Classroom Management—What Is It?
The actions teachers take to establish & sustain an environment that fosters students’ academic achievement as well as their social, emotional, and moral growth.
Classroom Management
Rules and procedures are the least effective tool in the classroom-management toolkit. This is the most effective tool in the classroom-management toolkit.
Mental Set (40% decrease in disruptions versus only 28% for Rules & Procedures)
The principle of behavioral interaction argues that your behavior influences this.
Student Behavior
We used this animal’s situational awareness and rapid reaction as a model for mental set.
Kangaroo Rat
Dee’s Bucks is an example of this disciplinary practice.
Tangible Recognition
Most classroom management discussions focus on this.
Managing disruptive behaviors.
Rules and procedures do this.
Communicate expectations about how the class works, i.e., what we do and how we do it.
Most new teachers start in this quadrant of the behavioral-interaction matrix, but transition to this quadrant.
Q3 Colleague to Q1 Competitor
Mental set consists of emotional objectivity and ____________.
Withitness: The ability to identify danger and act immediately.
This makes group contingency, one of the most effective disciplinary practices, effective.
Peer Pressure
The two downsides of poor classroom management from a student perspective. (You must get both correct.)
Student don’t learn. Students act out.
When Ms. G didn’t manage her classroom proactively, this happened.
The students managed it—much to everyone’s educational and emotional harm.
This happened when Ms G went Q1 (Competitor) on her students.
They quit coming to class.
The textbook approach to withitness involves walking around the room, making eye contact, looking for red flags, and ____________.
Menace with eyes, movement, and then voice.
(We recommend upgrading withitness to include better storytelling and frequently involving students. )
Teacher reaction, one of the most effective disciplinary practices, is largely synonymous with this behavior that we discussed as part of our discussion of mental sets.
Withitness
Two of the three downsides of poor classroom management from a teacher perspective. (you must get two of the three correct.)
Anxiety & stress go up.
Burn out increases.
Teachers leave the profession.
This is the first rule of establishing rules and procedures.
Keep rules to a minimum. (Go back and review the characteristics of a good rule.)
Because most teachers rely on coercive and reward power they end up with this as a best-case outcome.
Compliance
This is the key to emotional objectivity.
The ability to address classroom issues unemotionally.
A proactive approach to curriculum, pedagogy, and culture development will eliminate most disciplinary issues. This is the percent of disciplinary incidents you may still have to deal with using one of the five practices describe in the book.
20%
This is the least important priority of classroom management. Hint: It comes after getting your curriculum & pedagogy right and cultivating the right classroom culture.
Managing disruptive behaviors proactively.
Two of the three questions you should ask when you invite students to help design classroom rules and procedures. (You must get two of the three correct.)
Ask, “Am I asking for anything that is unreasonable or can’t be done?”
Ask, “Do you have any ideas for how to make the rule or procedure easier to understand?”
Ask, “Have I missed anything that is really important?”
This listening probe is most common; this probe is least used.
Close-ended Question; Reflective Statement
At Pike’s Fish Market, withitness is more proactive, involving these four behaviors. (Name two of the four behaviors.)
Choose your attitude.
Be there.
Make their day.
Play.
The book provided many examples of examples of teachers reacting to address inappropriate behavior. This one example focused on reinforcing appropriate behavior. (Be specific.)
“Catching a student being good.”