Classroom Management

Our Saturday classes have been on a tear over the past few months with the classroom management piece. Here is the basic concept underlying our discussions:

It is historically true in many American classrooms that, in order to survive, teachers must be not just a teacher but also wear a policeman’s hat and become someone who controls student behavior through force of will. This is exhausting to the teacher and is a major factor in teacher burnout.

When confronted with frequently interrupted instruction, no real learning can occur in most classes. An imbalance in the classroom occurs, in which the good memorizers who are quiet but not necessarily good communicators are rewarded with good grades for their obedience while those who resist are labeled as problem students.

Rewarding good memorizers who are quiet and not necessarily good communicators in a class whose standard is all about human communication seems a bit odd. What can we do about that? It doesn’t sound right when weak communicators and robot memorizers end up with the highest grades in a class in which the Standard is Communication.

More specifically, what can we do with those non-obedient problem students who disturb our classes in big and little ways so frequently? Why are they really acting out in our classes? Might they just be bored? Or could it also be that we have done a poor job of communicating our classroom expectations to them and to their parents?

How can we bring those bored students into our classroom process in a way that will cause them to voluntarily change their behavior in our classes, but not through negativity, force, tests or force of will, but because they actually enjoy our instruction and respect our rules?