Classroom Management

Aaah!!!!  By now, we’ve all felt it.  In its more severe form, it sounds something like, "I thought I could teach . . . but maybe I was wrong!" or, if another more experienced adult is in the room, a quick glance screams, "HELP!"

Fortunately, Judy (our internship sight professor and rock), CLC (Collaborative Learning Community) discussion, and some other informants come to the rescue.  And some of the things we talked about over the summer that were real nice in theory.  Now, the trick of putting it all into action.

My Clinical Teacher put it well. "They're good kids, but if they're talking, it gets in the way of instruction." Our class suffers from a light version of the problem, but my CT nailed it. Classroom management is an essential prerequisite of effective instruction.





I sit now at the end of the best first day of substituting I could have imagined.  I had the option of kindergarten, 2nd grade, and high school math today.  I chose I high school math.  I figured I only have to keep the students engaged for an hour at a time.  Then I get a break and a start-over.  Plus, I'm comfortable with the content.  In the earlier grades, I would have to have enough cute songs, rhymes, or stretch breaks to accommodate not only 6-year old 10-minute attention spans, but keeping hold of the same 28 6-year old attention spans for 7 hours.

It absolutely helps that the teacher I'm covering for was in before class and during every break giving me a briefing on his content, materials, and books, reminding me of little things (like how the derivative of trigonometric functions work.  Ha ha, just kidding. ;)  Sort of.), and letting me know right where I can step into his instruction as seamlessly as possible.  And it helps that he has all the honors/IB kids – the highest achieving 10% in the school.  That definitely helps.

But I did prepare for this day and I did bring a bag of tricks along.  After consulting with a friend whose teaching I greatly admire (she said she learned classroom management during a year of substitute teaching), I came to school in black slacks, heels, and a hound’s tooth blazer.  I wanted to look put together, good, and dressed for business.  Even on casual Friday. On my first day of substitute teaching, I'll take every ounce of credibility I can get.

Some other things I’m learning.

Next thing, a little bigger, and this is always true when working with kids.  WE HAVE TO SET THE EXPECTATIONS UP FRONT. Our kids, as with all people, have a much higher chance of living up to our expectations if they know what our expectations are.  Mine might be different from the classroom teacher's.  And even if they're not, the kids might have forgotten overnight.  Seriously.  There are different rules for operation everywhere, and the classroom is a very unique place. This particularity is even more pronounced for non middle-class and non-White students if the teacher is a middle-class White person. First thing in subbing, and always in our own rooms, we must state our expectations immediately, clearly, respectfully.  I said, simply but clearly today, "My name is Ms. Jones.  I'll be in while Mr. D is out today.  We will still be doing work (the students were talking about not needing their books).  I know you probably already know this, but I do expect everyone to respect me and each other while we work today.  That means your textbook and notebook are out and eyes and ears are on me if I'm talking." One helpful reminder here (see also Vitto) is to be specific about what we expect.  Responsible and even respectful are kind of abstract terms.  Concretely, what behavior do I want to see?  Especially as beginners, but even later, it is good to plan this at least as thoroughly as we plan any lesson content.

(For subbing, I called attendance and look each student in the eye, trying to attach the face to the name in my brain.  I use their names in instruction and conversation.  If a student was not acting according to expectation, I asked them to step into the hall with me, reminded them that they knew what the expectations were, asked what that meant they needed to do, closed with a stern “Thank you, please do it,” and ushered them back into the room.)

Judy talks about our credible voice versus our approachable voice.  The approachable voice says “we’re friends.”  There is a time for this.  That time is not during the introduction.  The credible voice says, “We are all learners, but I’m in charge of this classroom.  We will be doing what I say today.”  Though there are specific traits to the credible voice, I am finding this voice needs to come out of a decided and deep interior conviction: “I am the one in charge in this room today.  I am the one responsible for the learning.”  The “voice,” then (including body posture too), doesn’t need to be dominating or oppressive, but it does need to be confident, matter-of-fact, up-front.  My expectations of respect and hard work are not up for discussion.
I think, though the details of how this plays out may vary, I don’t think this credible tone that we set means we need to be mean.  During my best-behaved last hour, one girl asked, right after my intro, “can you be our teacher all the time?”  I countered, “How do you know you want that?  I might make you work really hard.”  She responded, “Yeah, but you smile at us. Mr. D doesn’t smile.”  I hadn’t really noticed that I had been smiling before stating my expectations so forthrightly, but I realized I had been trying to welcome them in this way.  I immediately thought about the “don’t smile until Christmas theory,” and threw it out the window once and for all.  I had seen Mr. D smile multiple times throughout the day.  I thought he was very kind and respectful, to me and to his students (he did start his own first-hour class).  He also said the last hour was the one with the most rowdiness.  I didn’t have that problem.

Consistency is key, especially in students' lives (like ours) who lack consistency and stability.  This is related to expressing expectations up front – it’s easier to meet expectations when they change less often, because you have a better sense of what they are.  It's much easier (we are habitual creatures) to hit a target that isn't moving.  Of course, this is difficult when we are interning in someone else's classroom and basically impossible when we're subbing.  I got a break today, but I think of expressing this reality explicitly to the kids, so they know and are ready to work within a different paradigm for the day.  Maybe something like this: "I know Mr. D. has certain ways he does things with you.   I don't really know what they are, though, so I'm going to ask you to do what I say today.  If you have a specific request, please raise your hand to ask me."

Accessibility is also key.  Two things.  First, I walked around the classroom looking at student work, and supporting students through individual or small-group instructional conversation (Dalton throw-back right here: IC).  This was important because many students were not even getting their materials out until I came by.  Others weren’t working on the assignment yet until they realized I would come by again.  Second, many of the behavior issues were coming from students who didn’t get the material.  They needed specific support to access it so they could engage in the content in the first place.  As I walked around, I found this to be more frequent than I expected.   I think back to fifth grade at Monaco.  If Yrazema is not writing an answer to the question, can she verbalize an answer?  If not, she probably can’t write it, isn’t going to try (she reasonably gave up trying after the first 5 times she found she couldn’t do it), and is going to talk to Alex about something she can (and would rather) grasp instead.  How can we scaffold on a whole-class or individual level so that all students have access to the content? (For all learners, but especially language learners, like Yrazema, we remember: students access content through language in a specific order: heard, spoken, read, written.  Yrazema may have heard the ideas once or twice, but does not yet have a competency with talking about these things.)

Finally, it is encouraging to remember that classroom management will be different in our own classrooms.  We will be able to establish the norms that will support every day instruction.  We will be able to teach them and have students practice like we teach and have students practice academic content (Vitto, again).  We will get to know our students, and hopefully we will have the wherewithal to reflect on ourselves and them, and really assess how we can meet their needs.

I brought some engaging activities with me for early finishers, today, or for whole-group content if the sub plan was lacking.  This time, we didn’t use them.  My day was a ton of fun.  I heard over and over, “we’re actually learning something today!” which, again, surprised me after what I had seen of the teacher.  The last student out the door at the end of the day took an extra minute to figure out the last problem, even though I had already posted the answer on the board.  As he was packing up he verbalized out loud, I think admitting to himself more than informing me, “I usually just copy.  Today I guess I learned something.”