Classroom Management 9/19

Classroom management was the topic I was most excited to learn about in this class. Being able to teach content to students is impossible without a successful classroom management plan. I have previously read Wong's First Days of School, and I absolutely loved it. I will be using a lot of components that I learned from this text in my blog today. I feel as if I am going to be a pro-classroom manager, but of course my belief will most likely crumble the first time I enter my classroom. I think that the most important part of classroom management is your knowledge of behavior and why a behavior is occurring, but that is another topic that Kalee and I are doing our teacher projects on.
The first necessary component in creating classroom management is deciding what rules and regulations you would like to see carried out in your classroom. The next phase is to write three or four (less is best) procedures that you would like your class to follow. For example, come prepared to class, treat other students with respect, and pay attention during instruction. The next step is to come up with the consequences for disobeying these regulations. It is best if you create a hierarchy of responses to each rule infraction such as a warning cue, verbal warning, points deducted off of conduct grade, note to parents, and write up. You also need to establish rules that result in immediate write ups if they are broken such as swearing, bullying, and destruction of property.
The next phase in classroom management is to make sure that you fully explain all of the procedures, rules, and consequences to students on the first day of school. I know that you want to dive into the material right away, but if you do not cover these fully and immediately you will be reteaching them throughout the whole year. When students walk into a classroom and immediately know what is expected of them, there is a greater chance that they will comply.
It is so important to keep the rules and consequences the same throughout the year. If you are constantly making up rules and consequences, students will not know what to expect from you day to day. I have seen this first hand in the practicum I am in right now. The teacher is constantly making up different infractions based on her mood that day. Her consequences change, as well, according to which student she is disciplining. For example, a student she likes is on his cell phone, she just tells him to put it away and ignores it; however if a student she does not like is on his phone, the phone is taken up and the student is sent to the office. Student behavior is absolutely out of control and the teacher spends more time working on their behavior than actually teaching.
Having the confidence that you can create a well-managed classroom is rather difficult, but if you keep the management plan simple and stagnant throughout the year students will respond positively.
For the CLE, I have decided to do the early education scenario about Willard the wanderer.
The first thing I would do is objectively define the behavior, what exact, observable behaviors is Willard exhibiting. The next thing I would do is collect data, and lots of it. Data collection will let you see things such as what happens immediately before the behavior, how often and for how long does the behavior occur, and what are the consequences of his behavior. After you have collected, graphed, and analyzed the behavior, you notice that Willard misbehaves when he is given seat work. You also notice that Willard is receiving positive reinforcement from his peers when they react to his behavior. This is when you, possible tier one, evaluate your own instruction. Are you providing engaging activities? After you have provided more interactive and engaging work to Willard you notice that while his behavior has decreased it is still a problem. Also during this phase, you should explain to the class that they should ignore Willard's behavior and focus on their work. The other students should soon learn to not reinforce the negative behavior. The next step is to create a behavior intervention plan. You talk with Willard and come up with a secret cue for when he needs to return to his seat and his work. If that does not ameliorate the situation, you begin a reinforcement plan with Willard. Tell him you will look up at him every ten minutes and if he is in his seat working he will receive a check mark. Tell him that if he receives ten smiley faces throughout the day, he will receive ten minutes of free time at the end of class.  As he meets his goal of ten smiley faces a day, gradually increase the amount of smiley faces he will require for free time. Hopefully, his behavior will be exterminated after working through this intervention. If no progress is made throughout all of these tiers, I would recommend meeting with a special education teacher to decide on other interventions or if an evaluation needs to be made.
Creating a learning environment with minimal behavioral distractions is ideal; however, we do not live in an ideal world. I was a great student in school, but occasionally I would partake in misbehavior. As a teacher, behavior issues will always emerge, but it is your job to create a plan to deal with each individual situation.