Managment Philosophy
Classroom Management is a collaborative effort between teachers, students, administrators, and parents or guardians to create a dynamic learning experience in a safe environment where students feel comfortable taking chances and tackling challenging problems. The ultimate goal is to help students build confidence, develop critical thinking skills, and take control over their own futures.
As the teacher in the room, it is my responsibility to put both procedures and rules in place to develop and foster a positive learning environment for every student in class. With the use of detailed procedures established at the beginning of the year, students will be free to utilize their time at school in a more educationally productive way. This particular brand of classroom management comes directly from the wonderful work presented by Wong & Wong in their book The First Days of School (2018). Wong & Wong tell us directly that “Classroom management is based on procedures” (2018, P. 95). I have taken this particular statement to heart and developed a comprehensive list of procedures that are easy for the students to understand and even easier for them to implement.
Or, in particular, I like the way The Skillful Teacher words it, "If we think of the learning experiences as a journey students will take, then converge, activity, and involvement thinking are like planning the details of the trip: the routes to take, stops along the way, possible alternate routes, what transportation to use, how to make it interesting, and so on" (Saphier et al., 2008, P. 375).
While I appreciate the analogy above, it fails to account for the "realities" of a 9-month trip with 30 kids along for the ride. You have to navigate every child's individual wants and needs without affecting the others in the car. First off, everyone is always hungry. Then, it is almost certain you will have to stop every 20 miles for another child or two to use the bathroom. Some of the kids will want to sleep and others will want to play video games. And then there are those who never wanted to go on the trip in the first place and are determined to make things miserable for everyone in the car. That doesn't even include the car crashes, frequent weather changes, and massive breakdowns that are inevitably going to happen along the way. You might even be in the middle of the desert and hit an iceberg that emerged out of nowhere. The possibilities are endless.
In the end, it can be a messy trip. And often times it's easy to wonder why you even decided to embark on the adventure in the first place. But then, when you see the joy in one of your kids' eyes, or the wonder on their faces, you become more determined than ever to do your very best to create an experience that will last all of the kids, even those who never wanted to go in the first place, a lifetime.
By using the ideas on classroom management from The First Days of School (Wong & Wong, 2018) and The Skillful Teacher (Saphier et al., 2008) to guide the "trip," or in this case the overall learning experience, the students are free to focus on the process of learning without the distractions of procedural ambiguity cluttering their minds.
I want to thank you for visiting my classroom management plan. It is my honor to have the opportunity to teach the youth of this generation and I can assure you I will never take that responsibility lightly.
Mr. Nicholas Prochnow