Module 3: The Core of a Well Maintained Classroom

For me, the two chapters that we read this week (Chapters were 7 and Chapter 13) were the most engaging and the most interesting. One of my biggest worries going into education is classroom management. How am I going to maintain a well-run classroom of 20 plus students on a daily basis? Between reading Chapter 13 closely, taking in the information that I found to be the most helpful to use, performing my interview, watching the additional resource videos, and working in a classroom with a teacher who has amazing classroom management skills I believe that I have a stronger understanding of how I can implement those same strategies and skills into my own classroom.

I like the definition that Woolfolk gives to describe classroom management.  Woolfolk stats that "the aim of classroom management is to maintain a positive, productive learning environment" ( Woolfolk 511). This way of defining classroom management can be interpreted in many different ways. For me, I believe that the way to maintain a positive, productive learning environment is by allowing students to be in control of how their day and even school year is going to look like. Students have to be allowed to take those risks and learn from their mistakes in order to learn even the simplest of tasks. If a teacher is constantly instructing a student in what he or she is doing wrong then the student is only learning how to annoy his/her teacher and will continue to do it either to get whatever negative or positive reaction to is resulting. Another key aspect of classroom management is the rules and procedures that a teacher sets in place. Woolfolk goes on to discuss these stating that as teachers we need to consider what kind of atmosphere you want to create in the classroom. In order to have good classroom management, you have to break down the purpose of each rule and procedure that you are expecting the students to follow. Students should also be told why such rule and/or procedure is important for them to understand. I also believe that allowing students to come up with reasonable rules that they believe should be followed as a classroom can be even more helpful because the student feels like they have some control of what they are being told to do. This concept would well with students in second grade or higher. That is because by second-grade students have an understanding of what rules are and how one should act in school.