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September 30, 2009
Classroom management: the merits of explaining rules and knowing what you're doing
I keep thinking about all my SHU friends that were in the education program when we were all undergraduates. They've all been teaching for one or two years now, and they might as well be pros on topics like classroom management compared to me, the novice, the beginner.
In class, throughout my schooling career, I was always one of those students that would be doing exactly what the teacher wanted no matter when the teacher looked up at me. I can't help I'm a rule-follower. I'm really good at feeling out conventions for how to behave in situations. I think that's a skill that, now later in my life and (semi-)post-schooling, has extended into my professional and personal life.
However, it's come to my attention that when I have students of my own they may not all know how to act in a classroom. It will be my responsibility, as the teacher, to provide structure (but not be too rigid). Lots of classroom rules have been instilled in us as citizens participating in the school system in the United States. This is not to say public or private schools because there are simple conventions that apply to just about all US classrooms that we're expected to know (don't talk when someone else is talking, stay in your seat unless given permission to get up, capitalize the beginning words of sentences, etc.). Breaking these conventions is what sets apart students who "know" from students who don't know and won't know unless we explicitly tell them. These rules that feel so natural and inherent to us are foreign to anyone seen as an "outsider." Crookes suggests in chapter 9 (p.146) that we might not even realize these things are rules because we've internalized them so well... (that's a little creepy, but I guess it's necessary).
I know this is a broad assumption (and this is a side note that borders on a separate blog entry), but I would assume that most ESL classrooms are comprised of students who are seen as "outsiders" to the US school system. What I'm wondering is how I can create a classroom environment that is helpful to them as students while not totally overwhelming them with nuances of schooling in the US. It seems like there could be a whole class on how to be in class in the US (or any other country for that matter, but I plan to teach in the US, so my questions are centered around only this nation).
Internalizing rules, like Crookes suggests we have (p.146), has benefits, though. Beginning teachers have to keep these rules--and how to enforce them--in mind as they manage classroom behavior, introduce material, and go through lesson plans. Crookes suggests "there are aspects of teaching that are facilitated by having freed up cognitive resources through automatizing some teaching behaviors" (p.147).
I'm a little jealous of my former classmates at this point because they've already struggled with being overwhelmed with classroom management while trying to implement lessons, improvise, and get ready to do it again the next day... I don't have any of that experience.
CALL FOR EXPERIENCE: tell me something you learned about classroom management (the good, the bad, and/or the ugly) and how it's helped you.
I'm just going to have to learn about it secondhand for now. I finished my GPLC ESL tutor training course, so now I'm just waiting to learn who my student(s) is(are) and set up meeting times. I'm having that on-the-edge-of-your-seat feeling about it right now because I'm basically at a standstill. I can't begin to do any lesson plans until I at least know their levels, needs, and what they're interested in learning. I know it'll come, but I'm ready to get going on this so I can gain experience in things like lesson planning, improvisation, and classroom management...
Posted by KarissaKilgore at September 30, 2009 9:49 AM
Comments
I think the small classes at SHU really encourage good classroom behavior. In the first few weeks of term, incoming freshman can be easily distracted by their phones or Facebook, but I've borrowed Frank Klapak's attitude. I tell students that all the work in college is optional. Of course, if they don't do the work, then I'll have nothing to assess, so they won't pass the course.
I will invite them to participate with the in-class activity that the rest of us are doing, but as long as they don't disrupt other students, I let them make their own decisions.
I remember as a young grad student, taking a course from a famous professor, there were these two grad students who always showed up late, walked all the way across the front of the classroom, and dominated the discussion. It was a Lit-Crit course, and the prof would lecture in the persona of whoever we were reading about, and these two students would argue with him. For example, if the prof were applying the concept of free will to literary criticism, these students would debate with him about whether the concept of free will existed. If the topic was Freudian psychoanalysis, they would debate about Freud, rather than focusing on, for example, the importance of Freud to the history of literary criticism -- even if Freud is no longer the central force in mental health studies.
I actually told the prof after class one time that I was annoyed that he spent time with these grandstanders, but I should have instead asked questions that kept the prof on track.
Posted by: Dennis G. Jerz at October 3, 2009 11:38 AM
Haha, I love that, Dr. Jerz. Really, by the time they reach college I hope (American) students can grasp the concept of being in class for the sake of being in class (not being in class as a socializing event; although, with the techno gadgetry being introduced, it's more like being in class for the sake of socializing with everyone NOT in class).
And your anecdote about the showboaters... I'm glad it wasn't me in your shoes for that story. I wouldn't have been happy because it feels like at that point the teacher is indulging the students and, they get it in their minds that its okay to do what they're doing, but no one benefits. As judge and jury for that case, I would say the teacher is fully responsible to put the students in line, and should have showed them how to behave in his classroom. If he had caught their behavior in its beginning stages, they wouldn't have felt invited to proceed in subsequent classes, I think.
Posted by: Karissa at October 4, 2009 1:31 PM