Classroom Management

Classroom management, in my opinion, is ranked right up there with motivation that we studied last week.  Being able to control the reigns of my class  is going to be my biggest challenge hands down.  I know that I am an easy-going person and I love to have a good time but right now I have no clue on how to best manage a class.  I'm so easy-going in fact that sometimes I feel like I'm a "door mat."  Controlling my class is something that I will need to really focus on if I'm going to have any success.  I rarely gave my teachers trouble in school because I knew if I caused problems, my mother would be waiting at home to give me a good tongue lashing and punish me.  I remember plenty of people in high school that gave the teachers the hardest time and my heart sinks just thinking about in those situations that WILL happen to me.

For my future classroom, I would first set the tone by the way I first present myself to the class.  I believe if you first present the rules of the class and the consequences if you do not follow the rules, then they will know you, as the teacher, do not let things slide.  If you let students kind of get away with no consequences then you're just setting yourself up for a bad time.  Last year when I was interviewed for the teacher education program, I answered one of their questions with "respect is key and it goes both ways."  Establishing and maintaining productive teacher-student relationships is one of the most, if not the most, important aspects of classroom management.  Some students may have had teachers in the past who don't care much about them and, as a result, that student may not think that I care about him/her.  Ormrod brings up an excellent point, "Regularly communicate caring and respect for students as people." (Ormrod 462).  This applies to me because I will be dealing with high school age students, yes they will be rowdy sure, but they are also young adults.  Keeping a line of communication open to these kids is critical because some might not be as fortunate and have a rough home life.  Think about it for a minute, our students will be looking up to us in the future.  They spend 8 hours a day with us and we act as their role model.  No matter how rough their home life may be, we MUST show them that we care because we are the only other adult figures in their lives.  Never give up.  Work hard to create a friendly and open classroom environment.

I found a useful link that adds on to topics presented in our textbook, Seven Strategies for Building Positive Classrooms, by Carol Gerber Allred, that showcases useful ways to build a great classroom environment.  I hope people will take the time to read through them all.

So clearly I am keen on three big topics for classroom management and creating a learning environment (I love keeping things in threes, it's easier that way):

1. Establishing rules of the class and the consequences
2. Establishing and maintaining productive teacher-student relationships
3. Creating a positive classroom climate - one that is welcoming and friendly to all

High School Case Study

For the CLE from our CSEL guidelines, I chose to examine the high school case study, as this clearly applies to me.  

You have started to dread your fifth period history class. It is made up entirely of seniors who are counting the days until graduation and seem to care very little about learning. Most of the students are obviously members of one clique or another. Whenever they think your back is turned, they start passing notes and text messaging. Worse, three boys have started disrupting those engaged in learning. No matter what you say, they laugh at the students who present their group projects to the class. Yesterday, Tony, Jeff, and Morris started roughhousing; then all three of them refused to sit down and follow the class procedures that the classroom community agreed upon at the beginning of the year. Although you have been using a set approach to handling infractions of rules, you decide it is time to change these procedures.

First, since these are high school age kids, I would start off by cueing them to their misbehavior.  When a teacher stops a lesson to correct a bunch of rowdy kids, it distracts every one else as well.  By taking time to pause and give them a stern look this ideally would get them to stop, and probably feel awkward in front of their peers as well.  They know this behavior is bad and should stop unless they want to cause more problems.  The three boys need to realize that school isn't over yet, but it's also my job to push them to the finish line.

Second, if the misbehavior continues then I would pull all three boys aside after class for a private talk.  A private after class talk is much better than openly calling attention to them because of two things: it takes them away from everyone else so they don't feel like they're getting away with it.  Two, as an educator, I don't want to flat out embarrass them or make them feel unwelcome.  This would also give me a chance to reinforce my classroom rules and consequences for disobeying those rules.  But there's still a big question about this case: How do you get the kids to care and pay attention even though they are so close to graduating?  They do not see a reason to.  I hope to answer questions like this in EDPY 401.

Last, if they continue to be a problem and it is obvious that they still don't care about my class, I will call in the cavalry (the parents).    As I mentioned near the beginning of the blog, communication is vital in both teacher-student and teacher-parent relationships.  If you communicate with parents to show that you care about their kids instead of constantly punishing them, then that will hopefully lead to the parents disciplining them at home.

These are perfect scenario responses to the case study.  Who knows what to expect in the real world classroom.  Sometimes classroom rules don't matter to some kids and that requires adapting to on the teacher's part.

Dan Pink RSA Video on Motivation

The Dan Pink video that we watched in class last week greatly surprised me.  I always assumed there was only one way to reward people: through performance with the carrot and stick method.  It kind of comes natural that we would assume that high performance should bring greater rewards.  Dan Pink points out that this is not always the case.  For simple, straight forward tasks, nothing beats the carrot and stick method.  For rudimentary cognitive tasks that require conceptual, creative thinking actually hurts the top performers.

Pink asks two questions: If you reward something, do you get more of the behavior that you want?  And if you punish something do you get less of the behavior you want?  To help answer these he brings up the issue of money.  Money is a big time motivator, but it has to be enough money or else the person won't be motivated.

Then he switches gears to talk about three things that were interesting and I think can help me in my future class: autonomy, mastery, and purpose.  Autonomy is a fantastic way of motivating people.  But it can also hurt because you don't want your students to feel like they have complete independence from you, but instead your students are like your protectorates, if that makes sense.  Autonomy can highlight certain abilities and skills if they feel like they have choice in the matter when it comes to assignments.  Dan gives the example of the Australian software company that allows its developers one day of autonomy each quarter to develop ideas and such.  That allowed for the company to see the great ideas its employees had without interfering or governing their work, and probably made them feel satisfied.  This is awesome because who wants to be told what to do ALL of the time?  I. Love. Autonomy and I'm going to utilize it in my future classroom.

The next motivator is mastery.  Mastery is the urge to get better at stuff.  Mastery drives us to improve on unique things that make us individuals in our free time.  Dan talks about Linux and it powers many servers worldwide, Apache is a free browser (correct me if i'm wrong, I don't use it), and the all mighty Wikipedia.  These things are free and are made by people who have jobs but yet still are driven to create these tools for free.  Wikipedia is absolutely free and it runs on donations from people who contribute to its purpose.  Why do people do this KNOWING they won't get paid?  Challenge, mastery, and making a contribution to something greater.

Lastly, Dan discusses the purpose motive.  Striving for a purpose, well for lack of a better term, gives us a sense of purpose.  It's why we get up every day and find something useful to do.  Employers more and more are starting to put the purpose motive higher than the profit motive.  A great purpose brings great people who are looking to be a part of that greatness.  I mean, who doesn't want to work for an employer that does cool stuff or maybe has half-days on a Friday once a month I don't know.  Purpose is exactly why I want to teach.  I know without any doubt that teaching will give me that sense of purpose that I'm ready for.  I really enjoyed this video and hope that everyone else in the class gets a chance to watch all of it.

Theories of Motivation

Today in class we talked all about the subject of motivation and how vital it is to creating a successful learning environment.  Motivation takes many forms intrinsically and extrinsically with rewards, tangible or simply motivation to get that "feel good" feeling by learning.  Motivation energizes students to learn and be proactive about pursuing goals in the class.  This matters especially when the student is in a subject that is not particularly his or her favorite or strongest subject.

There are three types of motivation that stand out to me: situated motivation, extrinsic, and intrinsic.  In class, I brought up the story about being in a 9th grade physical science course in high school.  On days in which we were in the science lab I was very motivated to get my hands on the equipment and solving the worksheets either individually or in a group.  I was motivated in those situations because I really loved lab days but did not enjoy test days.

I am extrinsically motivated to do exceptionally well in school when I am at my job.  I enjoy the people that I work with but I am ready to move on.  This makes me understand that the only way out is by giving my 100% at school.  I am motivated by the fact that I will soon have a degree and a teaching job that will get me out of my current situation.  While in school, I remember having class review games such as Jeopardy that provided extrinsic motivators like bonus credit on an upcoming test.  Those kinds of motivators encourage me to commit all of my efforts to succeed.

Intrinsic motivation comes from when I am motivated by factors within myself to perform the task at hand.  For example, I get enjoyment out of talking to war veterans, especially the World War II guys, because I know they will not be with us much longer.  I believe it is morally right to thank these men and listen to their stories out of pure enjoyment and satisfaction.  When in school, I also get enjoyment out of simply being there every day.  I understand how important education is to my future, therefore, I feel obligated to give my all every day in school.

From our textbook on page 363, I found two theories that make sense and could help me out in the future.  Under the cognitive theory, "learners tend to be more intrinsically motivated when they believe they have some control of choice in their activities - in other words, when they have a sense of self-determination" (Ormrod 363).  Here are some ways I can use this theory in my future classroom: give the students choice in a type of authentic assessment so they do not feel forced to do a project in one concrete way.  I can see how this can boost motivation because they might feel stronger about a subject or idea over another.  I want my students to be fully engaged and by giving them choice it should motivate them to do well on the assignment.

I also found the sociocultural theory to be beneficial as well.  It talks about how students may gradually internalize the importance of good behaviors set by the parents.  My parents, especially my step-dad, disciplined me in such a way that I learned how to be a good student and set an example for others.  They externally motivated me in such a way that I now want to be a teacher and help others do the same thing!

Blog 2

1.  Informal versus Formal Assessment
An informal assessment is something that would most likely take place at the beginning of a new section of the class.  This could take place in the form of a brief discussion and provide a starting point for both the teacher and the class.  After identifying the strengths and weaknesses of the class from the informal assessment, I would move on to the formal assessment at the end of each section.  The students who did not perform very well in the informal assessment will have time to improve in order to succeed on the formal assessment.  These two assessment types would also help me, as the teacher, find areas of improvement in my lesson plans.

2.  Paper-Pencil versus Performance Assessment
For a paper-pencil assessment I would most commonly assign homework and worksheets for the students to complete on their own.  As a future history teacher, using worksheets with maps or short-answer essay questions are going to help the students put things in historical context.  For a performance assessment, I believe a neat project would be to assign each student to a past American President and have them recite a clip of that president's farewell address and then explain to the class what it all means in modern day English.  This would demonstrate how much American foreign policy has changed over the course of our history.  I believe this would help the students learn how the U.S. came to be a superpower and how we conduct ourselves worldwide. Not only foreign policy but also taking a step back in time to see how a president wanted his successor to guide the nation.  This is only one of many possible ideas I could use to have some fun in my history classes.

3.  Traditional versus Authentic Assessment
Traditional assessments are concrete/old school methods of assessing a student's progress in the class.  These obviously consist of quizzes/tests/papers.  Authentic assessments measure a students' knowledge and skills in real world situations in a way that build upon traditional methods.  I think a fun authentic task would be a political debate in a U.S. Government class.  I remember in high school we were all assigned hot topic political issues and one team was "for it" and the other was "against it."  The students who weren't debating that day wrote down which team they think won on a sheet of paper and handed it to the teacher.  It got us out of taking an optional written test and also taught us about collaborative learning along with some friendly competition!!  These sorts of group tasks develop social skills that will help them succeed outside the classroom in the real world.

4.  Standardized Tests versus Teacher-Developed Assessments
Standardized tests are tests that we are all too familiar with.  These include TCAP, SAT, ACT, just to name a few.  These are statewide tests that assess a students' general achievement and ability levels.  As a  teacher, it would be my job to help the students excel on the social studies part of the test as well as helping with text anxiety in general.  Teacher-developed assessments help gauge how a student performs related to a specific instructional objective.  I believe the best way to learn in history/social studies is through written exams and papers.  So for my own assessments, I would give them several topics to write about on a test and let them choose one.

5.  Criterion-Referenced versus Norm-Referenced Assessments
For a criterion-referenced assessment, one easy way is by giving a T/F and multiple choice test with questions and statements relating to American people, dates, key events, and so on.  With this test, I would know what area of the curriculum needs improvement.  For a norm-referenced assessment, the students could take a general social studies test to determine how students differ from class to class and maybe even school system to school system.