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1
Classroom Management
Fourth-grade teacher Steve Ames is about to conduct a science lesson on earthquakes. Having just placed their chairs in a semicircle in the center of the room, his students are not yet settled as they chat with their neighbors, their reading books closed in their laps. Steve places his chair in the center of the students and as he sits, he raises one finger. In seconds the students are silent, turning in their seats to face him. Steve raises a second finger, and the students open their books to the assigned pages. He asks the students to describe an earthquake. Several students raise their hands and Steve calls on each, listening intently and nodding approvingly as they each give their definition of an earthquake. When one student responds to another of Steveās questions without raising his hand, another student quietly reminds the outspoken student to wait his turn.
Is this scene merely a teacherās dream? No. It is a description of a typical lesson in Steve Amesās classroom. How does he do it? Steve Ames has a classroom management plan.
His classes were not always so organized. It once took too much time to get students to come to order, to pay attention. Too often, they were distracted by the antics of their fellow students or they wrote each other notes instead of doing their class work. When they did pay attention, they were reluctant to contribute to class discussions. But now the students are attentive and engaged in the lesson; often they work in teams to teach each other the lesson. They donāt have time to get into trouble. They have accepted responsibility for the classroom environment, and they are not about to break the rules Steve asked them to create.
OVERVIEW OF CLASSROOM MANAGEMENT
Nearly every teacher agrees that classroom management is an important aspect of successful teaching. Fewer agree on how to achieve it, and even fewer claim the concept of classroom management is operating in their own classrooms.
Classroom management and discipline, terms often used interchangeably, are not synonymous. Teachers asked to define classroom management in one word have given the following responses: discipline, control, and consequences. Discipline was always the first word they chose. In the last few years, however, teachers have responded with the following words: organization, control, positive climate, and incentives. In effect, discipline has become a much smaller part of the term classroom management. Classroom management is much more than any one of these words or the sum of all these words (Charles, 1992; Wolfgang, 1995).
Classroom management means how the teacher works, how the class works, how the teacher and students work together, and how teaching and learning happen. For students, classroom management means having some control in how the class operates and understanding clearly the way the teacher and students are to interact with each other. For both teachers and students, classroom management is not a condition but a process.
Classroom Management: Gift or Skill?
Many teachers, especially beginning teachers, cite classroom management as an ever-present concern (Rogers & Freiberg, 1994; Veenman, 1984). A meta-analysis of the past 50 years of classroom research identified classroom management as the most important factor, even above student aptitude, affecting student learning (Wang, Haertel, & Walberg, 1994). But contrary to popular belief, classroom management is not a gift bestowed upon some teachers. While itās true that some teachers adapt to classroom management techniques easily, making it look to their colleagues like they possess some innate talent, classroom management is a skillāa skill that can be taught like any other, and, most importantly, a skill that like any other must be practiced to achieve proficiency.
Although much has been written about classroom management, teachers have not been taught comprehensive, practical methods of improving classroom management, and little emphasis has been placed on āhelping teachers understand the issues in effective classroom management and the relationship among various strategiesā (Jones & Jones, 2004, p. 1).
Many teachers try classroom management ideas and strategies, tossing them spontaneously and inconsistently into the classroom, then become discouraged when the classroom they hope for does not materialize. Effective classroom management does require specific skills such as planning, organizing, and reflecting as well as an aptitude for teamwork and perseverance. It requires a great deal of commitment initially, then a willingness to adjust oneās thinking and actions as one learns what works and what does not work.
But teachers cannot implement a definition. When teachers see that classroom management is a processāa process they can follow, learn, and implement in their own classroomsāthey understand that they can tailor the process to match their specific skills and needs. In other words, they can set themselves up for success, not failure. In addition, they recognize that the process is ongoing. Just as teachers change with experience and attempt to meet the changing needs of their students, so their classroom management plan must adapt as well.
CREATING A CLASSROOM MANAGEMENT PLAN
A classroom management plan (CMP) is not only a means of organizing a classroom. The plan gives structure to everything that goes on in the classroomāfrom the seating arrangement to the lessons to the grading of homework assignments to the relationships among classmates. As an antenna eliminates static, improving television reception, so a CMP eliminates distractions and allows teachers to focus on teaching and students to focus on learning. Because teachers and students alike know exactly what to expect in the classroom, the plan fosters a sense of community, of everyone working toward the same goal.
There is no magic formula for creating a CMP. In fact, while all teachers may have similar components in their CMPs, no two plans will be the same. That is because to be effective, a CMP must reflect a teacherās personality and teaching style. It will work precisely because the teacher feels comfortable with it. The purpose of this book, Planning Classroom Management, is to guide teachers in the preparation of a CMP. The text takes teachers through the process of creating a personal CMP, a process that has proved effective with preservice and practicing teachers.
The Classroom Management Process
The five steps of the classroom management process are covered in Chapters 3 through 7. The classroom management process is as follows: introspection (Chapter 3), classroom observation (Chapter 4), development of the CMP (Chapter 5), implementation of the CMP (Chapter 6), and revision of the CMP (Chapter 7).
In brief, the first step, introspection, asks teachers to identify and bridge the gap between their personal self and their teaching self. The second step, classroom observation, requires observing other teachers and being able to identify specific management structures and strategies that make a class work. The third step is the initial development of the CMP. The fourth step, implementation of the plan in the classroom, prepares teachers to teach the CMP. The final step has teachers revise the plan for more classroom management effectiveness. The steps are shown in Figure 1.1.
Itās important to note that teachers could simply fill out the CMP template (see Figure 5.1 in Chapter 5) and believe they have a plan for classroom management. But it is the process that helps teachers improve their classroom management skills, not the answers to the CMP questions. For through the process, teachers internalize the responses. Through the process, teachers face their strengths and weaknesses as educators, learn to evaluate objectively their teaching effectiveness, and, perhaps most importantly, come to understand that as they grow and change, so must the CMP. The very act of completing the process makes a teacher a better teacher.
Figure 1.1
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Classroom Management Plan
First-year teacher Kathryn Flaherty was ecstatic when she was offered the position teaching third grade at Meadowlark Elementary School. She spent the weeks before school started decorating her classroom with colorful posters and artwork, rearranging the desks into perfect rows, making sure she had plenty of supplies, from whiteboard markers to blank transparencies for the overhead. A stickler for details, she had the first three weeks of lessons worked out and written neatly in her lesson planner. She knew the subjects she would cover forward and backward and felt she was prepared for any questions the students might have.
On the first day of class, she greeted her students enthusiastically and started right in on her first lesson. But her carefully made lesson plans did not tell her what to do when the students didnāt pay attention day after day. They didnāt help her cope with one particularly ill-behaved student whose antics, while not destructive or harmful, were a constant distraction to the other students. They didnāt tell her how to get students to respond to her excellent open-ended questions. When she placed the students in pairs or groups of three to work, they, and she, accomplished even less. When a friend phoned her to inquire about her first weeks on the job, Kathryn said simply, āI was doing just fine until the kids showed up.ā
Clearly, Kathryn didnāt have a classroom management plan (CMP). A teacher with a CMP will not look or feel like a beginner. With the support of the CMP, a teacher sends a message not only to students but to administrators and parents that she knows what she is doing.
WHAT IS A CLASSROOM MANAGEMENT PLAN?
Les Fortune, a Virginia Beach, Virginia, Teacher of the Year, writes,
Classroom management is the most misunderstood term in the educatorās vocabulary. All teachers seek it, parents expect it, and administrators demand it. Should an administrator enter the classroom for an observation, the teacher is most cognizant that his or her performance will be judged primarily on the merits of viewed classroom managementānot learning, a far more difficult accomplishment to measure.
The quote above underscores the conundrum that is classroom managementāitās tough to define but everyone knows when itās not there. This teacher effectively characterizes both the significant and the intangible nature of classroom management. But classroom management need not be so elusive. The purpose of the classroom management plan is to put, literally and figuratively, the tools for classroom management in teachersā hands.
In a nutshell, a CMP structures teaching, student learning, and autonomy and provides a sense of community in a classroom. But the best way to describe and define a CMP is to discuss each of its components and their effect on cla...
