Classroom Management

"What is classroom management?"

Classroom management is effective discipline, being prepared for class, motivating your students, providing a safe and comfortable learning environment, building your students’ self-esteem, and being creative/imaginative in daily lessons!

I see classroom management every day in Mrs. Zawisza's classroom! She is always setting the tone for her student's behavior, attitude, and work ethic in a fair and consistent way. She also teaches them to manage their own behavior. Also, I always see her re-teaching classroom procedures as well as modeling and providing examples for student work and attitudes! Examples of this are when she uses certain hand signals the students know to look for to get them to listen and follow a direction. She goes through step by step with her instructions and even repeats them or has the kids repeat them back to her. I've never seen Mrs. Zawisza unprepared and she is always one step ahead in all situations. It's amazing to watch the control she has over her classroom and I know to pay attention to how she does it!

With my own classroom, I would hope to be able to have that much control and management! As of now I feel like I can be a bit of a pushover but great classroom management, as Mrs. Zawisza has, comes with a lot of experience as well as trial and errors. Yet, I would expect my students to behave just as my mentor expects hers to, with respect, complete attention, positively, and safely. I love the idea of using hand signals with the kids for things such as using the bathroom, if they need to be quiet or if they need help. I think it is very effective to keep an organized and well behaved class. I don't really know what kind of consequences I would give my students because I haven't seen many kids get in trouble with Mrs. Zawisza. I do like the idea of having the kids move sticks or clips to adjust their behavior like you see in my Class Rules page or Mrs. Zawisza has her kids move popsicle sticks to yellow or red as warnings to clean up their attitude/behavior.

Altogether classroom management is one of the most important things to learn when becoming a teacher and, if done effectively, can really help kids have a fun and safe learning environment.

“The ultimate goal of classroom management should not be on simple obedience, but on having students behave appropriately because they know it’s the right thing to do and because they can understand how their actions affect other people” (Hardin, 2008, p. 142).