Classroom Management Revisited

Looking back at my classroom management plan from the summer, I'm not sure I could give a fair assessment of its success. My biggest problem has been and continues to be consistency in enforcing my rules and consequences. So I can't really say whether or not the plan's worked because I haven't yet implemented it properly. I'm much better about enforcement at the beginning of class, but I still get lax partway through a class or midway through the week. The solution is simple enough, but this consistency and assertiveness business seems to be my personal weakness--not something I'm proud to admit, as it's the foundation of being able to teach at all.

I've considered the possiblity that my rules are simply out of sync with what I can reasonably expect of my students. A while ago, Austin and I talked about this in terms of his classes. He'd decided that his rule prohibiting any talking in class was unreasonable and that he had to loosen up on that front. I was a little skeptical, but I understood where he was coming from. But as for doing something like that myself--I don't have two years of teaching under my belt and I think I have a signficantly different teacher personality than him. My rules are unreasonable given how little my students respect me, but I know enough not to compromise on my rules for that.

So what do I see in my classroom management plan now, three and half months wiser? Naivete mostly. I knew that I should want my classroom a certain way and that I needed to require certain behavior of my students to get it and keep it that way, but I didn't have the conviction, bred of experience, to back that up with action. The procedures, rules, and consequences that I wrote then are still what I want now; having tried to teach a class in which those things aren't followed, it's clear to me now why I want them.