For my observation on classroom
management, I opted to write about the AP class. When students entered the room, they filed into their seats
without needing any prompting or redirection. I didn’t know if seats were assigned or not, but I did
notice that racial groups were sitting together. The students needed no redirection or prompting from the
teacher when it came to focusing on academics, though the teacher did need to
work a little hard to draw discussions and talking points out of the
students. When I asked the teacher
about this after class, he said that this group of AP students seem less
motivated than other AP students he has had in the past and that classroom
discussions are rather stagnant without his prompts.
When the teacher began to lecture,
all of the students independently took out either notebooks and pens or laptops
or tablets, presumably to take notes, I noticed a big difference between this
class and the inclusion classes I observed earlier in this respect because the
students in the inclusion class seemed to need constant prodding: “Take out
your notebooks. Take out a pen or a pencil. Write this down. Stop texting.”
Attendance was not taken because it was a small class of only eleven
students. The teacher informed me
that this class was offered the same time as an AP language class, and that
many students opted for the AP language class instead of AP history. No time
was spent trying to catch students up to speed because no students were absent
the day before and no students arrived to class late.
The
teacher opened up his lecture by discussing some current events that were
relatable to the period under study.
He casually led the class in a discussion about social media, corperate
collusion of sites like hulu and netflix, and how these businesses put
blockbuster video and Hollywood video out of business. This conversation moved on to discussions
about monopolies during the Progressive Era, and with special attention paid to
Rockefeller and Vanderbilt. He
tried to draw in students’ interest by telling them the Vanderbilt had a house
in Rhode Island, and the students seemed disinterested.
At
one point, a small student misbehavior was corrected. The teacher very respectfully to a student wearing a hat,
“Please take your hat off. Thank you.”
I asked the teacher about this later on, and he told me that he didn’t
think it was effective to yell at kids about things like that, especially since
if you ask most students kindly and respectfully they will listen to your
direction.
At
the end of class, the teacher wrote on the board: “Assess…’WWI justified
Wilson’s suspension of Civil Liberties,’” and then read the statement out
loud. He then said “For next
Monday. Yes, this is time for argument.
Do you guys remember reading about the Alien and Sedition Acts? When
your talking about Wilson, you’re talking about points in American history
where civil liberties have been suspended before. Draw in past examples of this.” No students asked any
questions about the homework, and as soon as the teacher began talking about
the homework assignment, students were closing notebooks, laptops and tablets.
The bell rang (the intercom buzzed) slightly after, and the students filed out
of the room quietly.
After
class I talked with the teacher for a bit about his classroom management. He talked about how he sees a huge
difference between AP classes and other classes because in AP classes he finds
that classroom management is generally not an issue. Especially in a class as small as 11 students that is not an
inclusion class, he does not have to spend class time dealing with classroom
management.
I
saw many different styles of classroom management in other classes I
visited. For example, in the ESL
class I observed, the teacher informed me that the students all have arranged
seats, and he arranges the seating in a way that no two students who speak the
same language sit next to each other.
This way, if a student wants to talk to their neighbor, they have to use
English because it is their only common language. In one inclusion class,
classroom management was largely the teacher telling all of the students what
exactly to do every second of class and making remarks like “Can you pretend
like you care about your education?” to the students. Another inclusion classroom managed their class by the
teacher’s humor. He tried to keep
the mood light with jokes and by joking around with the special education
teacher in the room. This seemed effective because the students wanted to be in
on the joke. Another class I
observed – a senior classroom – was managed by threats of detention to multiple
students throughout class. One
student actually got detention after multiple threats had been made. The threats of detention seemed to
detract students’ attention and focus from the lesson, and after one student
received detention, they were not engaged for the rest of class and instead was
using their cell-phone.
There
were systems of school-wide management in play as well. As I sat in the main office in the
morning waiting for my department chair to come, I watched two different
parents come in to discuss their children’s suspensions. The intercom was a tool used to check
in with teachers and to inform classes of a group on a field trip having
returned. I watched a secretary
manage the substitute teachers by telling them what teachers were absent that
day (there were two) and what classrooms to go to. I also was told that the school operated on a rotating
schedule system so that each class was had at a different time of the day
during the week.
I
think that school structure can contribute to student learning by providing
tangible expectations. On a
smaller level, I think that there are pros and cons of all different types of
classroom management and they all contribute to student learning in different
ways. I also think it is important
to talk about how classroom management varies based on the students in the
class.
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