyze, create. When students take an active role in their engaging with concepts, they are more likely to do some real learning.

There are plenty of great assessment practices that do not require testing or giving quizzes. High stakes tests and quizzes put students in situations where cheating becomes attractive because of students' fears about this kind of assessment. This is why having students put together a portfolio of things they can actually do is so important. Having students create something to show what they have learned is much more engaging, much less likely to lead to cheating, and much more interesting for you to interact with. Would you rather grade 25 tests with perfunctory answers or 25 projects where students got excited about the topic?

Assume the Best
On the first day of class, if a professor goes on and on about cheating and has all kinds of "safeguards" against it such as rules about how you take tests and the like, how does that make you feel? What is that teacher assuming?

Students tend to live up or down to our expectations.

Years ago, I had a wonderful opportunity to run a battered women's shelter. When I got to the shelter that first day of work, I fell in love with the building (an old house), but realized that the rules were a huge problem. For example, women were forbidden to have caffeine. Did that stop the women from drinking pop with caffeine? No. They simply sat in front of the shelter while finishing their pop, which was a huge security risk.

Another rule they had was that no one was allowed to have sugar. They actually locked up the sugar and doled it out for cereal only. Did the residents stop eating candy? No. They simply hid the candy in their rooms, which created a sanitation problem.

These rules reflected a perspective that the residents of the shelter were unable to manage even the simplest things such as their own diet. Since most abusers believe that the victims are incompetent, having this perspective in the battered women's shelter was counterproductive.

The worst part of this was that the staff did not follow the rules. They would bring coffee and donuts and lock themselves in the office.

It's no wonder that the shelter had been empty for about 30 days before I got there. Since a big piece of shelter funding depended on the number of residents we had each day, this was a problem.

I changed the rules. I ditched all the silly food rules, since I was not willing to follow them myself. I stated all the practices we had at the shelter as positive statements. For example, instead of "Don't spank your child," I said something like, "Children here have experienced a lot of violence. As a result, we use other ways of discipline besides spanking here in the shelter." Staff helped residents to deal with the behaviors of their children (we turned around the behavior of an 8 year old who pulled a knife on his mom, so we were pretty good).

All our practices (see--you don't even need the word "rules") reflected our belief that these women were competent adults who could make their own decisions. Each practice was clearly related to the need to work together to keep the shelter going in terms of interpersonal relationships but also cleanliness and maintenance. The women were not part of the process of creating these practices, since they transitioned in and out of the shelter pretty quickly. But because the practices were reasonable, typically they did not have any problems living with these practices.

The results were: we were never empty again during the years I ran the shelter. When we had individuals who could not live up to shelter practices, then we dealt with those folks individually and privately. We had a lot of people transform from fearful doormats into fully capable, intelligent women because they knew we had confidence in them.

Even very young children can act in very self-disciplined ways when teachers assume the best. If the majority of students are acting in a desirable way, then most students will follow along.

R-E-S-P-E-C-T
There is one principle that needs to be at the center of any community of people, from battered women's shelter to classroom, and that is respect.

Most adults tend to think of "how can I make the students respect me?" There are several problems with this question. One is that you can't make people do much of anything. You can inspire and you can set the example, but you cannot force someone else to respect you. In fact, force is the opposite of respect, so forcing something makes respect a one way street. Students respect the teacher but the teacher does not respect the students.

The other is with the focus on self. Respect is a focus on others rather than self. When we focus on others in a respectful way, respect becomes powerful in that it inspires more respect.

A friend of mine, who was my mentor for 26 years (up until her death), told me about a time when she was a young mother of four. It was the evening and she went out briefly to walk the dog. When she came back in the house, she realized someone was in there (and her children were upstairs asleep). She could see the glint of a knife in his hand.

Without turning on the lights, she said, "I'm going to make myself a cup of tea. Would you like one?" She walked into her kitchen and she heard him follow her. She put the tea kettle on and went about preparing two cups. Pretty soon, she heard him leave the house.

Her respecting him as a human being inspired him to respect her as a human being. I'm not saying you should offer a cup of tea to every home invader. Instead, I want to illustrate the power of respect--genuine respect.

Respect means being proud of students who are more knowledgeable or capable in one or more areas than you, the teacher. These students are resources that can benefit the classroom.

Respect means understanding that every human being has reasons for what he or she does. If people do something that seems crazy to us, then we need to find out what it is in their world that makes what they do a logical decision. We need to hear people's stories.

It means understanding that no one person is better than another. Education, positions of authority, and anything else of that nature do not bestow moral superiority. Poverty, life struggles, and the like do not imply that a person is morally inferior. The accident of the families into which we are born have a lot to do with the amount of resources we have in our lives.

One thing I learned at the shelter is that most people do the best they can with what they have and this includes people who commit domestic violence. If people are not doing very well, then they need more resources, which can include education, counseling, respect, caring, physical resources (food, shelter, etc.), positive experiences, support, understanding, etc. Some people may choose not to accept these resources, such as abusive people who may not be honest with themselves about how their behavior affects others. But even the worst abuser in the world, given a strong desire and the right resources, can begin to change, even if part of those changes include choosing not to be in any relationship for a long time.

Life is a huge mountain we are all climbing together. We need to throw a rope out to folks that are struggling along the way. And we need to accept the ropes that are being thrown to us.

Think About...
Choose one or two of the ideas that stood out to you and apply them to yourself either personally or professionally. If you plan to teach, how would these ideas impact your plans for your own classroom? If you are not going to teach, which of these ideas might be applicable to your planned profession? Are there personal applications of these ideas?