Classroom management is an intimidating aspect of teaching in the eyes of many teachers, including me, student teacher. Classroom management I believe means the way in which a classroom is set up; including, the physical layout, the rules and routines, relationship building, and motivation strategies. The following is my philosophy of classroom management at this time. But is definitely subject to change between now and the time I actually have a classroom of my own because of growth. My future classroom will be a positive, loving, and safe learning environment that will foster academic excellence and respect for diversity. My students will be responsible for their own behavior and learning and will appreciate other students' contributions and cultural differences. All my students will strive to do their best and help everyone in the classroom to be successful. My future classroom and learning community will be collaborative, engaging, focused, safe, creative, tolerant, and productive.
My ten belief principles about the factors that I believe will lead to good behavior and enhance high quality learning in my classroom are as follows:
- My first philosophy is that teaching is not about you. Is mostly about the students and what works for them. Look for something outside of the class. Be there for the students. When they are doing something on the field, or stage, and you are having a spare time, just show up. This builds good relationship between you and the student. And the probability of good behavior in your class, will be high.
- Now my second philosophy is that I believe the use of technology must be incorporated in lessons. And also, I believe the use of the highest level of bloom’s taxonomy will help students think critically and analytically.
- I established a parking lot in my class during my practicum. This I believe promoted high-quality learning. Now the parking lot is where I have a big poster and I put it normally at the back of the class. Normally before the class ends, I tell students to write on sticky notes ‘what was stuck with them in the class?’ or I ask students to write what they did not like. As a student teacher, I always check the parking lot. Because I get to know whether they understood the lesson or not.
- In order to enhance academic excellence, I always put a mental math on the board to refresh their mind before the main lesson of the day. This, I will call Todd's theory. I learned this from my cooperating teacher. Mental math could be any subject. So, it has mental and the subject name follows. I noticed, anytime there are mental math questions, immediately they enter the class, the students start working. And this reduced noise making within the first 10 minutes of class. After my students have finished answering the questions within a timeframe, we start the lesson for the day. When I notice that they could not answer some of the questions, I review the previous lesson before I start a new lesson.
- In order to build a culture of respect and discipline, I will make a class contract with the class. On my first day or within my first week, I will hand in sticky notes to my students. And I will tell them to write rules that we can implement in the class. Afterwards, I will take them and scan through them. Then make the class contract out of the rules they make. Finally, I will paste this contract on the class door. You make the rules, you follow them accordingly. I learned this from my cooperating teacher. And it was amazingly effective.
- I will provide a sign out sheet for the class. Anytime a student wants to go out to do something, you state where you want to go on the first section of the sheet, the time you are leaving and finally the time you return. Going out will be one student at a time. If I am in the middle of instruction and you want to go out. I will allow them to use sign language. As an educator, I have come to learn that it is essential for you to know what time your students left the class. I believe this will enhance a safe environment for my students.
- I like my students to interact with me all the time because I believe they need to have a role model that they can feel secured and safe with. And I will help foster their emotional and social development I this manner. Students mostly require more than just spoken dialogue with the teacher to feel he or she has the attention. While some students are very physical with their feelings and do not interact verbally with others. To help such students, I will ask them permission to touch or comfort them that is if the need arises. Then I will ask a few personal questions from time to time based on their body language. I respect the feelings and ideas of students, and I create situations which require them to make decisions.
- Communication with parents is a component that I will include in my classroom. It is important that a teacher upholds open lines of communication with parents and or guardians regarding their child’s behavior. Weekly calls, notes home, or behavior charts will help open lines of communication and help to engage the student’s parents in the process. I will manage student behavior whenever possible. Although for more extreme cases, the administration will be part.
- Something that will be important to me in my future classroom is to do my best to motivate students to learn well and to keep my students motivated. Firstly, I want my students to have a sense of control over their own lives. To aid this, I will do my best to keep routines and the class’ schedules organized and structured so that students know what they are supposed to be doing rather than telling them to do something. In addition, I will enhance the motivation of my students by providing objectives to them before I teach a lesson so that my students will have the sense of responsibility to get more resources about topics before I teach them. I will try and make my lessons fun by incorporating the use of technology effectively.
- I have learned that feedback aids improvement. And in order for my students to be successful, I need to constantly give them feedback on how they are doing in my class. I will do this consistently by placing stickers on their test or quiz sheet and by praising them in person.
Finally, I want to conclude and say everybody and what works for them as an individual. This philosophy principles, I believe will change as time goes on because of growth and experiences. But I hope to be a better person at each step of my career. As an educator I believe I will work 24/7 and I am fully ready for the game.