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.