a thought on classroom management

This originally came up after we saw the classroom management presentations, but I sat on it, for whatever reason. I've felt as though our classes have placed an enormous emphasis on the importance of rules and the unflinching, lightning-quick application of consequences to classroom management. Now, I wouldn't dispute that consistency and non-hesitation in discipline matters are essential to being a successful teacher and maybe the hardest thing about teaching for me. But it was interesting to hear Jess and Jake (two of the finest MTC'ers around, from what I hear) both stress in their presentations that the teacher has to meet his/her students halfway. What I think they were getting at was that good classroom management comes as much, probably more, from good planning--preventing problems--as it does from "pulling the trigger" on problems once they arise.

This was a welcome point to me, as I've felt a little uncomfortable with the teaching philosophy that seems to accompany advice on being sterner, quicker on the draw, etc. It's definitely helpful to remember that "students should be doing at least half the work" and that you're punishing the behavior, not the student; these are messages I'm trying to take to heart and I'm sure they're sound advice on how to survive in a very difficult situation. But I've also felt like embracing that advice too wholeheartedly would lead me away from the kind of teacher I want to be, towards something more authoritarian (to use that incredibly loaded terminology). So, on a personal level, lesson planning as proactive classroom management is an appealing idea.

I also think, however, that we should all be hearing that message a bit more. For one, I think we exhausted the different ways you could say "Pull the trigger sooner" and "Don't worry about being fair" in the first two days of class. Advice on how to plan lessons that will keep kids on task, on the other hand, can take many different and more specific forms. And second, I've heard a couple second-years remark (off the record) that their first-years are a bit too trigger happy, especially considering that we probably won't have such out-of-classroom support for our discipline decisions this next year. So why not spend more time on how to plan a good lesson than on how to feel okay about giving a kid detention?

To be fair, this TEAM business coming up sounds like it's supposed to do just that. And we probably will learn a fair amount about planning lessons, even if the master teachers are as mean as everyone says. But what we're missing out on, in teaching a room of adults, is the opportunity to really put our lessons to the test, seeing how well they can organize a bunch of kids. I think it's a fantastic idea to have a second summer school session (though I definitely won't want to get roped into it as a 2nd-year), but in order to be an improvement, it needs to be structured as practice in both the rules & consequences side to classroom management and the good lesson planning side.