What's Important To Know

To be a fine teacher, you have to know how to manage your classroom. Effective classroom management refers to the ability of a teacher to create and manage a positive and productive learning environment within her classroom. Classroom management encompasses more than the physical characteristics of the classrooms,  effective teaching strategies, and established rules and guidelines, it includes each teacher’s own verbal and non-verbal behaviors, attitudes, and beliefs about students and the role of the teacher. These personal views are critical in shaping and ultimately defining the type of environment that will exist within that particular teacher's classroom. It is important to note that the only behavior that a teacher controls is her own, therefore while she can exert influence on the behaviors of her students, it is usually by focusing on her own behavior that she is able to achieve a positive change in the behaviors of her students.

In order to be successful in the classroom, the teacher's philosophical approach must be congruent with her own beliefs and views. In other words, the teacher must believe that the management approach that she uses in the classroom is truly the one that she feels would be best suited for her students. The philosophical approaches include the following: student-directed, collaborative, and teacher-directed. In a student-directed classroom, the teacher actively involves the students in all of the decisions of the classroom. This means that choice plays a significant role in the learning environment. Students help create the rules and guidelines of the classroom, decorate their classroom and even sometimes choose the types of assessments that will be used to grade assignments. The goal of these classrooms is to build a democratic community of learners and through positive interdependence and cooperation stress individual accountability and development of social skills. Please note that creating this type of environment takes much time and effort and is usually easier to do in an elementary education setting where teachers have more time with the same group of students. 

The other approach to classroom management is the collaborative method. Through a collaboration between students and teacher, students receive some opportunities to have a say in the classroom, but not as much as in the student-directed environment. Proponents of the collaborative theories place the responsibility of classroom management on both the student body and the educator. Consequently, students are given limited choices to make decisions and therefore, feel empowered to be active members of their class while the teacher retains the responsibility for leading the classroom, having the final say in the structure, focus and the learning materials of the class. 

The last approach is teacher-directed. In teacher-directed classrooms, the teacher ultimately feels that it is her responsibility to make all the decisions and be the authority in the classroom. The students are in school to learn and they do not have the expertise that the teacher possesses to make the right choices about the subject matter, classroom layout or rules. Therefore, it is the teacher's responsibility to teach the students the rules and make all the appropriate choices as she feels would most benefit her students. In the teacher-directed classroom environment, the students do not have a voice in the matters of classroom management and it is up to the teacher to lay down the laws and for the students to obey them. 

Understanding these approaches to classroom management is very important for teachers in order to create effective learning environments where they would be happy teaching. A teacher who tries to use a student-directed approach to appear liberal will not be successful if deep-down she feels that she can make better choices for her students and that ultimately, if the students are allowed to rule their class, no work will get done and the environment will be chaotic. If the teacher believes that she will fail, it is more probable that she will. A teacher who believes in working with her students to find a common ground for rules of the classroom and feels that student participation will allow her students to feel more motivated and excited about their learning will be best served with a collaborative method than any other. So before you step into your classroom or if you have already started teaching, take a moment and think about who you are as a teacher and what type of environment you want to create for yourself and your students.