Classroom management is often thought of as the discipline that students have when they are in class, along with the way they obey a teacher when they are asked to perform an activity by the teacher. However, classroom management is more than obedience and drills from a sergeant-like teacher. Classroom management refers to various skills, techniques, and activities teachers use to see students organized, on task, focused, attentive, engaged, and productive academically. When classroom management strategies are effective, class time is less about behavior and more about enhanced student-centered learning.
A more comprehensive description of class management extends to everything teachers may do to facilitate or improve student learning. For example, factors like:
Behavior: teacher having a positive attitude, happy facial expressions, encouraging statements, respectful and fair treatment of students.
Environment: a warm welcoming, well-lit classroom, a classroom filled with academic stimulating learning material, a classroom that feels safe for students.
Expectations: the quality of work that teachers expect students to produce, the ways that teachers expect students to behave toward other students, the agreements that teachers make with students and how they honor them.
Materials: he types of texts, equipment, and other learning resources that teachers use and that are available to students for individual experimentation and learning.
Activities: the kinds of learning experiences that teachers design to engage student interests, passions, and intellectual curiosity. Activities that will make and impression in their lives and that will bring JOY back into learning.
I hope that we can all practice better classroom management techniques that will help students feel more at ease in the classroom and in return they can be better students. As we take into consideration these practices we can all create a better classroom environment.
