Classroom Management

                In Central Falls High School, the front desk is manned extremely smoothly, which makes me think that school-wide management is something the staff focuses on. They knew right away who I was and what I was doing there, and got to getting me where I needed to go. While sitting in the main office, I noticed the slow trickle of students coming by the main office for one concern or another. The secretary, I muse, is an unsung hero of any high school—she juggles multiple tasks without so much as blinking an eye. To an onlooker like me, it seems overwhelming, but she seemed practiced at this, and gets students and parents where they need to be. It makes the school seem like a safer place to be, and I’m more relaxed by the time I’m headed off to be observation.

In this classroom, management is maintained in a classic manner—the teacher is the authoritative figure with absolute control. The procedure for entering the classroom was as straightforward as can be: after socializing in the hallways, students would enter on their own accord. A few dropped their cell phones into a basket by the attendance sheet (this, the teacher explains to me, will earn the students a reward if they do it for the duration of the semester).  Students found their seats fairly quickly, with some lingering by the desks of their friends to socialize a bit. The room is arranged in a classic format: five rows of desks all facing forward.

By the time the intercom crackles and the Pledge of Allegiance is read, however, all students have found their spot. When attendance is taken, students are attentive to their own—they noticed who was missing, even before the teacher did. The class is quieted as the teacher stepped up the white board with the Do Now. The control of the classroom is focused entirely in the teacher’s hands: it is he who has the focus of the entire room.

Students act genuinely interested in the Do Now (“This Day in History”), but the instant the actual lesson of the day comes in they switch off. It’s nearing break, so no one really wants to do any work, but that hardly excuses the students who immediately disengage—they put their heads down and go to sleep, or doodle in the margins of their notebook instead of buckling down with work. Strangely, the teacher doesn’t try to correct this, which seems to be a major flaw in his classroom management style. How can you effectively manage a classroom if you’re letting students get away with inappropriate behaviors? How the teacher did speak up to correct behavior, he did so loudly, bringing the attention of the other students’ off of their work and towards the troublemaker—again, not terribly effective at keeping students concentrated on their work.

                Classroom management is a huge factor in how students get work done, and in this classroom I think that since the classroom management was lacking in the actual lesson, student involvement was therefore lacking as well. The teacher didn’t attempt to correct slacking students, and he absolutely disengaged the misbehaving student (who took to sulking for the rest of the class instead of reading as he was supposed to). Classroom management is parallel to student learning: high classroom management and teacher attentiveness facilitates student learning, but if the teacher is slacking, so will the students. 

RITELL Conference Reflection

The 2014 theme of RITELL’s annual conference was “Culturally Responsive Curricula in STEM” which, admittedly, I thought was not going to be all that an exciting a topic for a history teacher. Cultural diversity was something I could apply to my classroom—after all, history is often accused of being a parade of dead Christian white men—but STEM fields are the areas of math and science, areas that I struggled with in high school and had no interest in revisiting. I thought I would be hopelessly out of my depth amid science and math experts.

Fortunately, that didn’t prove to be case. I attended two seminars—one on encouraging girls to go into STEM fields, and one on Extended Learning Opportunities in Central Falls High School. Of the two, I found the latter the most interesting, and the one I could potentially use in my time as a teacher. Extended Learning Opportunities allow students and teachers to come together to create an individual curriculum for the student based around their strengths. For example, if a student enjoyed gardening, they could join up with a teacher to create a school garden (as a group of students did). Others worked in robotics, safety, music, and theater. The ELO counts for a class credit, and allows the student to explore their interests in a school environment. Personally, I think this program is a fantastic idea, and I would like to see more school implement it—imagine, as a student, coming to school and working with an individual, trusted teacher on a project you designed and implemented. It helps students retain interest in school and makes that all-important “real life” connection that students are always asking about. Playing to the strengths of students is definitely something I want to take back into my classroom.

One thing I disliked about the presentation was a comment from the keynote speaker, Dr. Christopher Emdin. In his diatribe against traditional learning, he mentioned that those who failed at traditional learning—those who failed in high school classrooms and didn’t make it to college—were stronger than those who had. “We are the weaker ones!” He exclaimed, so loud that even I, sitting at the back of the crowd, could hear him clear. “We are weak because we fit into the system! Because we cannot break out of the mold!”

That’s not true, I found myself thinking, that’s not true. I didn’t make it through the educational system because I enjoyed it—there were plenty of times I considered just not doing an assignment, just failing a course I didn’t like, thinking “well what’s the worst that could happen?” if I failed. But I wouldn’t let myself. I couldn’t let myself. Anyone who says that those who succeed in school are weaker than those who fail is generalizing a whole group of people who succeeded for different reasons. Students who do well in the current system are not just a bunch of yes-men: they succeed for a variety of reasons, some personal, some external. It’s not right to dismiss a whole cavalcade of students as sheep any more than it is to dismiss a group of students as failures. As I said beforehand, I want to be able to play to the strengths of all my students—those who work well in a traditional environment, and those that do not. 

Observation #3: 10-Minute Quiz

1) What do you think the objective is?

Students will study the growing phenomenon of sectionalism in the United States prior to the Civil War, and analysis how regional differences in the North, South, and West escalated political tensions.

2) What level of Bloom’s Taxonomy is that?

#4: Analysis

3) How will you assess it in 10 minutes or less?

Since analysis involves higher-level thinking, I have to ask the students higher-level questions. For this sort of objective, I don’t want to use multiple choice, because I want to them to explain and justify their answers. As such, short essay questions must be poised:

1.      1. Who were the key figures in sectionalism in the North, South, and West? What did they want for each region, and why?

2.      2.  Discuss the role of slavery in the South vs. industrialism in the North. How did these two systems oppose each other? Did any parallels exist?

Jamestown Fell and Everyone Died (The End)

Aka Microteaching II
They say overconfidence is the disease of the expert, so unload all of your critiques here.