Classroom+Management

Classroom Management

Say "classroom management" in an education class and immediately students start thinking about the rules and disciplinary practices they plan to use in their own classrooms. These may vary from being very strict to being somewhat relaxed, based on their personalities and experiences in school, but they are all based on the idea of teachers controlling the students and the forbidding of specific activities.

We would like to take a very different approach to classroom management. First off, rather than creating one or more rules, which address issues of behavior, we want to begin with a principle: respect. Why a principle instead of rules? Respect is a concept. While wily students can think up ways to avoid breaking the rules while still getting into mischief, the principle of respect requires us to think of our every action in terms of how it might affect another person and to ensure that our actions reflect respect. Rules are an external form of control--someone else has made the decision about what is okay and what is not okay. Respect requires each person to think for him or herself and to make decisions accordingly. If we want to raise people to be thoughtful citizens of this country, then we need to give children opportunities to take responsibility and that can begin with taking responsibility for their own behavior.

Even preschoolers can handle the concept of respect [Tobie, can you insert some really good examples from C. Ray Williams?]

Teaching Respect Respect as a concept should be taught at the beginning of the school year. It should be a part of first day activities, but also should be a point of active discussion for a number of days and weeks beyond that.

etc.

Respect as Drama This is a whole group activity. Divide students into groups of four or five. Each group is to come up with a skit that represents an example of disrespect. Give the students time to work to develop their skits but keep an ear out. When you start hearing social conversation instead of work-related conversation, it's time for the groups to finish up.

The first group presents its skit. Then discuss how what they presented was disrespectful. The discussion needs to be in-depth enough so that students are articulating for each other exactly what was wrong and why it was wrong. For example...

After this discussion, students in the audience tell the students presenting the skit how the interaction could be made more respectful. The actors act the new way out and students can discuss how effective and realistic each suggestion is. It would be a good idea to take time with the first skit so that the discussion is in-depth and to have the other skits on other days so that the conversation about respect can continue in the first days of school. The skits help students to consider what respect means and they also provide students with strategies for turning potentially disrespectful situations in to respectful ones.

Addressing a Student Who Has Done Something Disrespectful When (not if but when) a student does something disrespectful, it is a good idea to ask the student to say whether his or her behavior was respectful and to say why or why not. Then ask the student how the interaction could have been more respectful. Finally, you can ask the student what the consequences of his or her behavior should be. We have been told to have a set of rules and specific consequences for breaking those rules. Unfortunately, the consequences themselves become a temptation: students have to find out if the teacher is really going to follow through and bad behavior ensues. Also consequences defined by the teacher are imposed upon the student, while we want students to develop self-control. Asking the student what the consequence should be requires the student to consider his or her own behavior and to consider the damage he or she has caused. Naming the consequence is the first step towards making amends.

Respect and One Room School Houses Teachers in one room school houses struggled with classroom management, just as we do today. We think of school violence as something new but it really isn't. In his account of teaching in a one room school house, Jesse Stuart told about some young men, eighteen years old or so, who attended school not for learning but for the pleasure of being able to beat up the teacher. Stuart's solution was to get a farmer friend of his to agree to come to school; Stuart agreed to ensure that the farmer learned math that would help him farm more effectively and gain more money for his crops in exchange for the farmer coming to school. Eventually, though, the big boy in question was alone with Stuart and, in those pre-litigenous days, Stuart ended up beating up the big boy to keep from being beaten up himself.

Odds and endshttp://pajamasmedia.com/blog/a-one-room-schoolhouse-for-the-21st-century/   __ __http://www.bland.k12.va.us/bland/rocky/schoollaurel.html______ __  __   http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~moboonhs/helmich/helmich.html__   __http://www.kansasheritage.org/orsh/gallery/____   http://www.cedu.niu.edu/blackwell/school.html__  __http://www.cedu.niu.edu/blackwell/one%20room%20school.htm#lesson1900__ http://www.thetimestribune.com/schools/local_story_326094017.html?keyword=topstory upload Marshall Raising Responsibility Jesse Stuart The Thread That Runs So True