K. Janae's High Five - The Classroom Will Come to Order

If there is anything that the more then capable instructional team at Penn State may not be able to teach us and prepare us for before we move to the other side of the desk and that, my friends, is classroom management.

We role play different types of students during our contextual lab experiences and we have the opportunity to experience a real classroom, before our student teaching internship, during our micro-teaching experience. These experiences are purposefully placed to help prepare us for the time we will spend with our first very own students during student teaching; however, a lot of our "preparation" comes from readings and conversations with seasoned educators. Appropriately enough, here is a high five, classroom management edition.

1. Start Out Firm

• Lay down the law people! You cannot expect students to rise to higher standards after they have been able to get by with lower standards; standards that have become the norm. We talk about the first day of school and how unbelievably crucial that first day is for laying the way for your classroom expectations, procedures and consequences. I have to be incredibly confident in them and prepared to hold my students to them.

2. Routine at the beginning of class

• What are your students doing the minute they walk in the door? Do you have a routine that requires them to find their seats, acquire materials and perform an activity that gets their minds warmed up and ready to jump in with that days task? Or do you allow them to enter, socialize with their peers and create an unsafe environment? My classroom procedures require my students to enter the room, prepared to be engaged, active and productive participants and then to complete the bellwork I assign for them for that day.

3. Make generous use of praise

• We talk frequently about cultivating a growth mindset over a fixed mindset in our students (read more here). I believe that when my students are struggling with a fixed mindset the more apt they are to struggle with misbehaving or get frustrated in my class. If I am working to build my students up, continually calling them to keep striving to be the best version of them, my classroom culture and student behavior will surely be more positive.

4. Be consistent, yet not predictable

• Again, for the sake of not sounding too repetitive, starting out firm, holding true to the expectations and procedures that were set at the beginning of the class with provide students with the necessary structure for a positive learning environment. But in the same sense, it can be easy to get stuck in the routine. As a teacher, I need to watch for areas where my students are becoming "lax" with my classroom routine or are trying to work the system and continually remind my students that we are held at a higher standard. 

5. Never make threats, only promises

• Our schools create consequences for a reason. If I state that after one verbal warning, the student has to have a one-on-one meeting with me after class, then that is how it should go. I cannot, out of frustration or annoyance, threaten my student that immediately after another offense they will have to leave the room if that is not what I have outlined and set precedence for in my classroom consequences. I owe it to my students to be fair. 

Simply put, classroom management can certainly be more successful with more intentional creation of a classroom culture. I want my students to know that I may hold them to a high expectation, but that is because I know they are more then capable. 

Simply put, I believe in a classroom of second chances. Everybody gets a free pass for bad days! Each one of my students is a walking story that I may only know bits and pieces of. Off days happen, and that's okay. 

Here's a High Five from Me to You, K. Janae