Flat tire, SHHHHHHH. If you are a teacher, you’ll know. Teaching is part science and part art. The science of education comes from knowing the content and the skills necessary to understand future concepts. The art of teaching, is how you teach, the way you capture the student’s in the learning. As a new teacher, I found it to be difficult to master both figuring out the content and the art. So, I decided to get good at the art of teaching because I knew that science would come with time.
When you have 25+ little humans sitting in front of you with eager minds, how do you get them engaged? How are they going to be interested in learning? How will they learn? Million-dollar questions, now I wish I had the magic wand that I could give you that made all this happen, I don’t but, I do have some ideas to support those questions to allow teachers the opportunity to teach rather than crisis management.
When I started teaching I never really understood the concept of classroom management. I mean I had a class or two in college on it, but I never found any practical use out of the levels (side note THIS CLASS NEEDS TO BE TAUGHT TO TEACHERS). That was until student teaching when I then realized I had 20+ students with different ability levels, and learning styles and I was learning that all the “good curriculum” or lesson plans I could write would mean nothing without classroom management. My first lesson was TERRIBLE, excellent learning experience for myself, but downright bad. There wasn’t any learning happening because I had not set up the parameters in which learning could occur. To be fair, I had not a clue in how to do this at the time so I couldn’t blame the students for being off task.
It took a lot of time, learning, researching and experience to get the hang of it but eventually, it came. I did a lot of research on classroom management and the importance of it. This was when I came across PBIS (positive behavior intervention supports). A whole new world I had come across, more like saving grace! I learned so much on what to do and what not to do, and it helped me in getting my current job 😊
The first part of classroom management I learned was setting up the expectations. Honestly, this is the MAJOR KEY to successful classroom management. These expectations should mirror the schoolwide expectations, safe, respectful, responsible (or whatever your schools may be). When teaching the expectations, it needs to be specific- what it looks like in the classroom to show each of those expectations. These expectations should be adapted for each routine in the class, independent reading, partner talk, group work, and legit ANYTHING you have the kids do in learning needs to have expectations!
Expectations are what have been called rules in the past. As PBIS has started making its way into schools it has changed the negative statements such as “no talking, no running” etc. to positive statements. Instead of saying, no talking you would say level 1 voice during work time. As humans, our bodies are wired to notice the negative, it helped ancestors understand what not to do and helped them survive. So when focusing on the positive and using that language we are training ourselves to focus on positive behavior.
Throughout my teaching experience, I could point out the negative like it is no one’s business but focusing on the positive is a bit more of a challenge. That’s where the expectations come in; it helps the adults focus on the positive, looking for the students doing it the expected way. Basically, YOU GET WHAT YOU FOCUS ON! This statement works in so many aspects of life, not just education.
As a class, we came up with what it would look like to follow the expectations. We posted it in the front of the room and off we went. I started teaching and using the expectations to acknowledge the students following them, and I noticed that as I did the who were not followed. My lessons times shortened and I spent less time getting students on task and spent more time teaching.
After setting up the expectations, acknowledge, acknowledge and acknowledge. With a whole class contingency and group contingency and/or single contingency. I would recommend doing 1 and getting good at that rather than doing all three and not very well. I chose to do the whole class contingency; it was easier than the group or individual. When the expectations were set, I told them how I would acknowledge them for following our class expectations. Over the years, depending on the group of students I had different acknowledgment systems. Most of the time I used a marble Jar- mainly anytime I noticed a student or group was doing it correctly I would explicitly call out what I was seeing and put a marble in the jar. When the marbles reached a certain point, the class earned a reward, usually free time or computer time, as a class we came up with this.
After getting “good”- always room to improve, I could start setting up more routines and systems for the students and use the expectations to reinforce. Reinforcement, in my opinion, isn’t a bad thing. Student’s don’t intrinsically know how to follow your expectations if you haven’t taught them. My golden rule: “If you think your students know the expectation- they don’t, reteach it.” Reinforcements or acknowledgments, help students have a positive view of the routines, expectations and the classroom in general. I like to think of this as our paychecks, if you weren’t given a paycheck would you come to work? Probably not. We as adults are reinforced by a paycheck at the end of the month or on our evaluations when we hear about the improvements we have made. It is the same thing with students, receiving the in-moment feedback that is positive creates positive outcomes and feelings.
Now, this isn’t easy nor something I naturally did. It took practice, messing up and learning from my mistakes. But, using these classroom management strategies I could give my students an environment that allowed them to learn and grow with each other and I don’t know about you, but that is precisely what I wanted for them.
What does your classroom management look like? What about your expectations? How did you teach them?
Honestly Elise
