The end of the school year invevitably involves rethinking how to motivate students and develop more effective classroom management techniques.
How far have you come as a teacher? Wth the summer vacation almost in sight, teachers quickly will forget the thinking process that goes along with teaching that they've put in all throughout the school year. All teachers want the secret recipe on how to motivate students, but inevitably forget that the hardest part of teaching involves building an effective management system starting with your classroom management strategies and techniques.
It pays to have a book of general teacher tips with a special emphasis on discipline and student management, as you struggle to find your own method and approach since a teacher's classroom management style varies from teacher to teacher.
Robert D. Ramsey's 501 Tips for Teachers contains genuine heartfelt intuition and wisdom. It is just the vision a new teacher needs for finding his or her own way in the classroom.
Some of these tips are just plain common sense, others are based on the author's experience. Some really will get underneath your skin . Don't take it to much to heart, or even as a report card but rather from the point of building up your strengths. This of course comes with experience. However all of these tips have one thing in common: they focus on your growth and your attitude towards teaching, which ultimately involves your connection (and love) to children and the understanding of classroom learning.
Which ones will you plan on implementing when you start the school year? Have these tips worked for your classroom management techniques?
1.Structure the classroom space so you can move around and get close to every student.
2. Allow some constructure noise in the classroom. Noise can actually help settle down restless student. Dr. Harlen Handsen, of the University of Minnesota, states: "Good noise means learning. Bad noise means the children are out of control. No noise means adults don't understand the nature of children."
3. Reservice a "limbo seat" in the classroom for any student who can't function or focus in his or her regular seat for the day.
4. Put safety first. Make your classroom a sfe haven for every child. Insist on zero tolerance for fighting, bullying, or harassment. If kids don't feel safe, they can't learn.
5. Practice amnesty. The best teachers give lots of second chances and don't bear grudges.
6. Always present classroom rules with conviction. Avoid any hint of questioning, uncertainty, pleasding, or negotiating. If students think there's some wiggle room, they'll wiggle. Take your rules seriously, and your students will too.
7. Try not to "loose it" no matter how much you're tested. If students see they've angered you, they know they've beaten you at the discipline game.
8. Use a variety of positive enforcers, such as free computer time, being first in line, or time to sit with a friend, to motivate students. "Whatever works" is always the best choice.
9.Get by with as few rules as possible. Make 'em simple and make 'em stick.
10. Know what works in disciplining students. The tools of effective classroom management for the twenty-first century include the following: empowering, modeling, resourcing, coaching, influencing, facilitating, cheerleading, advocating, mentoring, negotiating.
501 Tips for Teachers is available from Contemporary Books. (1997)
