When I first came into this program, I fully expected to be a "lion" of a teacher – something we talked about early on in Foundations. When one of my coworkers asked me if I would be a "chill" teacher, before I could even open my mouth to answer – a few of my other coworkers said "NO!" in unison! I did some self-reflection when this happened … do I really rule with an iron fist? I continued that reflection when we were introduced to the lion and the lamb theory, and I quickly restructured my opinion on how I would manage my classroom. That is, not with the iron fist I (apparently) usually rule with. This opened my reflection to thinking about the other strategies of classroom management I would take on as my own.
Since the first week of this program, the topic of classroom management has been at the forefront of our brains, and the Week 7 seminar group in Learning and Development did a great job in consolidating a lot of classroom management strategies into one presentation. Not only did they talk about dealing with student misbehaviour, but how to prevent it in the first place. It is one thing to be able to diffuse situations and help students be more engaged with their learning, which all teachers should be prepared to do, but it is a whole different skill to be able to prevent this behaviour before it even happens. This is where I think I formed my idea of being a "lion" teacher – I figured being stern and "scary" would make students less inclined to act out. However, the courses in the BEd program and especially this seminar have showed me that this is not the best approach.
Instead of being a "lion," the group highlighted the importance of problem ownership and determining who is responsible for solving the problem at hand. This is something I never thought of before – I always figured it is the teacher's job to solve all the problems in the classroom, but students must be held accountable as well. They also talked about using "I" messages and communicating with the student(s) about how their misbehaviour is making you and other students feel. It is important to encourage students to reflect on how their actions can affect others, and this is a skill students will take with them for the rest of their lives. Furthermore, the group brought up the strategy of negotiating solutions with students, so they are taking more accountability for their actions. This way, you are working on a solution that you and the student agree to, which can help foster a positive student-teacher relationship more than imposing whatever solution you want would.
In this program, I feel we focus a lot on the ideal situations in classrooms with reminders here and there that things won't always go to plan. However, it is imperative that we remember classrooms are unpredictable, and being equipped with as many classroom management strategies as possible will help us tremendously in making our stressful career a little less stressful. After learning these strategies, I feel more confident in the type of teacher I will be when I enter a classroom of my own.
ZoeM@OTU
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