CSD ~ Classroom Management ~ Module 2

Professor Ramon Lewis' introduction:

• Four levels of proficiency:

1. Labour - teacher does what they can to the best of their ability;
2. Technician - teacher is skilled, training undertaken;
3. Professional - teacher can explain what they do and why they do it and why it works;
4. Artist - teacher can take all the skills and mix and match and adapt to the needs of individual students.

• General principles to take and apply in your own way.
• Recommendations towards researched based practices, implementation of which is limited only by your creativity!
• Two parts to Classroom Management:

1. Avoiding things going wrong: "Pre-emptive Management" (things that a teacher can do: good pedagogy, engaging curriculum - managing order in the classroom, flowing lessons, happy kids);
2. What to do when things do go wrong? "Responsive Management".

"Think back to 30 years ago or to an earlier time when you had experiences in schools? Do you think things have changed? Look at the slideshow below and think about the words that come to mind ... Spend some time sharing the list of words and your thoughts, experiences and ideas with the members of your small group.  What evidence do you have to support your views?"

• Words that came to mind for me while looking at the slideshow photos were: strict; rows; serious; rules; clarity; manners; discipline; sad; books / paper; chalk / chalkboards; drab plain space; simplicity; restrictive clothing (eg/ the jackets on young boys).
• These photos are a lot more than 30 years old!!  30 years ago was 1986, I was in Year 3 in a Public School in NW suburban Sydney. And my schoolrooms definitely did not look like those. Certainly they still looked different to today's classrooms in many ways, but some of the slideshow images are over 100 years old!
• So much is the same yet so much is also very different.  Technology in the classroom is different.  Technology at home is different. Families are different!  There are more and more children affected by parental separations and blended families (remember when the Brady Bunch was a novelty?!) Children have less freedoms in some ways (such as walking to & from school, being home alone, having less unstructured time) and more freedom in others (more entertainment, ideas, resources/facilities and structured activities are readily available).
• There are more diagnoses, more medications, and yet also more support and more strategies in place for children who struggle in the classroom environment. There are more toxins in the foods available and in the environments we live in, yet there is also rising community consciousness towards healthy and ethical lifestyle choices. The messages that children are exposed to in media and society are different, with more emphasis on sexuality and consumerism, but there is also a strong impulse towards individuality and recognition of the self, separate to typical stereotyping.
• As Professor Lewis has also stated, the language around classrooms and students has also changed a lot. The Pedagogy of teaching as an entire profession has evolved greatly as our understanding of learners, learning and teaching has expanded. 'Discipline' is frowned upon, teachers these days need to be much more aware of building strong, positive, professional relationships with their students, rather than creating fear of The Authority to coerce children into engaging with learning tasks. The task of the teacher to evolve their own pedagogy is a bigger one as there is a greater impulse towards teacher growth (through reflective proactive practice) and a bigger (and growing) body of knowledge to draw inspiration from.
• The needs that the world has of our learners/future leaders has also changed. We need more problem solvers, more visionaries, more doers.  We need people who can step forward to help mankind create better solutions and ways of being on the Earth. We need people willing to work with diversity and through adversity.  It is a BIG task that the educators of today undertake in preparing the future guardians of a fragile Earth.

Differences do not necessarily mean increases in the difficulty of teaching, although anecdotally that is what many teachers have experienced. It makes sense that big changes in the way that society as a whole works would have big impacts on the classroom (especially if you consider the classroom as a community in itself). This will significantly impact the way in which teachers need to be able to evolve their work to maintain effective engagement and interaction with their students in learning activities and supporting social development.

Reflection activity - Contemporary schools

Bearing in mind the photos you looked at and discussed previously, look at the pictures below and think about how our contemporary democratic society has changed the way teaching and learning happens in schools.

• What are some of the words that come to mind when you see these images?
• Happy; hands-on; engaged; small groups; helping; bullying; teacher @ student level, engaged; positivity.
• How do you think these contemporary values and ideals may impinge on your role as a teacher?
• Impinge "have an effect, especially a negative one" (Oxford dictionaries)
• "contemporary Australian democratic traditions mean that our schools must also accept and promote the role of personal freedom in their classrooms" (LaTrobe University: Classroom Management - Module 2)
• I think we do need to be aware that we are dealing with individuals, with individual strengths and challenges.  This does increase the difficulty of managing a large group of students, when you may be limited in your capacity and in the support available to you to be able to meet all of their needs.
• "Although students may protest their rights to personal freedoms, the role of the education system is to assist them to develop the personal and social dispositions which allow them to function in a collaborative and positive way, in both school and the wider society." (LaTrobe University: Classroom Management - Module 2) 
• When students perceive that what we request of them may just be for our own reasons, they may be less inclined to be cooperative and respectful than if we hold a clear picture that what we are doing we do with their best interests at heart. Students need to feel valued and respected as individuals, so this increases the significance of the teacher's capacity to build relationships with their students.
• In a chat with our school principle today, her comment to me was that "we have to teach behaviour these days, the children don't come with it" which I found interesting in relation to these discussions.
• Consider the following statement in relation to the pictures below: "Primary teachers teach children, secondary teachers teach subjects". How do you respond to this and how do you anticipate that this response may affect the way your classroom will function?
• Since primary teachers generally cover a broad range of subject matter with their classes, their relationships with their students are probably more significant in the children's overall learning;
• As primary aged children are younger, they are still developing foundational social skills and self-awareness which their teacher possibly needs a higher level of engagement with.
• The type of relationships that are developed between a primary teacher and a secondary teacher are different.  The younger child forms a more dependant attachment to a carer than a secondary student, who begins to develop ways of being with teachers more strongly borne out of an adult style relationship of mutual respect [Martin M.(Ed.) Educating through Arts and Crafts, 2008 p.68]
• Adolescent students do generally have a strong social foundation by the time they reach high school, which may largely allow teachers to focus on subject material rather than behavioural issues within the classroom.
• However, adolescent students are at a vulnerable stage in their personal development, and still need reliable adults in their lives in order to feel safe, secure and valued.  When a series of high school teachers each take just one subject with a group of students and do not make the effort to connect with the students there is a very real possibility that students will "fall through the gaps" so to speak and not seek out support that may be needed.