Ryan Jenkins

Classroom Management
November 4th, 2016

Classroom Management Plan

There are multiple moments throughout my life that made me consider being a teacher.
One of the earliest was when I was sitting in my grade seven Language Arts class. So, in many
ways, the last decade of my has been dedicated to achieving the goal of becoming an educator.
Along the way I have gained the know how and practical knowledge necessary to do this, but
something I had often wonder was how I would actually run the classroom. Having a strong
handle on the content and a good temperament is one thing. Having a strong Pedagogy is
something else entirely.

There are many things that a classroom needs to be. Just as a teacher has many hats that
they need to wear, caregiver, nurse, educator, mentor, etc, your classroom has many hats to wear
as well. For some, your classroom will simply be a place to learn. As a teacher, this at least
should be obvious, but for many others your classroom needs to be a safe space, a support
system, an epicenter of security that they may not find in any other aspect of their lives. In many
ways, as teachers, it is our responsibility to ensure that our classrooms double as a supportive
community and not simply a room to be taught in. It is the mark of an effective teacher to have a
classroom that doubles not only as their own second home, but as the home of their students,
because in many ways that is what your classroom will be.

To achieve this, I believe the first thing that needs to be addressed is your classroom itself
and your students interact with it. It is one thing to be aware of the fact that you have students at
are at an auditory disadvantage, it is another entirely to go the extra mile to make sure your
classroom is prepared to deal with this. Echo and natural reverb is one of the hardest things to
tackle inside a classroom, as they are usually designed with space in mind, not noise dampening.
There are a great deal of small things that can be done to help alleviate this, such as angling
smart boards and white boards slightly to aim sound reverberation up at the ceiling instead of
back at your student. Physical things can also be brought into your classroom to help dampen
this as well, such as Book Shelves (which any good English Classroom should have anyway)
Heavy Tapestries (with your school's permission) and furniture like chairs and couches.

How your students are seated is another aspect which often has too little thought put into
it. Paired rows are great for getting students to interact with a partner, and grouped desks are
great for group work but, they also limit the amount of interaction that is possible in your
classroom between students and promotes clicks and sub-cultures if you will within the class
which can be counter productive in building an effective class wide community. With this in
mind the most effective classroom set up would be to have the students sitting in a horseshoe
formation with the teacher at the lead. This ensures that even if students are sitting with their
chosen group of friends, which will ensure they still have their autonomy, they will be facing and
able to interact with the rest of the class, promoting a greater sense of interactivity and
community.

The last thing that I believe a classroom needs to possess to set the framework for a
strong community is something that is once again far too often overlooked. I have been in a good
number of classrooms that were well decorated with posters of my teachers interests, which often
times ended up being things I too was interested in. For a long time this is something I wanted
my classroom to have. The more I have thought about it in recent times though the more I have
begun to realise that this is not where it should end. I am a firm believer that a teacher should
feel free to post things they are interested in as it is a good way to spark conversation and interest
and has the potential to strengthen the relationship between teacher and student. More than this
though students should feel free and even encouraged to post things that they themselves are
interested in. As I have stated, our classrooms need to be just as much our second homes as they
are our students.

How I would like to actually achieve a sense of community within my classroom is a

little more dependant on the specific class that I have and the students within it. Every persons
need is different and to try to create an overarching formula for how I will meet these needs
without first seeing them is both naive and potentially damaging. That said there are a good
amount of overarching themes and strategies that I hold in very high regard and will continually
look back upon while assessing my individual students needs. The first, and main, article that I
feel will be a theme throughout my teaching career is Bergin and Bergins article Attachment in
the Classroom. To effectively assess your student's individual needs it is integral to become
aware of the attachments that they share with their parent, with you as an educator, and with the
other students in your classroom.

Building from this is the way that I plan to actually interact with my students.
Specifically speaking how I will be interacting with the behavioral problems that will emerge
within the classroom. I am a firm believer that all students belong and should feel that they
belong in within my classrooms. Everyone should feel welcome and well represented within the
safe space that I plan to create. That said there will always be students who have bad days, and I
am not going to pretend that this will not be the reality that I will be facing. The trick is to make
sure you have articulated effectively to your students that dangerous, aggressive, and interruptive
behaviours are absolutely not tolerated while still being fair and kind to the students
demonstrating these behaviours. It is important not to lose sight of the fact that there are no bad
students, only bad behaviours.
 One thing I plan to keep in my back pocket while continuing throughout my career is the
strategy that was brought up in one of the many articles we reviewed in this class. Classroom
Management Strategies for Difficult Children touches on a strategy that they label as Admiring
negative attitudes and behaviours which, though I have to disagree naming of the strategy, is
something I plan to implement fairly regularly in my classroom. What it really comes down to is
the reframing of these negative behaviours that we will see in our classrooms. The point is to
keep in mind that your students have learned to behave this way for a reason and it is important
not to invalidate that by simply punishing them for it but instead to get them to use that
strength for a more productive goal.

This, said I also understand that not every situation can be this easily remedied, and
where students safety and wellbeing is being threatened a strong stance needs to be taken. This is
again where it is important to keep in mind that we need to be hard on behaviours, not students.
When some kind of punishment, for lack of better term, is necessary restorative justice should
always be attempted before punitive. Make sure the student knows and understands that it is the
behaviour that does not belong in your classroom, not them.

With all of this in mind, I look forward to beginning my practicum and by extension
beginning my career as an educator. I cant wait to come back to this with actual teaching
experiences under my belt and to be able to strengthen and elaborate upon my management plan
with real experiences and examples to underscore the methods and strategies that I believe to be
integral to an effective classroom and building a strong classroom community.